Organisations are catching up to the hype of cloud computing and are increasing spend on public and private clouds, replacing traditional on-premise software deployments for key business applications and infrastructure, according to new survey by Strategy Analytics.

According to the survey, which surveyed 1,750 organizations in the US, UK, France, Germany, China, India and Brazil, software as a Service (SaaS) surged ahead, with 64% of organisations increased their cloud spending this year, compared to 37% for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and 22% for Platform as a Service (PaaS).

The study said that cloud adoption is driven by scalability, visibility, and manageability, so that corporate IT departments may more effectively respond to evolving business user needs and expectations.

Companies still keep apps off the cloud due to their concerns over security, reliability and availability downtime.

Strategy Analytics Enterprise Software and Communications director Mark Levitt said Organisations have been relying on business cloud services including email, CRM, and Web and audio conferencing for more than a decade.

"This Strategy Analytics survey shows that a majority of corporations have abandoned traditional on-premise software deployments for many types of application and infrastructure software. Public and private cloud computing is now the norm, not the exception," Levitt said.

Strategy Analytics Mobile Workforce Strategies senior analyst Gina Luk said, "Clouds help companies respond better and faster to business users who expect easier access to applications and information using PCs and mobile devices."