Businesses predict more than half of their applications and services will be deployed on the hybrid cloud within three years, according to research.
A global survey of 1,000 c-suite executives by Wakefield Research, on behalf of IT specialist Avanade, found that most firms still need to develop a strategy for moving on-demand, while the push for hybrid cloud is often led from outside the technology organisation.
Non-IT executives are 32 per cent more likely than technology leaders to advocate immediately moving critical applications, including data and analytics, e-commerce applications and customer-facing services, to hybrid cloud environments.
"Budgets and control may be shifting away from IT, but hybrid cloud solutions represent an opportunity for IT to align itself with c-suite priorities, delivering strategic value to the business in a secure and properly governed manner," said Mick Slattery, Avanade’s president for hybrid cloud.
Almost three quarters (74 per cent) of companies believe the hybrid cloud will enable their organisations to focus on issues that are core to business growth.
The research also shows that most companies are investing in hybrid cloud technologies at a faster rate than private or public cloud, with 69 per cent of executives agreeing that a hybrid cloud strategy will be one of their biggest areas of focus in 2015.
Despite clear agreement that adoption should be a priority, as many as 58 per cent of companies do not have a hybrid cloud strategy in place.
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And just 16 per cent of executives said they can identify the full range of benefits associated to the hybrid cloud.
