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Almost nine out of 10 (88%) respondents in a survey conducted by tech giant EMC believe hybrid cloud capabilities are ‘important’ or ‘critical’ to organisations who wish to enable digital business transformation.

The study, which polled more than 900 respondents, with one third in EMEA, found an overwhelming need for digital business initiatives. 92% said their company’s strategy called for such, while 90% said digital business was a “top priority” within three years. Almost two thirds (63%) claim they are already on their way to achieving digital transformation goals.

In particular, hybrid cloud enables increased IT agility, as well as making implementation of digital business initiatives easier, quicker, and less expensive, according to the survey respondents. Improving customer experience was the most popular reason behind business change (87%), ahead of acquiring new customers (86%), increasing innovation (82%) and enabling real-time business decisions (82%).

“Becoming digital is a priority for nearly every business on the planet,” commented Jeremy Burton, EMC president of products and marketing. “But how to get there is not as obvious. This study makes it perfectly clear that hybrid cloud – and the savings and agility it brings with it – is a key enabler to becoming a digital business.”

Naturally EMC, like practically every other cloud provider, has its own hybrid cloud offering. Yet the trend of hybrid cloud adoption is only going one way. According to a recent survey from North Bridge, the allure of business agility through cloud is superseding other factors like accessibility and scalability.

This is not the first study to be pumped out by EMC this week. The company, alongside VMware and VCE, previously posited that 85% of line of business decision makers surveyed in the manufacturing industry were using the public cloud in some capacity.