Cloud computing is on the verge of becoming the de facto method of buying business systems, according to a new study into adoption and attitudes towards the new generation of technology.

The number of enterprises that are not adopting cloud computing are a small minority, according to Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ 2016 State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud report. As the majority have run mission critical applications over the cloud, and there is near universal recognition of better performance, usability and lower cost of ownership, the fear of adopting cloud and abandon old expensive computing models has disappeared, according to the report.

The lean toward the cloud has reached the tipping point, according to Ryan Shuttleworth, cloud CTO for Verizon Enterprise Solutions and he predicts that companies will push on to look for ‘new opportunities to grow’.

The enterprise user feedback came from a mixture of Verizon’s own cloud customers, anonymised cloud customer usage data and data supplied by analysts such as Forrester and Gartner. This year the highest ever number of enterprises (69%) said they had re-engineered at least one business process using cloud computing, almost double the numbers from the previous year. An overwhelming majority (88%) said it was an improvement on their old computing model and improved responsiveness to the business, while 65% said it improved overall operations.

Having proved the concept of cloud computing, cloud phobia has disappeared, according to Verizon, as 87% of businesses think the cloud at least matches on-premise computing and 80% say they feel as secure or more secure than they do with an internally run IT service. As a result, 87% of businesses are now using the cloud for mission-critical workloads, up from 71% last year and 60% in 2013. By 2016, according to Verizon’s figures, the mission critical penetration of cloud computing could reach 98%.

Last year, it was news when a cloud was used for mission-critical workloads, according to Shuttleworth, but now it’s the de facto standard. “Companies are now using cloud technologies to create new customer experiences, business processes and new opportunities to grow,” said Shuttleworth.

There was some positive news for enterprise IT departments, however, with the revelation that private cloud on the rise with 44% of enterprises using, or planning to use, a private cloud system.