Software as a service (SaaS) adoption has more than quintupled since 2011 with the front office leading the way, research from North Bridge Venture Partners has shown.

The data, which polled 1358 respondents, found that SaaS was becoming increasingly important as a CIO priority, behind security software and business intelligence, hitting 74% adoption this year. IaaS and PaaS, in comparison, lag behind on 56% and 41% adoption respectively.

The report revealed fairly solid figures for cloud adoption and innovation. Nearly half (49%) of respondents claimed companies use cloud computing for revenue generation or product development activities, while a similar number (45%) want to or already run their company in the cloud.

The transition phase is also rapidly improving, according to the research. Aside from manufacturing, two thirds of respondents across all business apps will move some or most of their processing to the cloud in the next two years. This …