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Newly released figures from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) show that cloud computing adoption rate in the UK currently stands at 84%, with that number expecting to sizeably increase due to the shutdown of Windows Server (WS) 2003.

WS2003 will have its support stopped on July 14 and, as this publication has previously examined, many companies are leaving it to the last minute to finalise data migration plans. The CIF results confirm it; 58% of companies polled are still supporting the server, down only 2% from the year before. One solution is to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy, migrating easier data to the cloud but keeping others on-premise until the time is right. The CIF believes this uptake will significantly boost the overall numbers of UK cloud adoption.

78% of respondents are using two or more cloud-based services, according to the research of 250 senior IT and business decision makers from the public and private sectors. By early 2016, CIF predicts that 86% of UK-based firms will formally use at least one cloud service.

Seven in 10 (70%) of those polled who are already using cloud expect that number to go up in the next 12 months, while eight in 10 (79%) say they include consideration of cloud services within their wider IT strategy.

CRM is the most likely application to become cloud-based over the next 12 months, according to respondents; followed by disaster recovery, data storage, email, and collaboration services. Earlier this week disaster recovery specialists Databarracks issued a bullish prediction that disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) would become the most adopted cloud service of 2015.

“Cloud computing has come a long way in just a few short years,” said Alex Hilton, Cloud Industry Forum CEO. “Cloud has moved from the edge of the IT estate to the centre, and it is now largely regarded as just another way that we do IT.”

He added: “Importantly, it is, by and large, delivering the benefits the industry promised it would deliver.”