The majority of US enterprises will increase their spending on cloud computing by up to 50% this year, according to US based researcher Clutch.

Conversely, the research also indicates that 6% of enterprises will cut their spending on cloud. The survey of 300 IT professionals at medium to large enterprises could indicate the different uses for cloud computing, with some companies using it to manage costs while others use it as a strategic weapon.

The study found that nearly 30% of the sample will maintain their current levels of cloud spending, with 6% saying they will reduce their cloud computing budget. A significant minority, 47%, identified efficiency improvements as the main benefit of cloud computing. There were no figures on whether performance improvements may encourage companies to spend less money on cloud services in future however.

The statistics on the uses for cloud computing do not suggest this is a tactical, strategic investment, however. The most popular motive cited for enterprise cloud usage, in the US, would appear to be better file storage, which was nominated as the primary objective for buying cloud services by 70% of the survey. The next most popular application of the cloud, backup and disaster recovery, which was nominated by 62% of the IT professionals, is another cost item. However, the cloud was chosen for application deployment among 51% of the sample, but there was no breakdown of whether this was viewed as a cost saving measure or a tactical investment. Similarly, the figures for the numbers of buyers who used the cloud for testing, 46%, was not broken down into tactical and cost saving motives.

Storage costs are the easy win and prove the value of the cloud: tactical use may be a later development, said Duane Tharp, VP of technical sales and services at service provider Cloud-Elements. “The returns on file storage are pretty straight-forward. Every company needs file storage,” said Tharp. “The ease of adopting the cloud for file storage could prove the concept and pave the way for the adoption of other use cases later.”