Research commissioned by Fujitsu and Microsoft and published by Connection Research has revealed that CIOs in Australia are “embracing the realities” of the cloud.

In the foreword to the report, entitled “Insights Quarterly: Cloud in Australia”, authors Craig Baty and Greg Stone describe cloud computing as “infectious” and add that “cloud has arrived, and will continue to grow in functionality and popularity”.

The key takeaways from the report, which polled 179 CIOs across Australia, were:

• Cost was the biggest driver in moving to the cloud – lower operational costs and lower capital expenditure was most important to approximately 21% of respondents
• Email and messaging was the service migrated to the cloud most frequently – 22.6% of respondents were on the way to utilising it
• Data security (48.5%) was the most important factor in choosing a cloud provider

Each question was ranked in degrees of importance, leading to a set of …