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85% of line of business (LOB) decision makers in the manufacturing industry are using at least one form of public cloud service, according to a new research study.

The report, released jointly by EMC, VCE, and VMware – all now part of Dell in some capacity after the whopping $67 billion deal for the former in October – polled more than 600 decision makers overall across six industries, with one sixth each on telecoms, finance, retail, public sector, oil and gas, and manufacturing. Yet it was the latter which provided the most interesting results.

Cutting costs (33%) and driving efficiencies (29%) are the primary use for public cloud services, according to the respondents, with the majority of line of business employees surveyed (87%) saying they consult IT for cloud deployments.

Despite this, however, security worries remain. Security exploits, cited by 50% of respondents, was the most worrying aspect for line of business leaders regarding cloud deployments. Reputational cost to the business (43%) and internal data loss (36%) were also seen as important.

“Manufacturers are united in their appreciation and use of public cloud services, and understandably so – it can offer the agility and flexibility that many LOBs in the industry need to keep up with rapidly changing market demands,” said Rob Lamb, EMC UK and Ireland cloud business director.

“For manufacturing IT departments to be more heavily involved in LOB IT decisions, they need to embrace a cloud strategy that allows others to continue cutting costs and drive efficiencies while mitigating security and data loss concerns,” he added.

According to the latest rankings from research firm IDC, EMC sits in fourth position in global cloud infrastructure vendors, behind HP, new custodians Dell, and Cisco respectively.