Australia leads other Asian Pacific countries in adopting cloud computing. In a recent report from Frost and Sullivan titled State of Cloud Computing in Australia: 2011, 43% of enterprises are now using cloud computing in some form and 41% of IT decision makers agreed that cloud computing will continue to be a top priority.

The study shows that more companies use a hybrid of public and private cloud. 22% of total enterprises use this type of cloud more than the 18% of organizations primarily using public clouds. Major cloud providers continue to be big name brands like Microsoft, Google, IBM, HP, Cisco and Telstra.

The study also predicts the state of cloud use for enterprises for the year ahead. Enterprises will still be cautious about moving their workloads to the cloud. There will be greater hesitation to transfer information that is sensitive, custom applications and production environments. Servers will be virtualized and network security will be the enabler that underpins investments in private clouds.

Enterprises spending on clouds will increase. Customers will still be cautious about using clouds because of concerns about hidden costs and downtime. The biggest influencers for cloud use still remain the IT department. However, there is still the prevalent fear that cloud computing could effect IT employment.

Arun Chandrasekaran, Research Director - ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, says, "There has been a significant increase in the use of cloud services in Australia in the past 12 months and all the indications are that this will continue. While a formal "cloud first" policy does not exist yet in most enterprises, the idea of a "cloud alternative" evaluation is increasingly common. We expect to see a number of trial deployments this year as companies dip their toes in the water and test non-mission critical applications and infrastructure."