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DETROIT - Forty-four percent of U.S. executives aim to tackle current IT challenges through leveraging cloud solutions, and they are planning to invest more in cloud computing in the future. That is the finding of an IDC survey commissioned by T-Systems.

Corporations expect cloud computing to deliver lower IT costs (26 percent) and to enable them to replace legacy systems (21 percent) and adopt new applications more flexibly (14 percent).

As the U.S. cloud services market continues to mature, enterprises find that overall business impact and productivity gains from the cloud are as significant as achieving cost reductions, said David Tapper, IDC VP Outsourcing and Offshore Services Market Research. Cloud computing is seen as most likely to deliver solutions for Customer Relationship Management (31 percent), productivity tools like email, collaboration or Office packages (28 percent), online stores, and Enterprise Relationship Management (26 percent each).

Corporations continue to have reservations about security, but they are no longer the decisive criterion against cloud. The concept of security now extends to issues such as how cloud computing will impact compliance requirements or data availability. That is prompting corporations to consider the right cloud type and cloud service needed. Enterprises see an opportunity in the private cloud for providers to fulfill their security requirements and agree on service level agreements. 40 percent of U.S. respondents have implemented a private cloud strategy while only 13 percent are relying on public cloud and 16 percent on hybrid cloud solutions.

In the course of adopting cloud computing, enterprises are increasingly considering new service providers, and they are also considering providers whose services they have not previously used. In ERP more than half are considering providers with whom they have had no previous experience. CEOs, Tapper said, are ranked as most significant in the decision-making process on using clouds. The result is that buyers are viewing cloud as strategic in achieving critical business objectives for which CIOs and IT vendors must ensure that their cloud solutions help achieve these objectives and associated business benefits.

The survey results validate that one of the greatest needs in deploying cloud-based solutions is to find the right partner who can assist with the question of cloud readiness and bring forward a clear plan on how to migrate to the cloud, said T-Systems North America Managing Director Heike Auerbach. T-Systems has been migrating and managing complex applications to the cloud for more than seven years longer than any other IT service provider. It was gratifying for us to see that customers profoundly value an experienced partner as they make the journey to the cloud.

For the cloud survey commissioned by T-Systems, IDC asked CIOs and other top IT managers of 104 U.S. corporations in the summer of 2012 how they now rated cloud computing. IDC conducted the same interviews in the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and Brazil.

IDC analysts and T-Systems cloud experts are presenting the survey findings and the latest cloud solutions in free webcasts. The live webcast for the U.S. market will take place at 2 p.m. Eastern Time on October 18.

To register, click on T-Systems.Com

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44 Percent Of US Execs To Tackle IT Challenges Through Cloud