Cloud Is The 'New Normal'

The cloud has become the "new normal" for business, as more than two-thirds of U.S. organizations plan to shell out more for the technology in 2017, according to a new survey from B2B research firm Clutch.

Clutch's survey of nearly 300 IT professionals in the U.S. whose businesses use some form of cloud service found increased confidence in cloud security, which could be influencing more movements to the cloud, Clutch said in a statement. Security was cited by 45 percent of the survey field as the top benefit of using the cloud.

"This attitude is a shift from past years, when cloud security was often treated with skepticism and distrust," the Clutch statement read.

The other benefits? Increased efficiency (cited by 41 percent of respondents), data space (40 percent), flexibility (33 percent) and scalability (28 percent).

"Cloud is the new normal," said Jeremy Przygode, CEO of Stratalux, an Amazon Web Services consulting partner and MSP based in Inglewood, Calif., in the Clutch statement. "When businesses need to evaluate new solutions or need to do a hardware refresh on existing solutions, cloud is generally the first option."

Click through to read three other key findings from the study.