Companies are reporting more benefits and fewer challenges with expanded adoption of cloud computing, according to RightScale's second annual State of the Cloud survey.

The 2013 results showed broad adoption of cloud computing — with enterprises now adopting at higher rates than smaller companies.

Survey respondents continued to show a strong interest in multi-cloud strategies, with plans to evaluate and use a broad range of public and private cloud options.

In this survey, RightScale introduced a Cloud Maturity Model in order to segment and analyze companies based on their level of cloud adoption. Respondents were categorized into the following four cloud maturity levels:

- Cloud Watchers are developing cloud strategies and plans but have not yet implemented cloud projects. (17 percent of respondents).

- Cloud Beginners are new to cloud computing and are working on proof-of-concepts or first projects (26 percent of respondents).

- Cloud Explorers have implemented some cloud projects and are running applications in the cloud. (23 percent of respondents).

- Cloud Focused respondents are heavily using cloud computing and using it as a strategic initiative to transform business. (26 percent of respondents).

The remaining 8 percent of respondents were not planning to use cloud.

The top benefits reported in the survey are faster access to infrastructure, greater scalability, faster time to market with apps, and higher availability.

Organizations report that they are realizing significantly more benefits as they progress from Cloud Beginner to Cloud Explorers to Cloud Focused. As an example, 30 percent of Cloud Beginners reported that they were gaining faster access to infrastructure, while 87 percent of Cloud Focused respondents realized that same benefit.

In addition, respondents reported that challenges such as security, governance, and compliance declined as cloud maturity increased. For example, security is reported as a significant challenge by 38 percent of Cloud Beginners, but only 18 percent of the experienced, Cloud Focused, respondents.

Companies of all sizes continue to adopt cloud computing. However, larger enterprises with more than 1,000 employees were slightly more likely to claim some level of cloud adoption (77 percent) versus smaller companies (73 percent).

In addition, larger organizations are choosing multi–cloud (77 percent) with the majority of those (47 percent) choosing hybrid cloud strategies. Enterprises with hybrid cloud strategies are making progress toward their goals, with 61 percent of those organizations already running apps in public cloud, 38 percent in private cloud and 29 percent in hybrid cloud environment.

DevOps has taken hold in 54 percent of companies surveyed with adoption split between at the project level (25 percent), indicating a bottom up approach, and the corporate or business unit level (29 percent), indicating a top-down mandate.

The survey revealed that DevOps adoption goes hand-in-hand with cloud maturity, with more than 75 percent of Cloud Focused respondents reporting adoption of DevOps vs. 56 percent of Cloud Explorers, 53 percent of Cloud Beginners and 41 percent of Cloud Watchers.

“In our 2013 State of the Cloud survey, we were able to gather meaningful insights as to how an organization’s level of cloud maturity impacts both the benefits they are able to realize and the challenges they perceive,” said Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale. “The results reveal a clear cloud value imperative: more cloud adoption unlocks more cloud value."

"The data shows that investments in cloud adoption will continue to drive increased value for their business,” Crandell adds.

The survey was conducted in the first quarter of 2013 and included 625 respondents from development, IT and business roles across a wide range of company sizes and industries, including financial services, media and publishing, education, digital agencies, and software companies.