Only 12 percent say that the cloud platform is too immature, which is a major drop from 26 percent in 2011.

In addition, half of the survey respondents say that have “complete confidence” in the cloud – up from 13% a year ago.

While that does still mean that the other half of respondents are not entirely comfortable with cloud computing, the bottom line is that cloud is now considered the normal way to implement software solutions, according to an article from Forbes.

However, one might need to take these answers with a grain of salt, as the survey was sponsored by 39 companies, including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Eucalyptus and Glasshouse.

But there are concerns in the data – security remains the primary inhibitor to adoption in the cloud marketplace, Forbes reports, with 55 percent of respondents identifying it as a concern.

Implications of regulatory compliance also loom over the technology (38 percent) as well as concerns about vendor lock-in (32 percent).

Oddly, pricing and expenses were at the bottom of the deal-breaker list.

Also, few respondents this year feel that cloud helps lower the total cost of ownership of systems and applications – dropping from 57 percent to 53 percent, according to the article. This might be a sign of greater scrutiny of long-term cumulative costs incurred from monthly rentals of applications or security-as-a-service, which sometimes don’t favorably compare to buying and maintaining systems on-site.

One of the stand-out findings is the growing embrace of cloud-focused solutions for big data and analytics, Forbes says. Due to an increased trust in cloud computing, big data is emerging as a major focus for both vendors and end-users. In fact, 80 percent of respondents identified big data as the most likely sector to be disrupted by cloud computing. Vendors also identify analytics and big data as the first and second-most important cloud services to provide, respectively, the article says.

But the top reason for adopting the cloud remains scalability. Fifty-seven percent of companies identified it as the most important driver for cloud adoption. Business agility ranked second, cited by 54 percent, Forbes reports.