Nearly two-thirds of organisations are now hosting applications in the cloud, according to a new piece
of joint research into application development by Capgemini, Hewlett-Packard and Sogeti.

The World Quality Report 2010/11 found that 60% of businesses globally have deployed up to half of their application infrastructure to ‘the cloud’.

Respondents were asked what their organisation’s top reason for adopting cloud would be, whether or not they had done so. Half of the respondents said that cloud computing could reduce development costs, while 3% – presumably not cloud users – said the top reason would be that “it is trendy”.

The survey of more than 30,000 executives and IT directors also highlighted a rising appetite for Agile software development, with close to 60% of respondents stating that they expect to use the design framework for development in the coming year. Around a third (37%) said that Agile IT delivery improved their time to market.

“Profound changes are driving how applications are built and delivered,” wrote Jonathan Rende, vice president of HP’s application business, in a note accompanying the report. “Trends such as process and organisational shifts driven by the agile movement and cloud computing are increasing in visibility and implementation.”