For second straight year, cloud computing tops the list of IT investments for coming year

Half of the respondents to a recent Unisys Corporation online poll said that cloud computing is their top IT investment priority for 2012. The poll, which drew 300 responses, was conducted on the unisys.com web site in September and October 2011.

This is the second straight year in which respondents to a Unisys poll named cloud as the chief priority for IT investments in the coming year. In a similar poll conducted in December 2010 and January 2011, 44% of 262 respondents said that cloud computing topped their IT priority list for 2011.

"Over the past two years cloud computing has moved into the mainstream of IT investment decisions," said Colin Lacey, vice president, Data Center Services and Solutions, Unisys. "From the U.S. Federal Government's ‘cloud first' policy to enterprise business units' demands for greater IT responsiveness, business decision makers are embracing both private and public cloud computing models."