85% of the 2,650 respondents – from the Americas, EMEA and APJ (including Australia) regions – said hybrid cloud was their ideal operating model.

That figure was down from the 91% recorded in last year's Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index survey, and 73% said they are moving some applications off the public cloud and back on premises.

Repatriating cloud applications could be explained by the way that the resource demands of new applications can vary significantly, and the elasticity of public clouds can easily cope with such situations. But over time those workloads become more predictable, which can mean on-premises (or a different public cloud) may become the more cost-effective choice.

That said, 71% said they plan to move new and existing applications to a cloud platform in the next three years.

53% said the availability of relevant skills is a limiting factor affecting cloud adoption, but the good news is that a massive 91% said they were investing in reskilling their team members to keep up with emerging technologies.

Another barrier is regulations and policies limiting where data can be stored is affecting the services they use, according to 51% of respondents.

Hybrid cloud is generally favoured for several reasons, according to the survey.

• It is regarded as the most secure model – even more secure than an on-premises private cloud or a traditional data centre.

• It allows for the dynamic allocation of workloads to the most appropriate infrastructure – 61% considered application mobility across clouds to be essential.

• A growing range of options means IT departments can decide which cloud to use on a per-application basis.

Perhaps surprisingly, 23.5% of respondents said they currently do not use any cloud technology. But on the basis of their plans, this is expected to fall to 6.5% in 2020 and 3% in 2021.

“As organisations continue to grapple with complex digital transformation initiatives, flexibility and security are critical components to enable seamless and reliable cloud adoption,” said Nutanix CIO Wendy M Pfeiffer.

“The enterprise has progressed in its understanding and adoption of hybrid cloud, but there is still work to do when it comes to reaping all of its benefits. In the next few years, we’ll see businesses rethinking how to best utilise hybrid cloud, including hiring for hybrid computing skills and reskilling IT teams to keep up with emerging technologies.”

The 2019 Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index report is available here.