We’ve suspected a link between BYOD and cloud service adoption for some time, and this theory has all but been confirmed by the latest Cloud Trends report from IT provider CDW.

One of the biggest findings from CDW’s survey of IT professionals was that BYOD was cited by 75% of organizations as being the most “significant influence” on their decision to embrace cloud computing. And with 68% of companies also reporting increased demand for cloud computing support, it’s clear enough that employees’ use of mobile devices plays a big part in determining organization’s IT policies.

CDW says that 39% of organizations questioned have now adopted cloud solutions for their IT needs, up from just 28% in a previous survey back in 2011 – which is a pretty significant rise over a period of less than two years. In addition, another 33% of companies stated that they were “planning” to adopt cloud solutions soon, with 21% still exploring the idea.

In its report, CDW says that in spite of IT leader’s concerns over security, cloud adoption leads to some serious benefits for organizations. Among these, the improved ability to innovate, improved efficiency, enhanced employee mobility and cost savings have all been cited as big advantages that come with embracing the cloud. As for the most popular cloud applications, large companies said that conferencing and collaboration apps were the most important for their operations, while for SMBs cloud storage was dominant.

Stephan Braat, General Manager of Cloud Solutions at CDW, comments:

“Organizations’ adoption of cloud computing has steadily increased, which comes as no surprise given the growth of mobility and the consumerization of IT. By aligning cloud services with critical applications and preferences of employees that use mobile devices, organizations can better capture business value that includes cost savings, increased efficiency, improved employee mobility, and an increased ability to create innovative new products and services.”

CDW’s cloud trends report also delved into costs of cloud adoption, finding that factors such as software management costs (65% of companies) and software licensing (63%) had the biggest impact on their decision-making process. In addition, CDW looked at companies top concerns regarding the cloud too, finding that to no one’s surprise the biggest worry was security and data integrity (cited by 46% of respondents), followed by performance concerns (32%) and the challenges posed by integrating the cloud into existing legacy systems (25%).

Click here to read the full copy of CDW’s report, or alternatively you can watch this video for a watered-down version: