Such is the complexity of cloud computing systems that the average user runs applications and carries out experiments on a combination of six different public and private clouds, according to a new survey from Software-as-a-Service provider RightScale Inc.

RightScale’s 2016 State of the Cloud Report, which is based on the answers of more than 1,000 technical professionals, also reveals a sustained increase in hybrid cloud adoption, as growing numbers of enterprises shift workloads to the cloud, especially private clouds.

According to the report, private cloud adoption has grown from 63 percent to 77 percent of organizations, with hybrid cloud adoption growing at a rate of 13 percent year-over-year to 71 percent. It says that 17 percent of companies now have 1,000 virtual machines (VMs) or more up and running in the public cloud, a four percent increase from last year. In addition, some 31 percent of firms have at least 1,000 VMs up and running on private clouds, a nine percent increase from a year ago.

The increase in cloud usage is paralleled by the growing acknowledgment of the influence IT has in setting polices and choosing cloud providers, RightScale said. IT management is now given responsibility for deciding on public cloud providers in 42 percent of all organizations, up from 34 percent last year, and has a free hand in selecting private cloud providers in 44 percent of firms, up from 31 percent one year ago.

In what must be an encouraging sign for cloud providers, ecurity is no longer considered the biggest challenge for cloud computing. Instead, IT pros cite a lack of resources and expertise as their biggest concern, with security coming second, and cloud cost management ranking as the third biggest challenge.

More companies are embracing DevOps too, with the percentage of enterprises engaged in it rising from 66 percent to 74 percent in the last year. Furthermore, some 27 percent of companies now say they’re using Docker containers in production, while another 35 percent say they’re planning to do so. The most popular DevOps tools continue to be Chef and Puppet with 32 percent each, while Ansible is now used by 20 percent of all organizations, up from ten percent one year ago. And in case you needed any more evidence of DevOps’ growing importance in the enterprise, RightScale says that the number of respondents who’re planning to use Salt, Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Mesosphere, Docker Tutum, Rocket, and Rancher outweighs those who’re using them already.

As far as public cloud adoption goes, Amazon Web Services continues to hold sway at the top, with 57 percent of all organizations now using its cloud. Microsoft Azure is doing well too – some 17 percent of organizations are now using Azure IaaS, compared to just five percent last year, while 13 percent have adopted Azure PaaS, compared to nine percent one year ago.

As for the private cloud, every major provider saw increased adoption in the last year, with VMware’s vSphere leading the way with 44 percent. Meanwhile, VMware’s vCloud Suite and OpenStack are both used by 19 percent of all organizations, with OpenStack the more popular option among those businesses with 1,000 employees or less. RightScale’s report also counts bare metal adoption for the first time, revealing it’s used by 15 percent of all companies.

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