More Challenges

RightScale also recorded a rise in the perceptions of some specific challenges from the previous year.

One was greater competition for talent as adoption expanded and more companies advanced in their cloud journeys. Lack of cloud resources and expertise was reported in 2015 as a significant challenge by 27 percent of respondents, compared to just 17 percent in 2014.

That stat places limited expertise just behind security as the top cloud challenge.

Another uptick—from 18 percent in 2014 to 25 percent in 2015—was the trouble of managing multiple cloud services.

"As companies expand their cloud footprints and their portfolio of cloud services, they often struggle to gain visibility, automation, and governance across all of their cloud providers," RightScale wrote.