The survey also reveals a communication chasm as about 40 per cent of executives in Singapore said they don't have open communication with the departments and business unit leaders that may be provisioning their own cloud services.

One in four respondents in Singapore has personally purchased a cloud service without the IT department's knowledge.

Only one third of companies based in Singapore have set policies to govern the use and adoption of cloud services.

"As is true with many forms of technology innovation, consumer technology has a way of secretly creeping into the enterprise and leaving IT in the dark," said Craig Dower, president, Avanade Asia Pacific. "Today, public cloud services are in a similar situation. Our research shows some are so easy to adopt, they are outpacing IT's ability to manage and control them effectively."

"While policy is a place to start, managing cloud sprawl requires a real cooperation and dialogue between CIOs and their business counterparts," said Dower. "It's important that companies define a user-centric cloud strategy. With that strategy in hand, it's much easier to have an open dialogue in discovering what cloud services are already being used, where the gaps are and what new technologies the company should leverage to drive business value."