Regulations are another big roadblock to cloud adoption, the speakers said. The government needs to improve compliance rules that relate to cloud services and make them common at least across the U.S. states, said Yousef Khalidi, distinguished engineer at Microsoft.

That lack of consistent laws across state lines has a significant impact, Soltero said. "It's a non-technical obstacle, a purely regulatory obstacle that prevents all kinds of very interesting apps in the cloud," he said.

That said, the speakers find that some companies are using compliance as an excuse not to use cloud services. Terremark handles government classified information, yet some companies with far less stringent requirements believe they can't use its services due to regulations. "There's this perception issue that gets in the way more than reality," Drumgoole said.

The IDG News Service