Cost reduction is the top IT priority in the next 12 months, and complexity reduction is the top strategy in order to achieve savings.

Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of the CIOs surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that their business executives see cloud as a way to be independent of IT and about 58 percent of respondents are running mission-critical workloads in the unmanaged public cloud regardless of policy.

Of those surveyed, 79 percent plan to support running mission-critical workloads on unmanaged public cloud services in the next two years, indicating a growing acknowledgement that public cloud services must be a part of a comprehensive cloud strategy.

Seventy-one percent of respondents think IT operations should be responsible for ensuring public cloud services address their firm's requirements for performance, security and availability.