Dive Brief:

• Research firm Gartner predicts cloud technology will continue to grow in importance to the enterprise for the next several years, with more businesses using cloud than not using cloud by 2020.

• Gartner also estimates that at least 30% of the 100 largest vendors' new software acquisitions will be cloud-only by 2019.

• Though public cloud and private cloud usage are growing, Gartner says hybrid will be the most common enterprise use of cloud.

Dive Insight:

While many companies resisted cloud usage at first, Gartner predicts that companies will continue to accept it, and even the biggest hold outs will have at least some cloud applications in the next few years.

"Cloud will increasingly be the default option for software deployment,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice president at Gartner, in a press release.  “The same is true for custom software, which increasingly is designed for some variation of public or private cloud.”

A study released by HyTrust earlier this month found nearly 75% of organizations plan to move additional systems to the public cloud this year, while a May report from Synergy Research found that the overall cloud market grew by an astonishing 50% in the first quarter of 2016.

Cloud security was initially a concern for many enterprises, but it appears its reputation has changed and more business leaders are looking toward the cloud to keep data safe, according to a recent Fortune report. The banking industry, for example, is now more frequently moving to adopt the cloud, according to Deutsche Bank researchers.