Of the 312 respondents, 51% cited security and data privacy concerns when answering the question, "What do you see as your greatest barrier to moving to cloud?"

The next-highest barrier to adoption of cloud computing, cited by 21% of the respondents, was integration of cloud-based applications with existing systems.

Concerns about the ability to bring systems back in-house and regulatory/compliance issues were cited by 18% and 10% of respondents, respectively.

According to Unisys, the poll results confirmed the outcome of another rapid poll that the company conducted in a June 2009 webinar on protecting data in the cloud

Answering the question, "What is your greatest concern about moving workloads to the cloud?" 72% of respondents to that poll cited security concerns. Other considerations ranked significantly lower on the scale of urgency - for example, integration issues were next highest at 34%.

Sam Gross, vice president of global IT outsourcing with Unisys, said that the poll results confirm what the company continues to hear from its clients as - well as industry analysts.

"Until they are convinced that there is 'industrial-strength' security in the cloud, chief information officers will remain reluctant to move more than development and test systems into that environment."

"This is why we have made comprehensive security and data protection integral parts of the Unisys cloud computing strategy and solutions."