A graphic from the report shows more companies embracing cloud computing, and fewer companies dismissing it. Credit: Avanade, Kelton Research

Despite high-profile online glitches and the difficult economy, the past nine months have seen a notable increase in the number of companies testing or planning to implement cloud computing as part of their operations, according to a new study commissioned by Seattle-based tech consulting company Avanade, the Microsoft-Accenture joint venture.

Ten percent of the more than 500 executives responding were testing or had deployed cloud computing projects, compared with 3 percent when the same survey was conducted nine months earlier. The number of companies with no plans to adopt cloud computing dropped from 54 percent to 37 percent, according to the study, which was conducted in late August and early September by Kelton Research.

"It's real-world evidence of a dramatic increase in the rate of cloud adoption," said Larry Beck, Avanade's senior director of cloud computing, in an interview. "I have to admit, even though I spend all of my time working on this, I was surprised to see the numbers."

It's good news for Microsoft, which is getting set to launch its own Azure cloud computing system, competing with existing cloud-computing services from Amazon.com, Google and others. Avanade specializes in Microsoft technologies.

More broadly, it's a positive sign for the future of cloud computing -- in which companies can replace or supplement their own internal servers with computing and storage delivered over the Internet from remote data centers. The embrace of cloud computing demonstrated by the study comes despite high-profile outages at online services, the difficult economy and ongoing concerns about cloud-computing security.

Security concerns remain the top reason for companies not to use cloud computing, cited by 40 percent of respondents, according to the study. Cost-savings and business agility were among the reasons companies cited for embracing cloud computing.