Despite ongoing adoption of the cloud, companies are still leaning toward private models because of the licensing issues and rising costs of the public cloud. Security concerns, however, continue to be the biggest inhibitor of public cloud hosting services, according to a TechTarget report.

Since there have been so many scare stories about businesses losing or exposing sensitive information in the cloud, many decision-makers are worried about how well they can trust providers, the news source noted.

By leveraging the cloud, organizations can easily scale up and down capacity to fit momentary demands. As a result, companies can enhance efficiency during times of high traffic without worrying about experiencing bottlenecks or other issues. However, these advantages come at a cost.

"Yes, there are certain use cases where cloud doesn't make monetary sense," Photobox CTO Graham Hobson said, according to TechTarget. "A lot of our turnover comes in the month of December, so we don't need that much of cloud storage throughout the year. Buying that would be like renting a car every day."

Still, the benefits of the cloud often outweigh the risks, as adoption rates continue to rise. Eventually, the cloud will become the normal way to perform business operations.