Many companies say they will adopt cloud computing within two years

However, most cloud investment in the U.S. will be geared toward maintenance of infrastructure than innovation

One-third of 1,200 organizations plan to convert their application environments away from a traditional, client-server model to one based on virtualization and cloud computing over the next two years, according to a study commissioned by Microsoft and released today. The study sought to broadly determine global IT spending priorities.

While the survey was far from comprehensive, it did uncover a few silver-lining facts. IT spending budgets will not be cut, with 98 percent saying they will generally maintain or increase their planned investment. Nearly 2/3 say the economy has created reason to invest more in one or more areas of technology. And of those, virtualization, security, systems management and cloud computing are the areas of choice. Specifically:

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• 42 percent plan increased investment in virtualization
• 36 percent plan increased investment in security
• 24 percent plan increased investment in systems management
• 16 percent plan increased investment in cloud computing

Given today's economic climate, much of the study produced results on spending priorities that you might expect. Security remains the top challenge, with 73% saying protection of consumer and customer data as the top priority. Additionally:

• 55 percent indicate that the economy has changed the role of IT in their organization
• 51 percent say that budget cuts are the biggest barrier to innovation
• Innovation is taking a back seat to maintenance. In 2009 companies on average worldwide will allocate 37 percent of their budget to innovation and 63% toward "keeping the lights on"

However, one of the more surprising areas was that U.S. companies were allocating less budget toward "innovation," and more toward maintenance than their international counterparts, said Microsoft's Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of infrastructure server marketing in an online press conference. In the U.S. the breakout was innovation 29 percent vs. maintenance 71 percent. This compares to the U.K. and Japan's 41 percent / 59 percent ratio and Germany's 35 percent / 65 percent.

With respect to U.S.'s lower ratio, Kelly says, "The U.S. was the hardest hit in some respects from the economic downturn but also has the opportunity of coming back faster. Nearly 70 of the IT pros we surveyed believe that their investments in IT will drive revenue growth and become a competitive advantage over the next three years."

One area that won't be seeing the greenbacks is green IT, the study found. While most of those surveyed (84 percent), said they considered green factors when making decisions about datacenters, when push comes to shove, a technology's green-ness is only a factor for 44 percent when deciding what to spend on. In other words, the study suggested that people like to think about eco-conscious IT options, but these have a reputation of costing more and they aren't willing to spend more for so-called green technologies, at least not in this economic climate.