If you had any doubts about whether interest in the cloud is real, a fresh survey of IT professionals should dispel them.

Detailed in a new Webtorials paper (registration required, but it’s free), the survey asked 164 IT pros how likely it was that their companies would leverage the cloud for a variety of uses within the next year. The numbers are surprisingly promising for cloud adoption.

For example, almost 36 percent of respondents said they either will, or will likely, use the cloud for VoIP. More than 30 percent said they would use the cloud for Unified Communications, and just under 30 percent said they would use it for network and application optimization. Also, disaster recovery, security, and network management each had more than 25 percent “commitment” from the IT folks.

Not quite as popular but still polling in the 15 to 20 percent likelihood range were application performance management, virtual desktops, and high performance computing.

Now, if this survey had just asked for an expression of interest in these areas, these wouldn’t even be bad numbers. But the fact they represent certainty or near certainty that these will be happening within a year is very impressive, and good news for cloud service providers, “aaS” (fill-in-the-blank as a service) vendors, and others.

As this migration continues, beyond this one-year snapshot, it will continue to highlight the need for an absolutely dependable connection to the cloud. When you’re doing UC in the cloud, or depending on the cloud for disaster recovery or other critical applications, you can’t afford a weak link between you and your data and apps.

Hence the need for carrier-provided links offering end-to-end security, service quality, scalability, and the highest reliability. Remember your solution is as reliable as your weakest link and simply put, if it’s not carrier grade, you shouldn’t be transporting anything your business depends on over that link.