Skill deficit has emerged as the biggest impediment for Indian entities in their cloud transformation journey, followed by compliance requirements and cyber security threats, a market research report of IBM said on Wednesday.

The survey was conducted among 3,014 IT and business professionals, including over 250 from India, in companies with annual revenue over USD 500 million who have deep knowledge of their organisation's Cloud strategy, it added.

According to the report, 76 per cent of respondents think it is difficult to realise the full potential of a digital transformation without having a solid hybrid cloud strategy in place and at the same time, only 39 per cent of Indian respondents said that they have proven the benefits of cloud and are now focused on using it more fully.

Despite high regard for cloud adoption, lack of required skills, regulatory and security concerns are adversely impacting the pace of transformation in India.

"When it comes to managing their cloud applications, 66 per cent of respondents say their team lacks the skills needed to be proficient. This is a major roadblock to innovation, with more than a quarter of respondents saying skills and talent shortages are impeding their business's cloud objectives. 39 per cent of respondents say a lack of technical skills is holding them back from integrating ecosystem partners into cloud environments," according to the report.

Compliance challenges are increasing with regulations on the rise for professionals in India.

"57 per cent of respondents believe that ensuring compliance in the cloud is currently too difficult and 33 per cent cite regulatory compliance issues as a key barrier for integrating workloads across private and public IT environments," the report noted.

According to the survey report, security concerns can even hold organisations back from unlocking the full potential of partnerships.

"As potential security gaps can cause third and fourth party risks to loom, respondents say cyber security (50 per cent) and data governance (49 per cent) are the top challenges to fully integrating their business ecosystem into the cloud," the report said.