Nearly half of IT leadership and operations personnel identify improving operational efficiency as their number one near-term internal priority, and nearly one-third say big data analytics is their top deliverable goal, according to a survey by AppDynamics. Respondents also indicated a strong push into both public and private cloud, and nearly a quarter plan to implement container solutions in the next 12 months.

We’re seeing cloud picking up tremendous momentum. When you add together public and private, just about everybody is either building new applications or migrating existing ones to the cloud. That’s something we’ve been waiting to see for some time, as enterprises have built up their comfort levels with moving important applications out of their data centers.

The other area that’s getting serious traction is analytics. About 29 percent of IT professionals we surveyed said that delivering "big data analytics" to their organization is their number one priority. They are looking to harvest data from their applications that can contribute to real business insights. So these two areas of focus — cloud and analytics — are going to dominate 2015.

Also noteworthy from the survey is what emerging stage technologies IT professionals say they are pursuing, most notably, container solutions. Docker and other container solutions are big topics of conversation, and 24 percent say they have plans to use such a solution in the next 12 months.

Here are the main survey highlights:

■ 46% say “improving operational efficiency” is their IT department’s #1 priority

■ 29% say delivering big data analytics to their organization is their #1 priority

■ 26% are building new applications in a public cloud, and 17% are migrating existing applications to a public cloud

■ 34% are building new applications in a private cloud, and 20% are migrating existing applications to a private cloud

■ 76% say they have no plans to implement a container solution in the next 12 months or are not familiar with container solutions

Mobile continues to pose challenges for IT departments; 25 percent of respondents say they don’t have sufficient mobile application development resources, and 24 percent say security concerns are still a barrier to mobile app deployment.

This data points out two significant trends. One is that IT is looking to get the most out of its resources, as shown by the overwhelming prioritization of efficiency. The second is a push to deliver greater value to the business side of the enterprise through analytics.

The survey was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2014, with 193 respondents in IT leadership and operations roles who attended AppDynamics’ AppSphere users conference. The margin of error is +/-5.76% at a 95% confidence level.

Steven Wastie is Chief Marketing Officer of AppDynamics.