Companies still cite security as a top concern when they consider cloud adoption, but it's starting to fade,  according to new research.

In its third annual Future of Cloud Computing survey, North Bridge Venture Partners found that  the percentage of respondents citing security as their top concern fell to 46 percent this year from 55 percent in last year's survey.

Other concerns that impact cloud adoption include worry that IT management will grow more complex as workloads move to cloud -- a factor that 46 percent cited. More than a third (35 percent) of those surveyed named vendor lock-in as a concern and 27 percent cited interoperability as an issue going forward. Other inhibitors included regulatory compliance (30 percent) and privacy (26 percent.)

"It's a good sign to me that security is starting to fade as an inhibitor year over year," said Michael Skok, general partner with North Bridge Venture Partners in an interview. On the other hand, the fact that so many respondents cited complexity as a potential issue is concerning. "People are accepting and adopting cloud but they also realize it's not as easy as it should be. We're still very early in the market here and this worry over complexity tells me we have industry issues to resolve."

Check out results from last year's survey here:

Skok will talk about the results Wednesday at GigaOM's Structure event in San Francisco.

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