Cloud Computing is the Future

This month a report published by 451 Research has shown that businesses across the developed world are keen to adopt cloud computing. Some 69% of the North American and European businesses with dedicated cloud budgets questioned in the study stated that they are going to increase their spending in this area both in this year and the next.

As such the global market for the cloud will be worth over £12.5 billion by 2016 and annual growth will sit at around 36% for at least the next three years, which paints a rosy picture of an already buoyant marketplace.

So it seems that major enterprises and even those with lesser resources are embracing the cloud and heralding it as the future of IT. But what makes cloud computing so attractive to businesses and will it really live up to the hype poured upon it by various analysts?

 

Price Matters

In the aforementioned cloud study, one particularly salient piece of information to emerge relates to the impact that cloud computing has had on IT budgets. It is changing not only how much money businesses are having to spend, but the way they choose to spend it.

Cloud computing has made it possible for businesses to invest in riskier innovations and get products and services to market at a far quicker rate than was possible in the past, when in-house IT was the only way to go.

This means that less money needs to be spent on R&D and the rewards of worthwhile creations can be reaped sooner rather than later.

This is driving businesses to spend more on the cloud in anticipation of the savings that it can deliver in other areas. Since the cloud is something that is not limited to big businesses, but can be harnessed by start-ups and SMBs as well, this is an opportunity that is open to all, not just a privileged group of multinationals.

 

Escaping the Obsolete

With traditional IT, even the most significant investment in hardware and infrastructure needs to be made with one eye on the clock, because systems and software age like anything else. Similarly, they also require constant maintenance and there will come a time when all that shiny new equipment and high cost licensing is completely outdated.

This makes many businesses hesitant to spend money on internal upgrades, because to a degree it can feel like throwing cash down a bottomless pit which will never be satisfactorily filled.

Cloud computing makes it possible for firms to flee from the perpetual upgrade cycle and instead invest in IT as a commodity and service that can be paid for like other amenities without ever going out of fashion.

Third party cloud providers are responsible for keeping hardware and software up to date and enterprise customers can take advantage of this arrangement to stay ahead of the pack, or at least keep up with it.

In addition this instils a natural element of future-proofing into any business IT system, since when hardware changes and new platforms are released in future years, there is no need to worry about whether compatibility with legacy equipment will be an issue.

The value of cloud computing needs to be weighed in many different circumstances and by harnessing a variety of metrics and factors, without which it may be hard to appreciate the benefits that it brings, especially in relation to cost. But businesses which can see through any perceived obstacles to adoption will realise that the cloud is the undeniable future of IT and something which will come to define the next decade of computing in an enterprise environment.