All pointing skywards for cloud computing

Peter Dinham
Sunday, 24 May 2009 15:09

IT Industry - Market

Scepticism about cloud computing, still in its early stages of development, abounds in the technology industry, but despite the critics who apparently describe it as not much more than hype, there’s a new prediction that in the next six years – by 2015 – cloud computing will make up 17 percent of all IT expenditure worldwide.

There’s also been a note of caution sounded, with a warning that IT suppliers who do not begin to invest significantly in cloud computing and “learn from the demands of users” will find themselves increasingly marginalised, with “serious consequences for customer loyalty, revenues and profits.”

This take on the development of cloud computing comes from industry analysts, Coda Research Consultancy, who reckon there’s nothing short of a “radical transformation” going on across the technology world, and, “it’s called cloud computing.”

“For many commentators, cloud computing is the future of all computing, whilst for other commentators, much coverage is hype, and cloud computing is not significantly different from current and even older technologies and ways of doing computing.“

Despite strong growth predictions, senior director at Coda, Steve Smith, says many questions remain around revenues, cost, security, vendor lock-in, standards and the roles it has to play among different organisations.

“IT users who do not begin to evaluate cloud computing for their businesses risk seeing their competitiveness, productivity, customer loyalty and revenues all decline relative to their competitors.

The 17 percent growth in cloud computing over the next six year predicted by Coda, if achieved, would bring revenues worldwide  to $180 billion by 2015, from a mere $46 billion just last year.
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