Cloud computing services have actually been around for decades but were never utilized to the great extent that they are today and certainly were never a large revenue generator for the companies that were offering them. Today of course that has changed completely as, over the last several years, a wide selection of service upgrades to hardware and software have been developed along with the Internet itself.
At present the average consumer as well as a multitude of businesses have not just started using cloud services but have embraced them wholeheartedly. It is now common to use cloud services for editing email, photo editing and file sharing. Smartphone apps have made it easy and simple to do the same with mobile devices including tablets and many businesses use the cloud for sales force management and other highly important tasks.
Researchers believe that the move to ‘the cloud’ is not even close to its saturation point at the time, proving that the demand for cloud services continues to grow. In fact;
- For every 120 tablets sold or 600 mobile smart phones a new cloud server is put into service.
- Nearly 70% of all midsized companies are adopting cloud-based analytics because they offer much better efficiency, increased response time and quicker updates.
- In 2011 Microsoft spent nearly 90% of their R&D budget on new cloud computing products and strategy development.
- Employment in the cloud services industry has increased over 800%.
- Over 50% of all US Government employees now work exclusively on the cloud.
There are two main factors that are pushing cloud computing to the forefront. The first is that using cloud services frees a company from having to build and then maintain an IT infrastructure. This liberates people and revenue that can then work on creating value for the company instead, something that will increase future revenues.
The second is that working on the cloud can provide extreme flexibility in terms of scale, meaning that a business can quickly and easily increase or decrease the overall costs of their IT infrastructure as their company’s needs change.
Indeed cloud computing has been referred to as the ‘next generation of outsourcing’ for these very two reasons. It offers a degree of flexibility and ease of use that has never been seen before, lowering operating costs while allowing an unprecedented amount of freedom to the people using the cloud to perform tasks easier and quicker from practically anywhere. As we move into the future and the technology continues to improve more companies will not just adopt cloud services but indeed will build their business on the cloud from day 1.
This is a guest post by Deney Dentel. Deney is the CEO at Nordisk Systems, Inc. Nordisk Systems is an Vmware business partner based at Portland in Oregon has multiple certified sales and technical experts helps you to virtualize and find where Vmware partner fits in your environment.
