IT firms have long understood why moving to the cloud is good for the bottom line. It has a host of benefits to businesses ranging from increased security, decreased downtime, enabling a mobile workforce, and reducing hardware and maintenance costs. And now the numbers are showing that many other industries are embracing cloud technology in various types of applications. Gartner has just released a new prediction that demonstrates all types of verticals are moving all, or part, of their operations to the cloud. BusinessCloudNews tells us more:
Analyst firm Gartner has predicted more than $1 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly impacted by the transition to cloud computing by 2020.
As IT spend steadily shifts from traditional IT offerings through to the cloud, a process which the Gartner team has coined the ‘cloud shift’, the rate in which enterprise organizations transition through to cloud is expected to gradually increase year-on-year. The aggregate amount of cloud shift in 2016 is estimated to reach $111 billion, though this will increase to $216 billion in 2020. The Gartner team believe cloud computing will be one of the most disruptive forces of IT spending since the early days of the digital age.
“Cloud-first strategies are the foundation for staying relevant in a fast-paced world,” said Ed Anderson, Research VP at Gartner. “The market for cloud services has grown to such an extent that it is now a notable percentage of total IT spending, helping to create a new generation of start-ups and “born in the cloud” providers.”
In terms of the specific segments, IaaS is the largest market accounting for $294 billion, though demonstrates one of the lowest levels of cloud shift through 2016, only representing a cloud shift rate of 17%. Business Process Outsourcing, or BPaaS, will represent the biggest cloud shift rate at 43%, though the expected market value through 2016 will be $119 billion.
While the potential of cloud computing has been exhaustively discussed over recent years, one of the growing debates in the industry has been centered on the skills gap. Cloud requires not only new skills within the organization, but also a different approach in problem solving as well as a new business culture, should be benefits be realized. This challenge is currently being addressed by numerous organizations throughout the world.
“There is no doubt that cloud delivers unmatched business benefits in terms of usability, choice and agility,” said Angelo Di Ventura, Director at Trustmarque. “At the same time it requires wholly new skills and capabilities, and a complete IT transformation to maximize the value that businesses can gain from it – cloud can cause considerable disruption if left unchecked.
“The transition from an internet-enabled business to a digital business running in the cloud represents a huge jump for the majority of IT departments, whose existing infrastructure is designed for ‘business as usual’ operations. Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all model when it comes to making cloud work for a business.”
If you are ready to make the move to embracing the cloud more in your operational workflows, talk to us. We can move you to a more productive and flexible system so you can focus on other ways to increase your business. Contact the IT Solution Experts at Corporate Technologies Group today.