2016 Will Be All About the Cloud

January 2, 2016 Off By David
Object Storage

Grazed from Barron’s.  Author: Tiernan Ray.

Cloud computing was a hit last year, but 2016 is the year investors start asking more questions about a market very much filled with hyperbole.  The stocks of the two top cloud providers by revenue, Amazon.com (ticker: AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT), rose by 118% and 19%, respectively, this year. Another cloud vendor, Salesforce.com (CRM), rose 32%. All three vastly outperformed the stocks of the Old Guard in tech, the non-cloud companies such as Oracle (ORCL) and Cisco Systems (CSCO). They fell 19% and 2% this year, respectively.
 
There are multiple reasons why Amazon and Microsoft enjoyed investor favor, but a lot of it has to do with the simple fact that they started revealing more about their cloud computing results. Amazon first broke out financial reporting for its cloud business in the spring, and Microsoft followed with its own reclassification of revenue in September…

 

But that reporting raises numerous questions. Investors should, and will, increasingly demand to know more about what companies claim as “cloud.” The result could help the beaten-down stocks of the Old Guard…

Read more from the source @ www.barrons.com/articles/tech-spending-growth-this-year-will-be-all-about-the-cloud-1451704687