Cloud Computing Growth Still Going Strong

Grazed from MidSize Insider. Author: Shawn Drew.

There are tremors of economic uncertainty reverberating throughout almost every segment of IT. Through it all, cloud computing continues to grow as strong as ever. With performance and management benefits that non-cloud solutions have difficulty matching, it’s little wonder that the cloud is one of the few areas of IT still showing growth. But recent surveys have shown that midsize businesses may be a little slow to adopt the cloud and, in this market, that could be killing them.

Gartner IT Predictions

This certainly isn’t the perfect time for many businesses. Enormous economic uncertainty in the United States, Europe, and China has put a damper on many business performance predictions, with analysts choosing caution in the face of such an uneasy customer base. However, this global downtrend doesn’t seem to be affecting IT as badly, and it has the cloud to thank…

As detailed in this Bloomberg article, research firm Gartner Inc. recently updated its yearly IT growth forecast to 3 percent, up from a prediction of 2.5 percent earlier this year. This puts the global IT spending forecast at $3.6 trillion for 2012.

Global spending on the cloud is expected to reach $109 billion this year, a remarkable jump from $91 billion in 2011, as noted in PC World. The report also predicted that this number should grow to $207 billion by 2016. All the main areas of the cloud show growth, with the automation of business processes being the distinct leader.

Both telecommunications and IT services are expected to grow as well, the former through adoption in emerging markets, the latter because of the need for consultants to manage IT’s increasing complexity.

Cloud Computing and Midsize Businesses

The growth of cloud computing should come as no surprise to anyone watching the IT landscape in the past few years, but there still remains a decent number of businesses who just aren’t ready to make the jump. This is especially true of midsize businesses, as recent informal surveys have shown that the midmarket is far behind small businesses and large enterprises when it comes to cloud adoption.

In a way, this makes sense. Small businesses are naturally agile and often able to take chances with their technology. Additionally, they often don’t have a dedicated data center, making the cloud a perfect fit for many of them. Likewise, enterprises often have the leeway to experiment, giving nonessential sectors the ability to try out new technologies to see if there is any benefit.

Midsize businesses aren’t small enough to just go with the latest trend and not large enough to experiment, so it appears that many have let the cloud’s potential drawbacks deter them from using it. True, some aspects of the cloud are a little troubling. Your data will have to be handled through a third party and the costs are often understated, but the reality is that these are minor setbacks when compared to the benefits.

At this point, it should be obvious that the cloud is the future of IT. Gartner’s prediction of $207 billion in cloud spending by 2016 may be a bit conservative, considering the amount of attention this sector is getting.

IT managers at midsize businesses need to start accepting the inevitability of cloud computing and start taking advantage of it as soon as possible. Even if it just means utilizing cloud backup at first, or moving some HR areas to software-as-a-service solutions. The benefits of the cloud will show themselves quickly, enabling greater adoption at a later date.

The reality is that cloud computing allows smaller businesses to have access to computing solutions that even just a few years ago were reserved for large enterprises. Businesses that recognize this and start taking advantage of it will put themselves in a great position when compared to their competition, especially if their competition continues to rest on their laurels.