With cloud computing on the rise, it’s only natural that cloud services and cloud-based solutions will continue to grow rapidly across industries.
Bain & Company predicted that Software as a Service (SaaS), where software is licensed on a subscription basis and centrally hosted, would grow at an 18% CAGR by 2020. Platforms such as Google Apps, Salesforce, and Citrix GoToMeeting continue to dominate the cloud services ecosystem.
According to KPMG, Platform as a Service (PaaS) adoption was expected to become one of the fastest-growing sectors within cloud platforms, increasing from 32% adoption in 2017 to 56% by 2020. PaaS solutions enable organizations to develop, launch, and manage applications far more efficiently without building and maintaining complex infrastructure.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, has also experienced substantial growth. According to Statista, the global IaaS market was expected to reach $17.5 billion in 2018. Amazon Web Services (AWS) held the largest market share, competing closely with Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Engine (GCE).
Enterprise adoption of cloud services has accelerated significantly. Consumer cloud services continue to expand, cloud-based file-sharing solutions are becoming mainstream, and collaboration platforms are increasingly central to modern business operations. Social media services are also becoming more democratized and widely adopted.
In January 2019, Flexera surveyed 786 technical professionals across multiple industries to better understand the adoption of cloud computing and enterprise cloud strategies.
Cloud Computing – A Perspective
The 2019 State of the Cloud Survey identified several important findings shaping the future of enterprise technology:- 84% of respondents reported having a multi-cloud strategy.
- Public cloud adoption reached 91%, while private cloud adoption stood at 72%.
- Most organizations leveraged nearly five cloud platforms on average.
- Enterprise cloud spending continued to grow rapidly.
- A majority of enterprise workloads were increasingly being moved to the cloud.
- Central IT teams focused heavily on managing and optimizing cloud costs.
One of the biggest priorities for enterprises today is optimizing cloud costs while improving operational efficiency. The cloud should not be viewed as an end goal, but rather as a strategic enabler for digital transformation and scalable innovation.
According to McKinsey, cloud adoption has been increasing rapidly, with cloud-specific spending expected to grow at more than six times the rate of general IT spending through 2020. While many organizations have successfully adopted SaaS solutions or implemented cloud-first strategies for new systems, several businesses still struggle to extract the full value of migrating enterprise systems to the cloud.
Simply moving existing IT infrastructure onto cloud platforms may not always represent the most effective utilization of cloud services. The real opportunity lies in rethinking technology-enabled services for the digital era. Brands that successfully innovate in this space can establish leadership positions and create strong differentiation in highly competitive technology markets.
