Over the past year, we’ve seen how cloud computing has driven new and innovative business models, from the popularization of artificial intelligence to the arrival of virtual reality in the consumer market. For businesses of all sizes, cloud enables greater collaboration, faster innovation to market, and lower operating costs. Cloud has allowed for the maturation of the agile business model, where leaders are no longer tied down to on-premises assets, benefitting both customers and the greater marketplace.
Here on this blog, I try to quantify the impact of cloud computing every week. As the cloud evolves, it’s important that you know the driving forces that are pushing both your competition and the marketplace forward. Here’s what I found:
- Platform-as-a-Service Continues to Skyrocket: Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) platforms still have immense growth potential, with KPMG expecting adoption to grow from 32% this year to 56% in 2020. As more enterprises shift their operations to the cloud, PaaS solutions help head-off the overwhelming amount of data capture involved.
- Technology CFOs Corroborate Cloud Value: Cloud saves money, and chief financial officers couldn’t agree more. Research from the 2017 BDO Technology Outlook Survey showed that nearly three-quarters of CFOs saw significant financial impact. Financial impact according to this survey will also influence adjacent industries including the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing.
- APIs are Evolving: Last year we observed the crowning of application programming interfaces (API) with Google’s purchase of Apigee. Fast forward a year later and the API economy is booming, with nearly 17,422 APIs listed on the programmable web including for enterprise applications. We expect this number to grow significantly higher with even more applications headed to the cloud.
- IT Spending is In the Cloud: While cloud adoption appears to be universal, true adoption is hovering closer to half. That said, predictions from IDC in their latest FutureScape Report shows that cloud spending will hit 60-70% of total expenditures by 2020. If you think your competition isn’t using the cloud now to get ahead, they soon will.
- Cloud Computing is Growing Exponentially: Similar to my last point, cloud spending is also growing at four and a half times the rate of other IT spending. IDC predicts that cloud will see a 19% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) by 2020 and nearly six times IT spending from 2015 through 2020. While numbers past 2020 weren’t available at press time, we can only imagine how much higher predictions will be.
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