In 2008, Cloud Computing was more popular than what A-List celebrities wore on the red carpet. As the worst economic year since 1931 came to a close, why does Cloud Computing remain such a hot topic for 2009? The driving force? Arista Networks Chairman and Co-Founder (& Sun Microsystems Co-Founder), Andy Bechtolsheim, said it best in one word – Economics. It’s all about the “Benjamins” and what a cloud computing infrastructure can do for your wallet.
Analysts tend to agree; according to IDC, the market for cloud spending is expected to grow 6x faster than traditional IT spending in the foreseeable future and will reach $42 Billion by 2012. That’s huge and definitely something worth exploring for vendors.
Additionally, IDC predicts that Total IT Spending will grow an average of 7% per year from 2008 to 2012 whereas Cloud Spending will grow a staggering 27% per year. The pie chart from IDC below shows that over half of IT Cloud spending will be for the application side. By moving the application layer to the Internet, vendors can implement a “software-as-a-service” business model due to its ease of deployment across multiple sites while at the same time separating the user and the physical datacenter location. Companies such as Facebook and Yahoo have already been reaping the benefits from a vendor perspective.
Here are some FACTS, not opinions, about what Cloud Computing can do for vendors:
Easier for application vendors to reach new customers.
Delivering & supporting applications is easier and cost effective.
Using commodity server & storage hardware costs less.
Driving down data center operational costs saves money.
Everything above in bold == economics. Nuff said.
Comments