Adam Horne, IT Sales and Managed Hosting Specialist Consultant at Hays, shares his thoughts on the development of the cloud industry. An expert in all aspects of technical sales, including the IT, managed cloud hosting and infrastructure markets, he would be happy to hear from anyone interested in this post by email (adam.horne@hays.com) or via the Sales Specialists UK LinkedIn group.
There have been some exciting developments within the cloud industry recently. The 2013 Future Of Cloud Computing survey by North Bridge Venture Partners and GigaOM Research has shown that cloud adoption is on the rise, as 75% of those surveyed reported the use of some sort of cloud platform. According to the survey, gaining greater business agility, scalability and cost are the three main drivers of cloud adoption.
The survey also showed that 45% are now using Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas). Whilst Iaas is still a relatively new industry, this is good news for Google, as its highly-anticipated public IaaS cloud offering 'Google Compute Engine' (GCE) has just been released. The GCE boasts to be faster, more efficient and low-cost, but will need to develop its SLA if it wants to compete with Amazon’s offering: ‘Amazon Web Service’ (AWS).
Customers are queuing up for the cloud, not just due to reduced costs, but also for greater flexibility and knowledge options. Big Data has had a huge impact on cloud offerings recently; the ability to manage the vast amounts of data available in a more structured way is helping businesses to grow and develop. For example, cloud computing and Big Data technologies are at the heart of IBM's Smarter Planet initiative. Big data drives results, and in making such an impact, all that data has to be stored somewhere where it can be accessed on demand and in any location.
In addition, the growth of mobile devices is having an impact as people connect online, whilst on-the-go. With built-in GPS, location data works with the cloud to deliver targeted information to mobile users. Data analysis improvements, increased cloud-storage offerings and lower costs mean that Big Data is now available to more people.
What do you see as the next step for the cloud?
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