Cloud computing now on steep growth curve

That prediction comes from analyst Gartner, which believes the industry is poised for very strong growth right through to 2014, as cloud computing and cloud services increase in popularity. "We are seeing an acceleration of adoption of cloud computing and cloud services among organisations, and an explosion of supply-side activity, as technology providers manoeuvre to exploit the growing commercial opportunity", comments Ben Pring, research vice president at Gartner. "The scale of application deployments is growing and multi-thousand-seat deals are increasingly common. IT managers are thinking strategically about cloud service deployments; more-progressive organisations are thinking through what their IT operations will look like in a world of increasing cloud service leverage. This was highly unusual a year ago," he adds. Pring reckons that, after years of germination, notably in the SaaS (software as a service) arena, the ideas behind cloud computing – such as pay per use, multi-tenancy and external services – appear to be catching on. "In part, this can be explained by macroeconomic factors. The financial turbulence of the last 18 months has meant [that] every organisation has been scrutinising every expenditure. An IT solution that can deliver functionality less expensively and with more agility [remembering that time is money] is hard to ignore, against this backdrop," he explains. Pring also believes that cloud computing has become more material, because the challenges inherent in managing technology based on the principles of previous eras have become greater, and the benefits of cloud computing in addressing these challenges have "matured to become more appropriate and attractive to all types of organisations".