Are you debating whether or not a cloud-based application has a place in your company? Some companies have a rule against using cloud-based apps – they prefer having servers at their premises – and while they may have a legitimate reason for doing so, it appears to be going against the incredible growth trend that cloud computing is experiencing globally:
With businesses and consumers using and participating in cloud-based technologies more often, the economic impact has become an unmistakable juggernaut in itself. In 2015 alone, there was a 74% increase in both private and public cloud usage by businesses.
This quote and statistic is courtesy of Soliant Consulting in a recent article entitled The Economy of The Cloud that discusses the huge growth of cloud-based computing.
Although Salesforce.com became the “first large cloud company” in 1999 and although the term cloud computing was first coined two years earlier in 1997 by Professor Ramnath Chellappa, it can trace its roots back to the 1960s when an “intergalactic computer network” was first proposed by ARPANET developer J.C.R. Licklider.
Following the success of Salesforce, Amazon Web Services – the same web services company used to power DocBoss – arrived in 2002 and business suddenly started to pick up. Google Apps followed in 2009 and suddenly companies (and consumers) had web-based choices to host their documents, photos and more.
Some companies have a policy against using cloud-based apps – I’ve come across a number of them myself – but I’ve never been able to pin down an exact reason why. A common excuse mentioned relates to security concerns yet these days cloud-based applications have as good if not better security than server-based ones.
Some key stats from the article that really show how corporations are increasingly using cloud-based applications:
In 2015, 63% of businesses use private cloud services and 88% use public cloud services.
By 2016, 36% of all data is expected to be stored in the cloud. By comparison, in 2013 it was only 7%.
The US government has saved $5.5 billion annually by moving to cloud-based computing.
Cloud computing can be up to 40X more cost effective for a small business when compared to operating its own IT system.
Perhaps the most interesting stat? 95% of Americans currently use the cloud in one way or another even though only 29% of them actually report using it! In other words, cloud computing has become so pervasive so quickly, most people don’t even know they’re using it.
The article also addresses issues like costs and security and suggests that cloud computing users “report improved security, service availability, increased data efficiency, lower operating costs and transformative impacts on their operations.”
These are just a few of the many statistics and predicted trends described in the article. The Economy of The Cloud is a great read to learn more about the growth and benefits of cloud computing.