Increase in Market Confidence in the Cloud

A November 2012 survey related to cloud computing revealed the numerous growth opportunities for both buyers and consumers.

According to Michael Skok, Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, there is a growing interest in the cloud and understanding its potential. He claimed that the survey has enabled a greater understanding of the key issues related to the cloud, from the perspectives of customers and vendors.

"On the inhibitors, one of the things that's interesting this year is that, if you look back to 2011, 10 percent of the survey respondents would have said that the cloud is just too risky, and they gave many reasons last year. This year, we're down to 3 percent. So that's a significant drop," said Skok.

"The good news is that 12 percent feel that the cloud still needs to mature. That's not so significant number, but it's down from 26 percent in 2011. So again, people are starting to feel that the cloud is obviously meeting more of their needs," he added.

Skok noted that the future lies in applications that have been developed specifically for the cloud and enable users to do things that would not be possible if the cloud did not exist. Entertainment, media, gaming and social collaboration are example of areas with expanding cloud possibilities.

"People are getting used to the fact that it's so much easier to collaborate in the cloud than it is to try to send people on-premise applications to work with, when you want to collaborate with them. We'll see a great expansion of that going forward, too," said Skok.

"Devices that we carry with us, smart as they are, are nothing without the connections back to the cloud, to be able to do everything from synchronizing our contacts, calendars, and email, to much more important and significant things, such as to connect back to business processes and provide such key information as price lists and contracts for the people in the field to be able to do their job in situ," he added

The cloud is also providing new opportunities for eCommerce, by enabling business to cut cost and allowing customers the freedom of mobile shopping. Skok also pointed out the importance of the relationship between eCommerce, social networking and recommendations.

"You're going to see there is tremendous opportunity, because what people most rely on when they are actually buying things is their friends and trusted recommendations, and we're very early in that. Surely, people have begun to recognize the power of the like button, but we haven't yet seen that translate into commerce. We're early in Facebook trying to realize that," said Skok.

Other significant issues to come out of the survey are:

• 34 percent of people are still experimenting with cloud
  
  
• There is a significant growth of confidence in cloud throughout the marketplace, with vendors having more confidence than customers
  
  
• 67 percent of the survey's respondents are already deploying SaaS
  
  
• 75 percent said they would be utilizing PaaS in the next five years
  
  
• Items inhibiting adoption of the cloud are lock-in and interoperability.

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