According to Gartner research agency, cloud computing services in 2010 were employed by 16% more companies than the previous year. According to the prognostics, the rising tendencies will skyrocket in the nearest time. The most active market so far is the USA (58% of the world Cloud Computing services market), the second and third places respectively are occupied by Western Europe (23.8%) and Japan (10%). Cloud Computing services are primarily used in the manufacturing industry and the financial sphere. There are good prospects for the sphere of communications and high tech industries.
Western Europe: according to the research by Brocade carried out in 2010, 60% of Western European companies intend to employ Cloud Computing services. They see the following benefits in this: lower expenses (30%), the rise of efficiency (21%), and an increase in flexibility (16%). The poll represents the answers from big as well as mid-size and small companies. The Cloud Computing idea is primarily supported by big companies. The majority of the mid-size firms have concerns about the new technology, but the number of mid-size enterprises that become clients of Cloud Computing is constantly rising. They, as well as the majority of big companies, are attracted by lower expenses and a chance to focus on the business’ core directions.
Cloud Computing is often referred to as the new stage in internet development. Cloud is an instrument that enables clients at any time in any place to use a required service, from IT infrastructure monitoring to controlling business processes. No doubt that it brings additional benefits to companies and will be used everywhere in the future. At the same time, Cloud Computing, as an IT market service, does not stand still and is constantly evolving. Experts anticipate the rise of such additional service as virtualization, i.e. the creation of two virtual machines that will be working synchronously and substitute each other in case of failure of one of them. Social networks are also a very important development direction for Cloud Computing that is used inside a company as an own communication platform.
Experts recommend businesses to study different options in the sphere of Cloud Computing and decide for themselves what benefits of Cloud Computing can be used today. Some more questions that crave answers are the choice of Cloud Computing platform, software, and service provider.
