Infrastructure as a Service: Cloud Hosting Marketspace

The business of supplying cloud services to corporations certainly looks promising. Technology research firms are forecasting that the market for cloud services will expand at a dizzying pace over the next several years.

The logic  — remotely providing computing, data storage and applications as a service — is compelling. Customers don’t have to buy all that hardware and software themselves, and suppliers gain the efficiencies of running large-scale data centers for many different customers.

In this blog, let’s consider some key trends to build clarity around Infrastructure-as-a-service.  I review this marketspace and highlight some innovative cloud infrastructure vendors that are carving out a niche for themselves.

When Worlds Collide: Cloud Computing and Corporate IT

Cloud Landscape

The 2012 forecast for enterprise IT calls for partly cloudy computing, but what does the 3-to-5 year outlook foretell?

The bigger question is, what will enterprise computing look like in 2020?

The recent recession has prompted many executives to more closely examine the way they invest in, manage and innovate the business.

One particular area of focus is IT, where a new wave of growth and transformation is becoming prominent. There’s no doubt you’ve heard the buzz about cloud computing, a way of accessing and using business infrastructure and applications over the Internet.

Think Salesforce.com, Workday, Apple iTunes, Google’s Gmail, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon.com, online retailing or online banking in the consumer cloud market.

These days, senior executives, strategy leaders and even corporate boards find themselves pondering the following key questions: What does the trend mean for our company? How can it change the performance trajectory of our business? How should we restructure our IT function given the maturing of the cloud model in the next one, three or five years?