Cloud sky-rockets IT expenses to $1 trillion

The relevant IT expenses -according to Gartner’s estimations (http://gtnr.it/2bBqi8H)- clearly indicate a shift from traditional IT offerings to cloud services. In particular, this trend will directly or indirectly influence the entire market within the next 5 years.

Gartner estimates that the total amount of the so-called “cloud-shift” for the current year will reach $111 billion, while it is expected to reach $216 billion by 2020. The outsourcing of business processes, with the cloud segment being obviously the BPaaS (Business Process as a Service), appears to be shifting to the cloud by 43%, which amounts to $42 billion out of a total of $119 billion in this market. Accordingly, the shift for application software model (SaaS) is about 37%, followed by system infrastructure (IaaS, 17%) and application infrastructure software (PaaS, 10%).

According to Gartner’s Research Vice-President, Ed Anderson, cloud-first strategies constitute the foundation in order for a business to survive and remain relevant in an ever-changing world. Besides, the market for cloud services has grown that much that now represents a significant percentage of the total IT expenses. As a result, a new generation of startups and cloud vendors is created.

As businesses are looking for a new IT architecture and an alternative business philosophy, they are keen on taking advantage of new opportunities in digital business, including next-generation IT solutions, such as Internet of Things. Additionally, those that will embrace the dynamic, cloud-based operational models, will enjoy even better results in cost optimization and competitiveness.

At the same time, it must be noted that, when it comes to cloud adoption, there is no single model to cover all needs. There are still some issues of compatibility with the existing business apps, as well as complications related to the deployment of cloud solutions, which often remain unresolved for businesses. After all, the transformation of an internet-enabled business into a digital business running on the cloud is a major step for most IT departments, since their existing infrastructure is designed to support the usual processes.

Finally, it would be wise to remember that in 2013 already, Gartner predicted that “service-as” solutions (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS) would gradually overpower the more traditional methods by 2015, and it was not proved wrong. Based on its latest surveys, the company estimates that the global CRM solution market reached $26,3 billion by 2015 -an increase of 12,3% in comparison to the year before.