It is ten years since the official launch of Amazon Web Services -- and, during that decade, the cloud has moved from an over-hyped concept to a business reality.
Today, on-demand IT is used in a variety of ways by organisations of all shapes and sizes. But what will the future bring? We analyse the current market for on-demand services and predict how businesses will use the cloud by 2020.
How big is the cloud market, really?
William Fellows, co-founder and vice president at 451 Research, says the total value of the cloud -- in terms of infrastructure (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) -- is about $13bn annually.
Although significant, the amount of cash dedicated by businesses to the cloud is small compared to the total amount spent on technology around the world: to put that big number in context, there are some (very) big individual organisations that will have an annual IT budget not too far from that figure.
Such comparisons make for sober reading for those who believe the tipping point for on-demand IT has been reached. Yet Fellows says that, whatever way experts chose to interpret the figures, there can be no denying that something crucial is happening in regards to the way CxOs buy technology.
Fellows argues, the golden days of buying cloud ever-more cheaply -- which we are currently experiencing -- will not continue forever.
"The amount of companies involved and the low spending figures involved lead many to conclude that cloud providers are involved in a race to the bottom," he says. "That's a misconception. Providers are actually involved in a race to the top. The key suppliers are trying to get users onto their higher rate services as quickly as possible."
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