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To quote Dr Michio Kaku, he states in one of his books that “Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon.” It seems hard to believe but it’s actually true. It’s amazing to think that our smart phones we carry with us every day have more capability than what the top scientists used back in 1969. It shows how far the IT industry has come, but it also puts into perspective how unpredictably fast it’s moving.

Its moving so fast that a lot of top tech industry execs avoid predicting where there particular industry will be even 5 years from now, whether we’re talking about gaming, telecommunications or customer relationship management everything in the tech industry is moving at break neck pace and innovations are being made all the time, but along with the unpredictability of these industries there is one thing that is predictability inevitable and that is the Cloud.

Regardless of the doubts that some albeit a decreasing number of companies have regarding its security and privacy amongst other things, It is undoubtedly taking over. One of the main reasons being that the Cloud is changing the tech landscape and is fueling the pace of innovation. Put simply the cloud has created a playground for innovation to thrive at such a rate that there’s no holding it back. Merely this would be enough to tell the skeptics about the inevitability of the cloud, however there are other factors that also bring this realisation to the forefront.

There’s no denying that the majority of SME’s as well as the largest corporations are investing more and more money into their cloud infrastructure. Those who haven’t are year upon year joining the masses. The companies who were hesitant or have just recently taken the first step often do so by partly stepping into the changes that cloud brings about to their business. This is another plus point as companies have the choice of what they wish to do. Newcomers often invest in the hybrid cloud or use the cloud as a method of mirroring there in house set up at a data-centre for the purposes of disaster recovery, the companies more mature to the cloud can have this set up and often fully virtualise their infrastructure.

Aside from this whether it’s the big players like AWS and Microsoft Azure or the smaller up and coming companies are growing year upon year. For example, Microsoft Azure’s revenue grew well over 100% in 2016 and Amazon Web Services revenue grew at a similar rate. It is easy to see why the cloud providers re invest so heavily into all aspects of their cloud service, whether it be to improve connectivity or security all of this is to support the snowball effect of the clouds growth in the industry.

Of the many industries that have benefited from the cloud, undoubtedly the Medical industry is one of the main beneficiaries of cloud technology. A number of years back government policy in the US dictated the move to EMR and in the years since more than 90% of medical practices in the US are using it.

Start-ups have also gained since the advent of Cloud as it now provides the flexibility and benefits that were originally only accessible and affordable by the large enterprises. Scalability allows companies to scale up as their company grows and even scale down during a downturn, thus helping start-ups to manage their costs better and also helping them save money on in house IT or the expensive equipment that comes with the territory. To put things into perspective the cloud has benefited start-ups to the point that well established companies are being disrupted by the arrival of their smaller yet rapidly growing rivals. 

Start-ups – have massively benefited from the cloud. Rather than estimating where they will be a year down the line and buying the in house infrastructure for a business that may exceed its capacity, they can simply be up and running within a few hours and if the business grows then their infrastructure can scale up with it. Start-ups are disrupting the well established companies in the industry, examples

The last of the plus points I would like to come to is one you may hear most often, which is the cost effectiveness of the cloud and we’re not talking just from a direct cost perspective. While it does make your IT costs more manageable and affordable as you save on capital expense by adding your IT costs into your operational expense with monthly or quarterly payments, but another aspect that many don’t focus on or simply don’t take into account when looking at the value cloud services can provide, is the fact that many companies often save time from dealing with teething problems and ongoing issues in the office as everything is supported and managed for them 24 hours a day 7 days a week, thus allowing them to dedicate more time to their core business. The other aspect of its cost effectiveness is the fact that quality Cloud providers invest heavily in everything from support, disaster recovery to speed and security, often at levels that use to be exclusive to the large enterprises and are now the standard for start up’s and SME’s too.

Ultimately the fact of the matter is the technology industry has always grown at an incredible rate but without the cloud we would not have made the countless innovations that have occurred since its implementation along with countless other benefits. Governments are more and more geared towards investing in cloud as are the companies that provide such services. For those companies who haven’t taken advantage of what the cloud can provide, need to remember that with such a fast growing industry if they don’t move to the cloud, their competitors most certainly will.