The Bright Future of Cloud Computing

The actual inner-workings of “the cloud” can be a little hard to master if you’re not versed in the ways of tech geekery. And there’s something almost mythical about its invisibility and the fact that it is just out there — somewhere, somehow — keeping everything together. This has added enough confusion to the topic that a character played by actor Jason Segel said, “Nobody understands the cloud,” in a recent Hollywood film.

It doesn’t help that one of the worst TV commercial campaigns in Connecting to Web recent history — Microsoft‘s awful “to the cloud” campaign that launched in late 2010 — was the one that introduced the general public to the concept of the cloud for the first time.

Or, rather, it attempted to introduce the cloud concept, as it showed a family shouting “to the cloud!” (as if they were Batman going to the Batmobile) every time they wanted to share a picture online or some other task. But it was terribly vague about what they product actually was or why they kept shouting about a cloud.

Microsoft’s fine marketing helped muddy up the concept beyond recognition and left millions of TV viewers scratching their heads. As this tech blogger astutely (and humorously) pointed out:

If I’m not mistaken, it looks like Microsoft’s unique selling proposition is the fact you can access the Internet using Windows? In one of the commercials, a mother simply shares a photo via Facebook and this is apparently demonstrating “cloud” capabilities. No one’s going to the cloud on Microsoft, they’re accessing the Internet, and they can do that on any operating system.

Whether or not you have a clear grasp of what the cloud actually is, there’s one thing that isn’t confusing: the bright future of cloud computing.

In fact, if you have any doubts about the viability of cloud computing or what its future will look like — and, more importantly, whether or not your company should move toward the new technology — the latest data coming in should dispel most, if not all, of those doubts.

The Latest Research Confirms the Truth: Cloud Computing is Taking Over

NetworkWorld.com made the following shocking observation about cloud computing:

Need more proof that cloud computing is taking over? Just before the Independence Day holiday, research firm IDC released its assessment of the Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Market—and the numbers were astonishing. According to the firm’s Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, server, storage, and Ethernet switch revenue for public and private cloud systems grew by 25.1% year over year to nearly $6.3 billion in the first quarter of 2015.

The bottom-line, as Network World notes, is that one-third of all IT infrastructure spending is on cloud services.

If that’s not shocking enough, when you compared it to the abysmal numbers of non-cloud IT infrastructure, the picture gets even clearer. Non-cloud IT infrastructure only increased by 6.1%. Non-cloud Ethernet sales increased by 1%, and storage sales decreased.

Why? Because Security is Now Much Stronger for Cloud Services

Cloud Computing Security One of the stigmas of cloud services that still hangs around is weak security. Although the strength of your security largely depends on who is supplying and maintaining your cloud services, security is actually slowly turning into a selling point for cloud services.

A July 2015 article from Daze Info noted the following: “…in truth it is purely dependent on the chosen provider, in regards to the [strength of security] you receive. However, a survey by RapidScale showed that 94% of businesses saw an improvement in security after switching to the cloud.”

IT security has become extremely complex. However, a skilled IT team who understands cloud management can keep a company’s systems operating efficiently whole also establishing close, constant monitoring. The remote monitoring of security allows continual security sweeps and fast response times to any threats that manifest.

And then there’s the disaster recovery side of security. Cloud computing makes it easy to schedule backups of all data, and its remote location offsite means that the backups of data are always available. This allows a quick restoration of the systems if a natural disaster or some other disaster occurs.