The ICT sector has changed a lot in recent years. Technology has spread to companies in all sectors, who have realized that the use of such tools is essential to survive in a world where competition is increasing.
Having the right software is essential to control processes, monitor activity, keep accounting and, ultimately, perform more efficient management. Traditionally, companies accessed this type of software through the acquisition of a license. However, this model is changing in recent years, due to the spread of cloud computing.
Confidence in cloud technology continues to grow
According to IDC, in 2018 half of IT spending will be cloud-related. By 2020 that percentage will rise to 60% when it relates to IT infrastructure and will account for 60% to 70% of all software, services and technology expenses.
According to data provided by BESH, 1 in 3 companies worldwide actively uses cloud computing technology. But in Spain the proportion drops to 1 in 5.
Although depending on the size there are differences. “The percentage of large Spanish companies that have risen to the cloud is considerably higher and stands at 75%,” explained Nestor Correa Head of Business Unit at BESH.
According to this data, in 2016 this technology generated in Spain a turnover of about 1.4 billion euros, representing almost 6% of the world market.
“The use of cloud tools and platforms in large accounts continues to grow. Better access to infrastructure, the ability to scale the service, as well as its high availability, the reduction of time to market and the continuity of production processes are some of the variables that have influenced the improvement of the confidence that they have organizations in these types of systems.” This is assured by Nestor Correa.
The cloud computing market
In addition, according to Gartner data, business spending on cloud computing services is growing at an even faster pace than expected. Gartner’s latest worldwide cloud utility forecast shows that global revenue will reach $260 billion by year-end, compared to $219 billion the previous year. That represents year-on-year growth of 18.5 percent.
Software as a service (SaaS) or applications delivered online, and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) such as compute services, storage, and base networks, were the two most growing segments in the cloud services market.
“Final data in 2016 shows that software as a service revenue was much higher in 2016 than expected, reaching $48.2 billion,” said Sid Nag, Gartner’s research director. “SaaS is also growing faster in 2017 than previously predicted, leading to a significant increase in the entire public cloud revenue forecast.”
Gartner said SaaS revenue is expected to grow by 21% to $58.6 billion by the end of the year. The acceleration in SaaS adoption can be explained by vendors providing almost all functional application extensions and plug-ins as a service. This attracts users because SaaS solutions are designed to be more developed and offer better business results than traditional software. However, it is the IaaS category that will see the greatest overall growth. Gartner said revenue is projected to grow 36.6 percent this year to $34.7 billion. “Strategic platform-as-a-service (PaaS) adoption is also exceeding previous expectations, as enterprise-scale organizations are increasingly confident that PaaS will be their primary form of application development platform in the future,” Mr. Nag.
The catalysts that drive greater adoption
The catalysts that drive greater adoption and the corresponding higher ACGrs (compound annual growth rates) include a shift Gartner sees in spending on infrastructure, middleware, applications, and business processes. In 2016, Gartner estimated that approximately 17% of total market revenue for these areas has moved to the cloud. Gartner said it expects the overall growth of the public cloud services market to continue until at least 2020, although things are expected to “stabilize” from 2018 as the cloud becomes more current. The graph below compares the compound annual growth rates (CAGR) for each cloud service area, including the total market.
Established public cloud giants such as Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud will likely be the main beneficiaries of this continued growth, according to Gartner, with two-thirds of cloud service spending through 2021 going to the top 10 suppliers.
IBM launches two new services to help businesses
Companies are increasingly re-entrusting this technology and are adopting it faster. One of the reasons for this is because companies that offer cloud services try to make the whole process easier for them.
IBM recently announced two new services that are intended to make it easier for companies to transfer their data and applications to the cloud. The company says IBM Cloud Migration Services and IBM Cloud Deployment Services will make it easier and cheaper to migrate your existing workloads to the public cloud.
Cloud Migration Services, as the name implies, helps enterprises prepare to migrate all their data to the cloud. This is very similar to a custom service where IBM helps understand your existing IT infrastructure and then works with the company to migrate services to the cloud.
Cloud Deployment Services is a fully managed automation and orchestration platform for building private and hybrid clouds across multiple platforms and service providers (and including non-IBM products). At the heart of this is the ability to model (or “blueprint”), infrastructure and application solutions and make these patterns repeatable to automate infrastructure, as well as middleware builds and operations.
“In addition to providing enterprises with a much less expensive and faster way to orchestrate workloads across multiple cloud delivery models, IBM Cloud Deployment Services also provides the next gene automation with its niche patterns and flows working. This helps reduce service delivery time and dramatically reduces design, construction, deployment, and testing efforts,” said IBM’s CTO and Bridget Karlin Global Technology Services VP.
IBM notes that Cloud Deployment Services also helps enterprises leverage the “IBM Services Platform with Watson capabilities”. “The platform, along with these new services, provides companies with artificial intelligence tools that bring together human intelligence and technology-based knowledge that create cognitive IT infrastructures,” Karlin said.
These two new services fit seamlessly into IBM’s existing product portfolio around cloud migration.
The most innovative cloud companies
The “Top 50 EMEA Cloud Climbers Report” sponsored by F5 Networks and conducted by the HotTopics.ht platform has recently been published. This is the first study devoted entirely to analyzing the impact that Cloud Computing is having on the transformation of organizations and in which the 50 companies in the EMEA area are most innovative and advanced in terms of the adoption of the cloud Pel
The report has selected 50 companies from different sectors of activity, retail is the one that presents the largest number of representatives in the list of companies offered by this report, with 12% of the total. It is followed by Financial Services (8%), Automotive (6%),Sports (6%) and Transportation/Logistics (4%).
As for specific companies, they include:
- Spotify, which uses the cloud to keep the evolution of its music streaming service continuous and optimize.
- Mercedes F1, for its cloud-based performance analysis.
- Airbus, which uses cloud and machine learning to store and process hundreds of terabytes of satellite images.
- Adidas uses automated and intelligent robotic technology and also cloud-enabled 3D printing.
- Carrefour, you’re using the cloud for an omnichannel strategy. You can now view all customer interactions on a single screen, allowing agents to offer a more informed and personalized service. It is also possible to switch between communication methods, such as chat and phone.
