In a relatively short period of time, cloud computing has had a major impact on the technological landscape. Since Information Systems Professor Ramnath Chellappa first coined the phrase back in 1997, the cloud computing industry has taken off, seemingly overnight.
Within this first decade and a half since the cloud has gone mainstream, businesses and individuals have been attracted to the cost saving, scalable advantages that the cloud has to offer. In the simplest of terms, the cloud allows for reduced costs in hardware and infrastructure, while helping to expand the scalability, efficiency and availability of data.
What this means is that the ways in which business services are delivered and managed has been changed forever, leading to greater innovation and expansion on a global scale.
The Cloud Computing Industry is Just at the Beginning
While the technological landscape has forever been changed by the cloud, it is important to note that we are just beginning to scrape the surface. According to a recent Forrester Study, the cloud computing marketplace, which was at $40.7 billion in 2011, is expected to grow to $241 billion by 2020.
One can only guess at the impact that this massive growth will have on the technological and global landscape. As cloud hosting services continue to take root among enterprise businesses, greater cost savings and efficiencies can be expected to also take root. Businesses and individuals will then be able to devote less time on maintaining their IT systems, which in turn can lead to greater technical, economical, and even social innovations.
And while it can be hard to predict the future, it does appear that we are only at the beginning of the cloud computing revolution, making this an exciting time for companies who are just now beginning to explore the advantages that the cloud has to offer.
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