Cloud Computing - Disruptive innovation moving towards maturity

During past few years I have been following on SoA, SaaS, MPS, Web 2.0 developments and observed as technology innovations moving fast to keep pace with ever changing business needs/ models. As business is going global, their scale of operations and complexity to effectively and efficiently managing their needs is demanding new solutions at relatively much lower costs.

Cloud computing is an innovation in that regard as it provides computing services as utility- be it processing, storage, web hosting, team collaboration, email communication with greater level of agility. Gartner forecast for cloud computing services worldwide for 2010 is already crossing $68b and touching $148b by 2014.

Many big players like Micorsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Salesforce.com, Zoho etc have already started offering cloud computing services and already have double digit growth rate for client base.

While many SME are now riding on cloud computing wave, large enterprises still have their concerns about data security, auditing and regulatory needs so adoption is slow there except for few who are moving towards private clouds.

I think as industry around cloud computing goes to next level, these concerns will also get addressed with close collaboration with regulatory bodies, governments and auditors agencies.

Agility offered by cloud computing will enable new level of operation efficiencies while even triggering new business models running altogether on this platform.

Even if someone is still not ready to join this, it makes sense to be aware about its impact on business models to remain competitive in their respective markets.