The future is in the Cloud

In a matter of 4 years, a non-cloud policy will be the same as a non-Internet policy today

Ignoring the cloud as an extension of our own company involves renouncing innovation that can boost productivity and cost savings. Recent reports by Gartner on the importance of the cloud in businesses have confirmed our views as leading consultants in cloud computing.

A few days ago Gartner published a statement with which Intelligence Partner could not agree more. It began by saying that, by the year 2020, a “non-cloud” corporate policy would be as exceptional as a “non-internet” policy today. “Exceptional” understood as strange, rare, unusual…

It is clear that ignoring the Internet today would be reckless. It is almost impossible not to have e-mail, to ignore some basic functionality, such as access to the Internet from your mobile phone, or not to have some level of web presence. At least a minimum level of presence so that people can get to know us or find us. In many cases (and increasingly), not being present on the Internet is almost equivalent to not existing in real life. What became of the yellow pages that we used to receive each year at home, for example? They are still published, but they no longer have the relevance they used to have.

And let us not even think about doing away with other Internet services, such as electronic commerce, social networking or the benefits that many of us already enjoy from WhatsApp for instant messaging or internet calls, video conferencing via Google HangOuts… not only because of the reduction in costs (even free), but for the added value of being able to see people’s faces when having a conversation or sharing our screen with one or several partners.

In short, if we were deprived of the Internet today, we would feel truly isolated.

Returning to Gartner’s statement; cloud-first or even cloud-only policies are replacing the non-cloud positions that dominated the strategy of many providers in recent times. In fact, most technological innovation today is cloud-based and not always applied to on-premise scenarios.

The cloud is being viewed as the default option for many commercial software developments and the same is happening with customised software, which is increasingly being designed to rely on some form of public or private cloud.

However, Gartner does not say that everything is going to be in the cloud, but that the extreme position of having nothing in it, is doomed to disappear. In fact, this hybrid scenario will be the most widely used, but it requires the public cloud to become part of a company’s overall strategy. Therefore, technology providers will increasingly assume that their customers are willing to consume cloud-based services.

Other interesting predictions by Gartner indicate that by 2019, more than 30 % of investments by the leading software manufacturers will move from cloud-first to the cloud-only strategies and, consequently, many capabilities will only be available in this mode. They also predict that by 2020, more computing power will be sold in IaaS and PaaS models (Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service) than in releases directed at enterprise data centres. In fact, the IaaS market has been growing at an annual rate of 40 % since 2011 and it is estimated to continue growing at rates of at least 25 % until 2019.

At Intelligence Partner, we are convinced of the potential of the cloud for businesses and this is the reason why cloud solutions are certainly at the core of the services we offer our customers: productivity, collaboration, CRM, geolocation, mobile workforce management, employee expenses… The Cloud Consulting Company is our motto and is embodied in our cloud-based development and integration projects for the full benefit of our customers.