Cloud computing is experiencing exponential growth worldwide. The United States has emerged as a global leader and has been predicted to maintain this position having acquired 58% of the total global cloud computing market share in 2016.
As a service, cloud computing is delivered through three categories:
- Software as a Service (SaaS) – delivered on a remote computer instead of a local one.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) – designed for the development of scalable applications and software directly on the cloud.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – comprises of remote computing and storage resources, commonly known as “the cloud”
The correlated growth prospects of cloud computing look bright as the SAAS, PAAS & IAAS are interlinked.
BPaaS and its benefits
To top these three categories of service delivery is the BPAAS which stands for Business Process as a Service. BPAAS is meant to link business processes to cloud.
Some of the benefits of BPAAS:
- BPAAS is a more economical solution than BPO and focuses more on operational expenditure than capital expenditure.
- The flexibility and interlinked functionality of SaaS, PaaS & IaaS make BpaaS solutions easy to customize to a client’s requirements.
- Greater mobility and easy accessibility offered by BpaaS score over the restrictions posed by outsourced IT processes.
- In contrast to the BPO industry that requires colossal investments up front, BpaaS gives you scope to start small and scale up only once the business permits.
- BpaaS also allows users to scale up and down to meet capacity demands.
Growth prospects of cloud computing
Consumers, enterprises and the public sector feature among the myriad users of cloud computing. If we review of the growth trends we find that the consumer’s cloud usage is bound to grow five times in the next four years. The federal government will double its usage and the enterprise will accelerate cloud solutions implementation.
Mobility and standardized experience are the two major factors that coax consumers to rely on cloud based services.
Current budgetary constraints of The Federal Government have led to a rapid movement to cloud computing. From adopting a “cloud first” IT policy to moving all basic applications to cloud, the government is keen on integrating this cost effective solution.
Although several mid sized enterprises are leading the growth in cloud use, the overall migration to cloud computing is still slow in the Enterprise.
Private cloud over public cloud
Even though private cloud is more expensive than public cloud, enterprises and the federal government choose the former due to security reasons. This trend however, is changing with a noticeable shift to hybrid and public clouds as evident from the substantial rise in the market share of hybrid cloud from 36% in 2012 to a predicted 52% in 2017.
A lot of service integration across IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, BPaaS is seen among the major players in cloud computing such as Amazon, Terremark, IBM, Oracle, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Workday.
Hence, with a market dominance advantage, the US boasts of a high standard in the area of cloud computing accompanied with immense opportunities for foreign players. For a smoother market entry, it’s helpful to engage the services of a professional market research agency to facilitate the process.
