Cloud computing provides a cost-effective architecture that has enabled new business models including Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The financial crisis might spell good news for cloud providers up and down the stack. According recent articles, IDC predicts that the current economic crisis in the U.S. will contribute to cloud computing growth over the next five years and spending on IT cloud services will reach $42 billion by 2012. Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC believes, “The disruptive vectors of the market will be among the highest growth sectors in 2009 as their advantages are magnified in a down economy, and suppliers who slow down their transformation will limit long-term viability and miss near-term growth.”
John Horrigan at Pew Research offered this look at cloud adoption in the consumer space, which has been driving the growth of the big public platforms long before the economic downturn. As IT organizations are pressured to find yet more efficiency it will be interesting to see how quickly they find the confidence in providers to follow consumers to the cloud. At a snap poll of attendees conducted this week at Gartner’s Data Center Conference the results appear promising.