Current & Emerging Cloud Trends: 2012 Proformative Cloud Computing Survey Report
We are pleased to share the results of the 2012 Proformative Cloud Computing Survey .This survey was designed to quantify the current state of affairs regarding the current and emerging trends in Cloud Computing/SaaS adoption. The survey was sent out to a segment of the Proformative community of several thousand finance, accounting, and treasury professionals and was in the field for a period of approximately three weeks. We received 366 responses.
The four main inferences to be drawn from this survey are:
1.Cloud Computing and SaaS are now being viewed by companies as enabling improved strategic decisions that drive profitability, and not just offering value in terms of cost savings.
2. Cloud Computing and SaaS adoption and optimization are strategically important to companies in 2012.
3. The adoption of Cloud Computing/Saas and related technologies will accelerate in 2012 and encompass increased adoption by SMB companies.
4. Human Resource Management and Client Relationship Management (CRM) are operational areas which increasing numbers of companies will move into the Cloud in 2012.
Learn more about the survey results by attending our "Current and Emerging Cloud Trends: It's Now longer If, It's How and When" webinar on February 16th. Register Now!
Comments
Company: Small business
The right technology is important for any business to boost productivity and innovation. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have traditionally been limited in their ability to access the right systems – mainly due to high technology costs, lack of IT support, and changing usage models. With cloud computing, SMEs are now able to access business applications over the Internet, as and when they need it. These applications and data are hosted from the cloud service provider’s data centre, meaning that SMEs incur zero upfront investment costs, with access to advanced IT services on a subscription basis.
Compared to an on-site IT deployment, cloud computing service helps fulfill communication and collaboration requirements without worrying about ongoing maintenance and software updates. This saves a small or medium size business’ time from having to deal with different systems and vendors. Cloud computing service allows companies to save much on IT costs, reducing their large capital expenditure in new IT systems and ongoing maintenance. It also increases business agility by enabling SMEs to focus on their core businesses. Using a cloud service, employees can rapidly communicate with each other. Multiple users get simultaneous access to files from anywhere and at anytime via Internet. Cloud uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology in order to ensure data security. Moreover, robust data backup assures business continuity under any unfortunate event. The impact of cloud computing on business performance is very positive for a company which adopts it, and thus, more and more companies will get their applications hosted on cloud.
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Company: Anametrix, Inc.
I found it interesting that even in 2011 BI fell so low on the list, compared to HR and CRM. I suspect that the flood of so much data born in the cloud as folks build their on line presence, will result in a problem to solve; more companies will need to find ways to collect all the online web and social traffic, and correlate it to their in house, off line data. I suspect digital analytics or the like, will emerge as a category as more folks find themselves making sense of the the data flood.