Cloud Computing Update: The Cloud Be With You

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine’s Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

If it hasn’t already happened, 2018 just might be the year your organization ventures into the cloud computing world. Whether you are considering a move to cloud computing or are firmly entrenched, there is much going on in the space. It’s always wise to stay abreast of the trends that are emerging, and there are a lot of them being predicted with the cloud for 2018. To begin with, Forester and IDC offer the following financial predictions:

  • 77% of the provider market will be owned by Amazon (AWS), Google and Microsoft (Forester)
  • The global cloud market will increase to $178 billion, up $32B from 2017 levels (Forester)
  • 50% of IT spending will be cloud related (infrastructure and software) (IDC)

In addition to massive growth and large provider dominance within the cloud computing space, security risks are still an issue. One of those risks is ransomware (at least according to MIT). Imagine if one of the major cloud providers got hit with ransomware in a way that shut down some or all of their server farms. Granted, such an attack would have to be pervasive and fast to be effective (and may be more the stuff of a theatrical movie plot); but if it happened, the impact could be globally devastating.

Nonetheless, it is pretty certain that the major cloud providers offer a more secure environment than the majority of on-premise computing platforms. That …

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Published at Thu, 05 Apr 2018 04:00:00 +0000