Trident Contract Management Blog

We are all familiar with the many ways cloud computing has revolutionized our use of technology in the office, at home, and on the go.  Whether it’s using Trident’s Poseidon portal (built on the Salesforce.com platform), streaming movies and television shows at home via Netflix, or Apple’s iCloud services on your iPhone or iPad, cloud computing has infused itself into nearly every aspect of our day-to-day lives.  The underlying concept has existed for decades, but it came to prominence with the widespread expansion of high-speed internet in the early  2000s.  However, the most fascinating aspects of cloud computing do not lie in its history, but rather in what lies on the horizon.

This summer, North Bridge Venture Partners released its annual survey on the future of cloud computing.  North Bridge surveyed nearly 800 people at 39 well-known information technology companies (including Amazon, SAP, VMware, and Citrix, along others) to gather their insights and opinions on what’s to come in the realm of cloud computing. The full results of the survey can be viewed here.

The overarching conclusion was straightforward: the cloud is changing software.  While that may seem obvious to most of us, the devil is most certainly in the details.  More than 50% of the respondents believe that most categories of today’s software will be disrupted by the cloud, with “big data”, CRM, and e-commerce at the top of the list.  At Trident, we have already witnessed sizeable cloud-driven initiatives at many of our customers (one of which is their use of our online Poseidon portal) and we expect this trend to accelerate as the cloud continues to mature.

As evidence of this, spending on Software as a Service (“SaaS”), perhaps the most well-known cloud computing service model, is expected to grow at six times the rate of all other types of software, with 55% CIOs planning to increase spending on SaaS in the next twelve months.  According to the respondents, the main driver of this growth is surprisingly not cost; rather, scalability is the top reason for switching to the cloud (with business agility as a close second).

Even if you haven’t yet made the decision to employ cloud-based applications in your environment, it is very likely that you will in the near future.  According to research by Goldman Sachs, 84% of new software will be SaaS.  This shouldn’t be surprising, as cloud computing has provided:

• scalability,
• ease of maintenance,
• lower maintenance costs,
• reduced capital expenditures,
• straight-forward subscription pricing models,
• resiliency and redundancy,
• and faster deployment.

The survey also details a rapidly declining trend in the cloud’s perceived concerns.  Only 12% of respondents believe the cloud still needs to mature, down from 26% in 2011, and a scant 3% consider it too risky, down from 10% in 2011.  Perhaps most surprising is that 50% have complete confidence in the technology, up from only 13% one year ago.  It will be interesting to see how these numbers change as more and more of us take the step to leverage the amazing advances in cloud computing in the months and years to come.

To learn more about how Trident can help simplify the management of your software, hardware, and data, please contact Todd Steiner at tsteiner@69.167.137.58 or (608) 276-1909 or visit our website at www.trident-it.com.