The challenges facing the growing cloud market
Every business is aware that cloud computing has become a globally dominating market. Some estimates have the cloud worth $75 billion, perhaps even more. It is expected to continue growing well beyond that. Still, the growing cloud market faces several challenges in staying competitive.
With exponential growth comes a plethora of challenges. Cloud computing organizations must be able to keep up, as companies, governments, and even business-minded individuals from all over the world represent current and potential customers. Cloud consumers are relying heavily on infrastructure services. According to Gartner, the forecast in 2016 for IaaS alone represented over $22 billion in cash flow. The growing demands and customers’ expectations are in a tight juggling act with the forces that promise to challenge cloud service providers.
Cloud Market Challenges
- Can providers keep up with the demand? As more and more clients sign on to cloud services, providers are faced with the challenges of updating their infrastructures to handle the increased load. If enough providers struggle with this, it would create great instability in the market. Cloud companies have been largely reliant on affordable storage and bandwidth, passing the savings on to their customers.
- Will prices remain low? The success of the cloud market, driven thus far by appealing pricing and savings, could be hampered if the same pricing schemes don’t hold up. Competition among major IT companies is helping to keep prices low. Pricing models are based on several factors. Subscription, consumption, market-based prices, and others impact the services your organization can afford.
- Will value be maintained? Cloud companies are under pressure to stay low in terms of pricing. Does that mean they can keep up the same level of value? Your company may have to consider whether going for best pricing or better revenue is the best strategy.
- Will demand for key services change? Cloud customers are pretty keen on data storage, and backup and recovery, services. Could a shift in what they’re looking for sidetrack the cloud market? Providers are always on the lookout for innovative services. To some extent, we don’t know what the future may hold in terms of productivity, efficiency, and expenditure reduction solutions. Innovation therefore also plays a role in unforeseen challenges.
- What global conditions will impact the market? The cloud market is quickly evolving. So are economic, political social, and technological conditions around the world. It’s not easy for a cloud company to foresee regional conflicts, or even regulatory changes that can impact how business is done.
A Market Dominated by Major Players
The decisions that the major cloud computing companies make, and their performance, also present challenges. These organizations are unlikely to go out of business. Major shakeups within these companies could, however, have repercussions across the market. It is hard to predict what services and pricing models companies such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, Google, or VMWare will come up with. Each of these certainly has a global influence. A major innovation from one is bound to shake things up for the others. Likewise, if certain challenges arise, all these corporations are under intense pressure to quickly find solutions that will work for customers.
Security, of course, remains a challenge. This cannot be understated. The security protocols in place must satisfy a user base that can range from a retail shop to a government agency. Will the customer base still respect the security, access control, outsourced all flash storage, and other important elements? There are bound to be hurdles that make customers think about usage. Can cloud providers latch on to a more stable model of retaining customers, developing loyalty through high-demand services? These are just a few of the challenges the overall cloud market faces in a stage of exponential growth.
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Rick Delgado has been blessed to have had a successful career and has recently taken a step back to pursue his passion of freelance writing. He loves to write about new technologies and ways of keeping ourselves secure in a changing digital landscape. He writes articles for several companies, including Dell.