Cloud Computing: Threats and opportunities for IT industry

Cloud Computing has opened a world of opportunities for Indian IT companies. It has changed the whole new way businesses deploy technology. It is simply impossible to ignore the potential of cloud computing and how it readily offers access to the completely new business aptitude, economical IT resources and unrivaled flexibility for businesses of every size. And especially, after top firms including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, leaped on the bandwagon of Cloud Computing, offering multitude of services, it should not be seen as just another technology.

Cloud computing is helping corporations create new, cost-effective business models. Small and medium enterprises are the major recipients of this technology. It has enabled the smaller ISVs access to customers that they could have never reached through the use of market places. This has facilitated smaller ISVs to run applications on cloud platforms (such as Azure, App Engine etc) and make themselves accessible to global consumers. On the other hand, this has also increased the flexibility for end customers and increased the choice of products and services.

Cloud Computing too has huge opportunity in the Indian industry as technology penetration among Indian enterprises are miserably poor. In 2010, India emerged as the third largest user of Cloud services- signalling the wide scope of Cloud computing here.

The market in India will see double-digit growth in near future owing to the bigger IT spending coupled with the adoption of cloud services amongst the SMBs as well as the large businesses. It is mainly because of the massive IT spending, India has become a viable market for cloud offerings.

A report has revealed that the market of cloud computing in India is expected to reach a figure of about US$ 1,084 million by 2015.

In spite of the economic and convenience benefits that Cloud computing offers, it has its own share of risks. There have been security concerns over the threat of hacking, lack of back-up and lack of privacy protection.

In addition, as most of the cloud vendors use virtual machines to accumulate data for various companies on a single server or processor, there is an apparent risk of lack of control and an increase in the possibility of data leakage and security violations.

Moreover, while adopting Cloud computing, businesses have to make some hard choices as it alters the structure of IT organization.

But if we keep aside these risks, Cloud computing is a huge opportunity for companies who are willing to change.