What is Cloud Computing?

IT and Communications are one of the world’s largest markets, accounting for $6.6 Trillion spending in 2013. While the thought leadership of major players subdivides things by mega trend – Big Data Analytics, Mobile, Social, etc. – few pay attention to definitions and market sizing.
It’s obvious to assume that Cloud Computing is newer, smaller, but growing at a faster rate – but what is it? For a number of years I’ve used generous definitions to identify Cloud spending, under which the market was worth $1.1 billion in 2013 (see Figure), but think it’s time to reappraise. Our goal is to create an acceptable measurement of this most important market, which is currently missing.
Defining Cloud Computing is problematic – it covers many different technologies and use cases; for some it is a different kind of delivery, for others – a different way of paying. It also creates internal dilemmas along the way – for instance, should we count ‘software’, ‘platform’ and ‘infrastructure’ in their donor categories or as services as their ‘as a service’ tag suggests?

I’m going to publish a series of articles looking at each area in some detail before proposing a more up-to-date set of definitions and sizes. We’re going to look at:

• The audience in terms of player (supplier, ISV, MSP, user)
• Views by role (IT manager, software developer, Line of Business, Cloud provider, broker and consumer)
• Types – SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and more
• The change in purchasing, architecture and relationships
• Hyperscale Web users and the data centre evolution
• Security, data location legislation and other barriers to adoption
• The differences between public, private and hybrid solutions

Later this month I’m speaking and moderating a workshop for the Innovation Group in Milan on these issues and am looking forward to learning as much as I can. Let me know if you’d like to get involved. As always your comments and criticisms are most welcome.