Whether you consult Gartner, canvass the providers or poll the marketplace the fact is that more businesses are investing in cloud computing. It is a profitable business with revenues set to rise faster than the recent drop in oil prices.
But this boom is not attributable to the benefits cloud computing promises. This boom belongs to the cloud alone, not computing. Cloud computing has become a hackneyed phrase that has served marketing well but now should be retired.
What we so often call cloud is really a group of services, enterprise IT, that manages network access, manages the devices that use our networks and provisioned services that make business systems interoperable. And, we shouldn’t forget the benefits of data, analytics and machine learning – Big Data and the Internet of Things. The cloud has become a catch-all descriptor for all these services and more.
The term computing is encumbered. It reminds of us an era where power was measured in megahertz. Speed was a hallmark of the 20th century. Back then the silicon, the microprocessor, was important. But when we first cut our physical ties to the desktop PC with Wi-Fi our IT requirements began to change.The rise of mobile phones and mobile device only hastened the pace of change. Effectiveness and enablement are the measure of today’s technology.
In some ways the term computing has already begun see the exit. To the public the cloud is a place where we store data. To the industry the cloud is often a network or application that manages provided services.
Hybrid cloud deployments, mixing public access with private security, hosted applications, online storage, centralised, end-point management are helping businesses become more efficient across greater geographies. The success of the cloud is clearly in its application, not its speed. The potential and the rising opportunity for MSPs providing these services is fuelling the boom.
As we near the end of prediction season, and before the year truly gets underway, we should turn our attention to our own terminology. Computing doesn’t sell connectivity – you could say it doesn’t sell anything. Cloud doesn’t need computing. With so much growth it is time to divorce the suffix and let the cloud reign.
Growing up in decade where you could still build your own PC and it was cool David Ray is a writer with a keen interest in all things tech.