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Posts tagged ‘IDC SaaS Forecasts’

Nov 14

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5 Insights & Predictions On Disruptive Tech From KPMG’s 2015 Global Innovation Survey

  • cloud computing survey 215% of U.S. tech leaders see biotech/digital health/healthcare IT as the most disruptive consumer-driven technology in the next three years.
  • 13% of U.S. tech leaders predict data and analytics will be the most disruptive enterprise technology in three years.
  • Global tech leaders predict cloud computing (11%), mobile platforms and apps (9%), Internet of Things (IoT)/machine-to-machine (M2M) (9%) and data and analytics (9%) will be the most disruptive technologies over the next three years.

These and many other insights are from the fourth annual 2015 Global Technology Innovation Survey released via webcast by KPMG last month. KPMG surveyed 832 technology industry business leaders globally, with the majority of being C-level executives (87%). Respondents were selected from a broad spectrum of businesses including tech industry startups, mid- and large-scale enterprises, angel investors and venture capital firms. For an in-depth explanation of the survey methodology, please see slides 6 and 7 of the webinar presentation. The goals of the survey include spotting disruptive technologies, identifying tech innovation barriers and opportunities, and tracking emerging tech innovation hubs.

The five insights and predictions from the report include the following:

  • Global tech leaders predict cloud computing (11%), mobile platforms and apps (9%), Internet of Things (IoT)/M2M (9%) and data and analytics (9%) will be the most disruptive technologies over the next three years.  U.S. tech leaders predict biotech/digital health/healthcare IT (15%), data and analytics (14%) and cloud computing (14%) will be the three most disruptive technologies over the next three years.  Chinese tech leaders predict artificial intelligence/cognitive computing (15%) will be the most disruptive technology impacting the global business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplace.

tech driving consumer technologies

  • The three most disruptive technologies predicted to drive business transformation in enterprises over the next three years in the U.S. include cloud computing (13%), data and analytics (13%), and cyber security (10%). Japanese tech leaders predict artificial intelligence/cognitive computing will have the greatest effect (23%), and 14% of Chinese tech leaders predict the Internet of Things/M2M (14%) will have the greatest impact on business transformation in their country.  The following table compares global tech leader’s predictions of which technologies will disrupt enterprises the most and drive business transformation over the next three years.

business transformation

  • Improving business efficiencies/higher productivity, and faster innovation cycles (both 20%) are top benefits tech leaders globally are pursuing with IoT strategies. The point was made on the webinar that in Asia, consumers are driving greater adoption of IoT-based devices to a richer contextual customer experience. Greatest challenges globally to adopting IoT is technology complexity (22%), lack of experience in the new technology or business model (16%), and both displacement of the existing tech roadmap and security (both 13%).       

IoT in the enteprrise

  • Analytics are most often adopted to gain faster innovation cycles (25%), improved business efficiencies and higher productivity (17%) and more effective R&D (13%).  The greatest challenges are technology complexity (20%) and lack of experience in the new technology or business model (19%),

data and analytics KPMG Survey

  • Tech leaders predict the greatest potential revenue growth for IoT in the next three years is in consumer and retail markets (22%).  IoT/M2M is also expected to see significant revenue growth in technology industries (13%), aerospace and defense (10%), and education (9%).  The following graphic compares tech leader’s predictions of the industries with the greatest potential revenue growth (or monetization potential) in the next three years.

Emerging Tech IoT monetization

 

Sources:

Tech Innovation Global Webcast presenting the findings of KPMG’s 2015 Global Technology Innovation Survey

KPMG Survey: Top Disruptive Consumer Tech – AI In China, Healthtech In U.S., 3-D Printing In EMEA

 

Oct 16

Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2016

2016 Gartner technology trends graphicGartner announced their top 10 strategic technology trends for 2016 at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo held October 4 – 8th in Orlando. David Cearley, Vice President and Gartner Fellow, presented the company’s Top Ten Strategic Technology Trends for 2016.  You can find the video here.

Key take-aways from his presentation and the trends announced are provided below:

  • Enterprise 3D-printing shipments will attain a 64.1% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) through 2019. David Cearley mentioned during his keynote that jet engines are being 3D printed today.  He gave the example to illustrate that 3D printing will continue to gain adoption in more demanding manufacturing environments including aerospace, automotive, energy, medical devices and military-based markets and industries.
  • Emergence of an entirely new class of business models based on smart machine technologies, advanced analytics and big data. Combining machine learning, continued adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and supporting data models, and advanced intelligence to interpret and act on the data, Gartner’s predictions set the stage of an entirely new class of business models. Manufacturing-as-a-Service and paying only for the production time used in a factory are within reach for more companies than before based on these predictions.
  • The device mesh will expand to include IoT-based devices that scale well beyond the enterprise. Gartner is predicting that in the next three years traditional computing and communication devices, including desktop and mobile devices will increasingly be augmented by wearable devices, home electronics including appliances with sensors, transportation-based sensors and data collection devices, and environmental devices all capable of capturing data in real-time.
  • A digital mesh will continue to proliferate, aligning apps and devices to individuals’ specific roles and tasks.  Gartner sees this digital mesh as an expanding series of devices, services, platforms, informational networks and individuals that integrate together and provide contextual intelligence and enabling greater collaboration. The proliferation of the digital mesh will lead to more ambient, contextually intelligent and intuitive app design over time Gartner predicts.
  • The next twelve months will also see the proliferation of algorithm-based businesses enabling automated background tasks including smart machines. Gartner’s technology trends for 2016 set a solid foundation for the growth of globally-based smart factories and production centers. Acumatica, Plex Systems and other Cloud ERP providers are ideally positioned for this trend, having proven their ability to provide manufacturing intelligence from the shop floor to the top floor. In addition to cloud platforms, these algorithm-based businesses will need to support unstructured data analysis including latent semantic indexing (LSI), data taxonomy and classification algorithms to ensure data fidelity and scalability, and more robust analytics and predictive modeling systems.
  • Combining algorithms, analytics, data architectures and smart machines have the potential to revolutionize manufacturing quickly. General Electric’s Predix platform, IBM’s IoT Foundation and several other cloud-based IoT platforms are already making progress on transforming the vision of algorithm-based smart machine production strategies into a reality for manufacturers globally.
  • Gartner sees a new IT reality taking shape. Adaptive security, advanced systems, Internet of Things (IoT), mesh app & service architectures are the catalysts of the new nature of IT that Gartner is predicting.

A graphic illustrating the top 10 strategic trends is show below:

top ten technology trends 2016

Sources:

Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2016.  Press Release Announcement, October 6, 2015.

Video replay of the keynote: The Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2016

Mar 15

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2015 Roundup Of Cloud Computing Forecasts And Market Estimates

AA046808Global SaaS software revenues are forecasted to reach $106B in 2016, increasing 21% over projected 2015 spending levels.  A Goldman Sachs study published earlier this year projects that spending on cloud computing infrastructure and platforms will grow at a 30% CAGR from 2013 through 2018 compared with 5% growth for the overall enterprise IT.

Centaur Partners and other firms mentioned in this roundup are seeing more enterprise-size deals for cloud computing infrastructure and applications. While each of these consultancies and research firms have varying forecasts for the next few years, all agree that cloud computing adoption is accelerating in enterprises on a global scale.

Key take-aways from the roundup are provided below:

  • By 2018, 59% of the total cloud workloads will be Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) workloads, up from 41% in 2013.  Cisco is predicting that by 2018, 28% of the total cloud workloads will be Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) workloads down from 44% in 2013. 13% of the total cloud workloads will be Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) workloads in 2018, down from 15% in 2013.  The following graphic provides a comparative analysis of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS forecasts from 2013 to 2018. Source:  Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2013–2018. (PDF, free, no opt-in).

Image Cisco SaaS IaaS PaasS Results

  • Centaur Partners’ analysis of SaaS & cloud-based business application services revenue forecasts the market growing from $13.5B in 2011 to $32.8B in 2016, attaining a 19.5% CAGR. Centaur provides a useful overview of current market conditions including M&A activity in their latest market overview published this month, Introduction to Centaur Partners: SaaS Market Overview, (PDF, free, no opt-in).

centaur partners forecast

Top Five Tech Spending Increases

  • Global SaaS software revenues are forecasted to reach $106B in 2016, increasing 21% over projected 2015 spending levels.  Spending on integration, storage management, and database management systems are projected to experience the greatest growth in 2015. These and other key insights are from Forrester’s SaaS software subscription revenue by category show below.  Source: Enterprise software spend to reach $620 billion in 2015: Forrester.

Global SaaS Forecast Forrester

  • $78.43B in SaaS revenue will be generated in 2015, increasing to $132.57 in 2020, attaining a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.14%.  The following graphic and table provides an overview of Forrester’s Global Public Cloud Computing market size analysis and forecast for the years 2011 to 2020. Source: Institut Sage. 

Global Forecast Public Cloud Forrester

Goldman Cloud TAM

Goldman Cloud Disrupting Traditional IT

SMAC Areas

  • IDC predicts that by 2016, there will be an 11% shift of IT budget away from traditional in-house IT delivery, toward various versions of cloud computing as a new delivery model.  By 2017, 35% of new applications will use cloud-enabled, continuous delivery and enabled by faster DevOps life cycles to streamline rollout of new features and business innovation. Source: 2015-2017 Forecast: Cloud Computing to Skyrocket, Rule IT Delivery.
  • By 2018, IDC forecasts that public cloud spending will more than double to $127.5 billion. This forecast is broken down as follows: $82.7 billion in SaaS spending, $24.6 billion for IaaS and $20.3 billion in PaaS expenditures.  Source: Forecasts Call For Cloud Burst Through 2018.
  • By 2016 over 80% of enterprises globally will using IaaS, with investments in private cloud computing showing the greater growth. Ovum forecasts that by 2016, 75% of EMEA-based enterprises will be using IaaS.  These and other insights are from the presentation, The Role of Cloud in IT Modernisation: The DevOps Challenge (free PDF, no opt in). The graphic below provides an analysis of cloud computing adoption in EMEA and globally.

Ovum Cloud Adoption Forecast

SaaS for SCM

Enterprise cloud revenues

  • By 2018, more than 60% of enterprises will have at least half of their infrastructure on cloud-based platforms.  These and other are insights are from the keynote Cloud Business Summit presentation Digital Business, Rethinking Fundamentals by Bill McNee, Founder and CEO, Saugatuck Technology.  Source: Digital Business, Rethinking Fundamentals.

new platform

Dec 30

Roundup Of Cloud Computing And Enterprise Software Predictions For 2014

cloud computing predictions 2014 Alan Kay’s saying that the best way to predict the future is to create it resonates through the best cloud computing and enterprise software predictions for 2014. Constraints that held start-ups back from delivering sophisticated new apps and services are disappearing fast.  The dynamics of one of my favorite books, The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, are in full force across the cloud and enterprise landscape.

There are many predictions being generated right now and instead of writing yet another set,  I’m providing a listing of those that are the most interesting and thought-provoking. They are listed below:

  • 10 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2014 – In-depth analysis of ten predictions including how more companies will realize they are really in the software business, private cloud computing having a moment of truth and continued adoption of cloud brokerages.  This set of predictions is an interesting read and provides useful insight.  I’d just add that as application developers go, so goes an industry, a point Bernard Golden refers to in this post.
  • Analytics Eats the World in 2014 – George Mathew of Alteryx is one of the most driven people I’ve ever met about analytics programming and development.  He’s very focused on breaking down constraints that hold analysts back from getting more value from their data. His predictions provide insight into how business analysts’ roles are changing based on rapid advances in analytics app development, model development and use.
  • Changing Cloud Scapes in 2014 – Jeff Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies provides ten insightful predictions regarding the continued adoption of cloud computing platforms in the enterprise.  His fourth prediction, “Although horizontal cloud solutions will continue to experience significant growth, vertical market solutions aimed at specific industries will grow even more rapidly” is starting to emerge today.  The recent success of Veeva Systems supports his prediction and points to next year seeing more vertical market solutions being successfully launched.
  • Cloud computing experts forecast the market climate in 2014 – Excellent summary of seven cloud computer experts’ predictions for 2014 including Mark Eisenberg, Roger Jennings, Paul Korzeniowski, David S. Linthicum, Tom Nolle, Dan Sullivan and Mark Szynaka.  Highlights include IDC analysts predicting the “Over the 2013 to 2017 forecast period, public IT cloud services will have a compound annual growth rate [CAGR] of 23.5%, five times that of the IT industry as a whole,” and PaaS will lead IaaS and SaaS with a CAGR of 29.7%. What’s useful about these set of predictions is the breadth of expertise reflected in market statistics, market and technology projections and insights shared.
  • Cloud Computing Predictions for 2014: Cloud Joins The Formal IT Portfolio – James Staten of Forrester Research has compiled an excellent series of predictions for the year with emphasis on security and SaaS becoming the de facto choice for new applications.  While he hasn’t quoted adoption figures of SaaS relative to on-premise, he does point out that Forrester believes HCM, CRM and collaboration will be the leading categories of SaaS apps in 2014.
  • My One Big Fat Cloud Computing Prediction for 2014 – I have been following the industry analysis, writing and research of Joe McKendrick for years based on the excellent insight he provides.  Joe predicts that cloud computing is set to become mainstream computing, period.  He cites Cisco’s research showing the majority of data center will be cloud-based and shares his perspective of the market.  Joe has an innate sense of how enterprises adopt and use technology and this post reflects that expertise.
  • SaaS predictions for 2014 – Chris Kanaracus is predicting that multitenancy will fade away as a major concern in SaaS, geographic depth of coverage will accelerate with cloud vendors announcing new data center openings around the world, and more vertical market adoption of SaaS.  He also prefaces his predictions with the Gartner forecast for SaaS (software as a service) quoting their figures of the total market will toping $22 billion through 2015, up from more than $14 billion in 2012.
  • Top Predictions about Software Companies in 2014 – In-depth analysis and predictions of which companies are going to be the most interesting to watch in 2014 and predictions regarding the enterprise software landscape.  This post provides a great overview of how industry veterans see enterprise software changing as a result of cloud computing as well.
  • Troubling, Challenging 2014 ERP Predictions – Brian Sommer’s predictions are the most thought-provoking and honest of any written so far this year. He writes “for an ERP vendor to sell CX (customer experience) software and then mistreat their own customers so badly is more than ironic (or moronic). It’s a death wish.  Yet, it happens.”  If there is only one set of predictions you read from this list, be sure to read this set.
  • What Should CMOs Do In 2014? IDC’s Top Ten Predictions – Gil Press provides in-depth analysis of IDC’s predictions of how the role of CMO will change in 2014.  He’s summarized the key points of the recent webinar including market forecasts from IDC, providing his insight and expertise in this post.  IDC is predicting that digital marketing investment will exceed 50% of total program budget by 2016, up from 39% in 2013 and that by the end of 2014, 60% of CMOs will have a formal recruiting process for marketers with data skills.

Dec 18

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IDC’s Top Ten Technology Predictions For 2014: Spending On Cloud Computing Will Exceed $100B

Planning-for-Cloud-Computing-2014-Final-300x2242-300x225International Data Corporation recently presented their top ten technology predictions for 2014.   Frank Gens, Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC hosted a webinar to present the research firm’s predictions for 2014 including the research firm’s latest cloud computing market forecast.  You can see a replay of the webinar and get the predictions documents at IDC Predictions 2014.  They are briefly summarized below:

  • Emerging markets will return to double-digit growth of 10%, driving nearly $740B or 35% of worldwide IT revenues and, for the first time, more than 60% of worldwide IT spending growth.  IDC also predicted that in 2014 the number of smart connected devices shipped in emerging markets will almost double that shipped in developed markets. In addition, IDC predicts that over the next seven years emerging markets cloud spending will grow seven-fold versus three-fold in developed markets.  IDC is predicting IT spending in Western Europe will be marginally up, with U.S. and Japan spending marginally down.
  • 3rd-platform-253x300Worldwide IT spending will grow 5% year over year to $2.1 trillion in 2014. Spending will be driven by 3rd Platform technologies, which will grow 15% year over year and capture 89% of IT spending growth.  Smartphones and tablets will lead 2014 growth, accounting for over 60% of total IT growth.  Excluding mobile devices, IT growth will only by a modest 2.4%.  The graphic shown to the right was shared during the webinar today, explaining the 3rd platform and its contribution to market growth.
  • Within the 3rd Platform, value will start to migrate “up the stack”, from infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to platform as a service (PaaS) and from generic PaaS to data-optimized PaaS. The latter will be most evident as Amazon Web Services rolls out an avalanche of platform-as-a-service offerings for developers and higher value services for businesses. This will force incumbent IT suppliers – the companies that won market leadership in the 2nd Platform era – to urgently reconfigure themselves to fight for position in the 3rd Platform marketplace.
  • The mobile device onslaught will continue in 2014 with sales of tablets growing by 18% and smartphones by 12%. The Android community, led by Samsung, will maintain its volume advantage over Apple, while Apple will hold onto its value edge with higher average selling prices and an established ecosystem of apps. But Google Play (Android) app downloads and revenues are making dramatic gains and the “app ecosystem value gap” will be significantly narrowed in 2014. And the clock will be ticking louder for Microsoft, which needs to quickly double mobile developer interest in Windows.  Frank Gens presented the following graphic to support this prediction:

idc

  • Cloud spending, including cloud services and the technology to enable these services, will surge by 25% in 2014, reaching over $100B.   IDC explained the $100B figure includes software, services and cloud infrastructure.  IDC also expects to see a dramatic increase in the number of datacenters as cloud players race to achieve global scale. This will be accompanied by a similar expansion in the variety of workload-specialized cloud infrastructure services, leading to new forms of differentiation among cloud service providers. Finally, a pitched battle will be joined for the developers that can create the cloud-based applications and solutions that will fuel the market’s growth.  IDC predicts that by 2017, 80%+ of new cloud apps will be hosted on six PaaS platforms.
  • Spending on big data technologies and services will grow by 30% in 2014, surpassing $14 billion as demand for big data analytics skills continues to outstrip supply. Here the race will be on to develop “data-optimized cloud platforms”, capable of leveraging high volumes of data and/or real-time data streams. Value-added content providers and data brokers will proliferate as enterprises (and developers) look for interesting data sources as well as applications that help them to understand their customers, products, and the markets in which they exist.  IDC is also predicting that big data analytics services 2014 spending will exceed $4.5B, growing 21% over 2013.
  • Social technologies will become increasingly integrated into existing enterprise applications over the next 12-18 months. In addition to being a strategic component in virtually all customer engagement and marketing strategies, data from social applications will feed the product and service development process. IDC expects enterprise social networks will become increasingly available as standard offerings from cloud services providers. This will enable enterprises to further embed social into the workflow, rather than having a separate “social layer.”  IDC also predicts that by 2017, 80% of Fortune 500 companies will have an active customer community, up from 30% today.  By 2016, 60% of the Fortune 500 will deploy social-enabled innovation management solutions.
  • Datacenters represent the physical foundation underneath the cloud, and are thus a crucial component of the 3rd Platform. As cloud-dedicated datacenters grow in number and importance, the market for server, storage, and networking components will increasingly be driven by cloud service providers, who have traditionally favored highly componentized and commoditized designs. The incumbent IT hardware vendors, who have struggled to sell into this market, will be forced to adopt a “cloud-first” strategy, designing new innovations for initial release and widespread adoption in cloud service provider datacenters.
  • The 3rd Platform will deliver the next generation of competitive advantage apps and services that will significantly disrupt market leaders in virtually every industry. A key to competing in these disrupted and reinvented industries will be to create industry-focused innovation platforms (like GE’s Predix) that attract and enable large communities of innovators – dozens to hundreds will emerge in the next several years. IDC predicts that most of these industry platform players will not reinvent the cloud underpinnings they need, but will build on top Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce, and others’ platforms. In 2014, it will be critically important for these IT leaders to find these emerging industry platform players and win their business.
  • The 3rd Platform will continue to expand beyond smartphones, tablets, and PCs in 2014 to the Internet of Things (IoT). With IoT momentum building in 2014, IDC expects to see new industry partnerships to emerge as traditional IT vendors accelerate their partnerships with global telecom service providers and semiconductor vendors to create integrated offerings in the consumer electronics and connected device spaces. This kind of collaboration and coordination will be necessary to reach the 30 billion autonomously connected end points and $8.9 trillion in revenues that IDC believes the IoT will generate by 2020.

Source: IDC Predicts 2014 Will Be a Year of Escalation, Consolidation, and Innovation as the Transition to IT’s “3rd Platform” Accelerates 

Nov 24

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Roundup of Cloud Computing Forecasts Update, 2013

tunnel-of-speed-forecast-of-saas-cloud-computing-final-300x201Time-to-market, more flexible support for business strategies by IT, and faster response time to competitive conditions are combining to accelerate cloud computing adoption today.

Of the enterprises I’ve spoken with over the last several months including several Fortune 500 corporations to small businesses just beginning to evaluate cloud-based CRM and manufacturing systems, one message resonates from all of them: they need enterprise applications that keep pace with how fast they want to move on new business strategies. The latest round of cloud computing forecasts reflect the urgency enterprises have of making IT a foundation for strategic business growth.

The following is a summary of the latest cloud computing forecasts and market estimates:

McKinsey Analysis

  • IDC predicts public IT cloud services will reach $47.4B in 2013 and is expected to be more than $107B in 2017. Over the 2013–2017 forecast period, public IT cloud services will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.5%, five times that of the IT industry as a whole. The growing focus on cloud services as a business innovation platform will help to drive spending on public IT cloud services to new levels throughout the forecast period. By 2017, IDC expects public IT cloud services will drive 17% of IT product spending and nearly half of all growth across five technology categories: applications, system infrastructure software, platform as a service (PaaS), servers, and basic storage. Software as a service (SaaS) will remain the largest public IT cloud services category throughout the forecast, capturing 59.7% of revenues in 2017. The fastest growing categories will be PaaS and Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), with CAGRs of 29.7% and 27.2%, respectively.  Source: IDC Forecasts Worldwide Public IT Cloud Services Spending to Reach Nearly $108 Billion by 2017 as Focus Shifts from Savings to Innovation.

IDC Forecast Public IT Spending

  • Informatica’s presentation titled Enable Rapid Innovation with Informatica  and MicroStrategy for Hybrid IT by Darren Cunningham, Informatica Cloud  and Roger Nolan, Informatica Data Integration and Data Quality contains a useful series of cloud market overviews supported by 451 Research Gartner, Forrester and IDC data.  A summary of the statistics section is shown below:

Informatica

adoption graphic from KPMG

  • Gartner predicts that in the next five years enterprises will spend $921B on public cloud services, attaining a CAGR of 17% in the forecast period.  Darryl Carlton, Research Director, APAC with Gartner recently presented Cloud Computing 2014: Cloud Computing 2014: ready for real business?  His presentation is full of insightful analysis and market forecasts from Gartner, with specific focus on Asia-Pacific.
  • Visiongain predicts the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) submarket is valued at $1.9B in 2013 growing to $3.7B in 2018, attaining a 14.3% CAGR for the period 2013-2018.  The following figure shows the firm’s forecast.  Source: Visiongain on Slideshare.
  • Gartner predicts that in the next five years enterprises will spend $921B on public cloud services, attaining a CAGR of 17% in the forecast period.  Darryl Carlton, Research Director, APAC with Gartner recently presented Cloud Computing 2014: Cloud Computing 2014: ready for real business?  His presentation is full of insightful analysis and market forecasts from Gartner, with specific focus on Asia-Pacific.
  • Visiongain predicts the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) submarket is valued at $1.9B in 2013 growing to $3.7B in 2018, attaining a 14.3% CAGR for the period 2013-2018.  The following figure shows the firm’s forecast.  Source: Visiongain on Slideshare.

visiongain forecast

marketscape

  • Boston Consulting Group writes that SaaS is a $15B market, growing at three times that rate of traditional software.  BCG estimates that SaaS is 12% of global spending on IT applications.  BCG interviewed 80 CIOs and found they were willing to consider SaaS solutions for 35% to 60% of their application spending.  BCG also evaluated how the economics of cloud software adoption vary for on-premises versus SaaS customers.  The following two charts from the completed study. Source: (Free, opt-in required) Profiting from the Cloud: How to Master Software as a Service

Profiting_Cloud_Ex1_lg_tcm80-138310 BCG Categories

Profiting_Cloud_Ex2_lg_tcm80-138309 BCG Economics

Asia Pacific Cloud Market Growth

Oct 12

Best- And Worst-Performing Cloud Computing Stocks Through Q3, 2013

cloud-computing-stock-update-October-2013-300x225The five highest-performing cloud computing stocks as of Q3, 2013 in the Cloud Computing Stock Index have proven prowess in closing enterprise-level deals, expertise in compliance and security, and years of infrastructure experience.

Twelve of the nineteen companies in the index delivered a positive return in the first three quarters of this year.  NetSuite (NYSE:N) leads all companies in the index with an annualized gain as of calendar Q3 of 88.69% and has a dollar value of $16,078 on $10,000 invested on January 2nd of this year.    Workday (NYSE:WDAY) attained an annualized gain of 81.49% as of Q3, and has a dollar value of $15,617 on $10,000 invested on January 2nd.  Qualys (NASDAQ: QLYS) attained an annualized gain of 49.33% and delivered $13,498 on $10,000 invested from January 2nd to October 2nd of this year.  The following table lists the top best performing cloud computing stocks in the index.

Best Performing 

high-performing-cloud-computing-stocks

Worst Performing

Seven of the nineteen companies in the index lost value, with Fusion-IO (NYSE:FIO) experiencing the greatest annualized loss in stock value of -51.03% and $10,000 invested on January 2nd of this year being worth $5,862 as of October 2nd.  Rackspace (NYSE:RAX) had an annualized loss of -38.61%, with $10,000 invested on January 2nd being worth $6,943 as of October 2nd.  The following table shows the five lowest-performing cloud computing stocks in the index.

low-performing-cloud-computing-stocks

The nineteen companies that comprise the Cloud Computing Stock Index attained a 19.41% return from October 3, 2012 to October 2, 2013.  In the same period Microsoft gained 13.98%, Oracle, 7.05% and SAP, 4.83%. Please click on the index to expand it for easier viewing.

CLOUD-INDEX-FOR-A-YEAR

Specifics on the Cloud Computing Stock Index

I used The Cloud Times 100 as the basis of the index, selecting nineteen companies all of which are publically traded.  The latest edition of the Cloud Computing Stock Index is shown here.  The filter applied to these companies is that 50% or more of their revenues are generated from cloud-based applications, infrastructure and services.  Please click on the index for easier viewing.

clous-computing-stock-index-October-2-20132-1024x351

Note: I do not hold equity positions or work for any of the companies mentioned in this blog post or included in the Cloud Computing Stock Index.  

Aug 26

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Top 12 Sites For Free Cloud Computing & Enterprise Software Research

campusOne of the most common questions I get from students is where they can find free cloud computing and enterprise software research.

Few if any of my students work for companies who have subscriptions with the top analyst firms however.  A small group of students are working on a start-up on the side and want to absorb as much market data as they can.

Many of my former students are also in IT management roles, and when they become interested in a specific cloud computing or enterprise topic over time, they write me and ask if I have any data on their subject of interest.  I keep the following list updated from them too.   To serve all these students I’ve been adding to the list shown below for a number of years. None of these companies are current or past clients and I hold no equity positions in any of them.

The requests are so prevalent in global competitive strategy courses I distribute this list at the beginning of the semester with the following disclaimers.

  • Many of the cloud computing and enterprise software companies pay to have white papers written and research done.  Writing white papers and doing research for an enterprise software vendor client is a very lucrative business for many industry analyst firms.  Ethical industry analysts will often insist that a disclaimer be included in the white paper and on the website stating that they and their firms were hired to write the paper or do the research and publish the report.
  • The reports are intellectual property of the firms publishing them.  Enterprise software vendors often pay tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum for reprint rights and the right to provide them on their websites.  I advise my students to seek out the copyright and quote policies of the research firm of interest if they plan on re-using the graphics in any published materials or in their blog posts.  One for example, the Gartner Copyright and Quote Policy is shown here.
  • Pay attention to the methodologies used in each report and realize they change over time.  This is especially the case with the  Gartner Magic Quadrant and MarketScopes. Gartner has been very active this year in refining the Magic Quadrant methodology for example.

The following are the list of cloud computing and enterprise software vendor sites that offer free downloads of cloud computing and enterprise software research:

  • Amazon Web Services – Amazon has purchased re-print rights to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service written by Lydia Leong, Douglas Toombs, Bob Gill, Gregor Petri, Tiny Haynes published on August, 19, 2013 in addition to the latest reports from Forrester on enterprise public cloud platforms and enterprise cloud databases. Link:    https://aws.amazon.com/resources/analyst-reports/
  • BMC Software – Many free reports from Gartner, Forrester, The 451 Group and other research firms covering advanced performance analytics (APA), cloud computing, IT Service Management and long-term technology trends. Link: http://www.bmc.com/industry-analysts/reports/
  • Computer Associates – An extensive collection of cloud computing and enterprise software research organized into the following categories: cloud; data management; energy and sustainability management; IT automation; IT security; IT service management; mainframe; project and portfolio management; service assurance and virtual organizations.  CA requires opt-in on the latest research as they use this site as part of their lead generation strategy.  Link: http://www.ca.com/us/collateral/industry-analyst-reports.aspx
  • Cisco Systems –  Data Center and Virtualization; includes the latest Current Analysis, Forrester, Gartner, IDC, Lippis and Yankee Group research reports covering Big Data, blade servers, cloud computing, Hadoop, unified data centers and many other topics.  Be sure to click across the Computing, Network, Orchestration/Automation,  and Network Services tabs to find additional research:   Link: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns340/ns857/ns156/ns1094/analyst_reports.html
  • Hewlett-Packard – HP has invested primarily in networking-related analyst research including the latest studies and market frameworks from Forrester, Gartner, IDC and Infonetics Research.  Link: http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/networking/ar/index.aspx#.Uhp-ERufg-J
  • Intel – Organized around the topic of designing a data center for the cloud, Intel is providing a series of research studies, reports, white papers and videos that provide insights into virtualization, networking, mobility and Intel-based servers running cloud architectures.  Link:  http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/cloud-computing/cloud-computing-analyst-reports.html
  • Microsoft – Balancing the need to support their enterprise applications today and create demand for cloud-based initiatives now and in the future, Microsoft’s series of analyst reports reflect their evolving business model.  Microsoft has licensed the latest research from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESDG), Forrester, Gartner, IDC, Ovum, Yankee Group and others listed on this site. Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/itanalyst/
  • Oracle – The most comprehensive collection of industry analyst research online for any enterprise software vendor, Oracle has hundreds of research reports available for viewing under their reprint licenses for free, and also for download.  The reports are organized into corporate, infrastructure, systems, services, solutions, industries, enterprise applications and regions.     Link: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/analystreports/index.html
  • Progress Software – Extensive collection of research from Bloor, Forrester, Gartner, IDC, Tabb Group, Ovum and other research firms are available for download from this site. Link:  http://www.progress.com/en/inthenews/analyst-reports.html
  • SAS – The most extensive and well-organized online collection of analyst research on analytics and business intelligence (BI) available, SAS makes research available from fifteen analyst firms across six industries on this area of their website.  You can find the SAS Analyst Viewpoints section of their website here: http://www.sas.com/news/analysts/
  • Symantec – Provides downloadable analyst reports in the areas of risk and compliance, endpoint security and management, information and identity protection, messaging security, backup and archiving, storage and availability management, services and emerging trends.  ESG, Info-Tech Research Group, Forrester, Gartner and IDC reports are on this page for download. Link: http://www.symantec.com/about/industryanalysts/analystreports.jsp
  • Teradata – Extensive collection of industry analysis and research organized into the sections of Active Data Warehousing, Active Enterprise Intelligence, Enterprise Data Warehousing, Teradata Analytical Ecosystem and Teradata Integration Analytics.  The latest market frameworks from Gartner, Forrester, IDC and other research firms are available for download.  Link:   http://www.teradata.com/analyst-reports/

Aug 20

451 Research: Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Fastest Growing Area Of Cloud Computing

public-cloud-computing-forecast-2011-2016The majority of cloud computing revenue in 2012 was generated from vendors with sales over $75M (66%) and who are privately held (77%), with Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) projected to attain a 41% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2016.

Market Monitor, a service of 451 Research, is also predicting 36% CAGR in cloud computing, growing from $5.7B in 2012 to $20B by the end of 2016 in their Cloud-as-a-Service overview report. Other research firms including Gartner have much higher forecasts for cloud computing in general and IaaS, PaaS and SaaS specifically.

Market Monitor relies on a bottoms-up forecasting methodology that includes revenue analysis and forecasts from 309 cloud-services providers and technology vendors across 14 sectors. Their taxonomy defining Cloud as a Service is shown in the following graphic:

taxonomy cloud as a service

Here are the key take-aways from the report:

  • The cloud computing market will grow from $5.7B in 2012 to $20B in 2016, attaining a 36% CAGR over the forecast period.  The following graphic from the report shows the breakout of revenue on a yearly basis throughout the forecast period.

forecast breakout

  • Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) will attain a 41% CAGR through 2016, generating 24% of total cloud revenues.  71% of PaaS revenues will be generated by vendors over $75M in sales according to the study.
  • Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) will attain a 37% CAGR through 2016, generating 51% of cloud revenue.  69% of IaaS revenues will be generated by vendors over $75M in sales according to the study.
  • SaaS will attain a 29% CAGR through 2016 and the distribution of revenue by vendor size shows how fragmented this area of the market is.  The following is a summary table from the report showing distribution of sales by vendor and category.

distribution table

Jul 30

2 Comments

Roundup Of Small & Medium Business Cloud Computing Forecasts And Market Estimates, 2013

Small & Medium Business cloud computing What sets apart the fastest-growing small businesses is their an innate strength at turning data and information into results.

It’s becoming easy to spot a smaller business who is going to break out and grow quickly.  They often have these qualities:  they highly value knowledge, expertise and speed over seniority or cronyism; they have successfully managed a geographically distributed supply chain, production and service operations early in their history; and long before they reach $20M in sales they have learned how to balance domestic and international customer demands.  In short, they learned fast how to compete and win business globally.

Over the last several months research firms and enterprise software vendors have released studies on cloud computing adoption in small & medium businesses (SMBs).

The following are the key take-aways from these studies:

  • Forrester forecasts that channel partners will increase their reliance on cloud software and services from 22% to 27% from 2013 to 2014.  The majority of this growth will be in SMBs. For additional details please see the free reprint of the report, Cloud Channel Trends, 2013 To 2014 by Tim Harmon and Jonathan Silber, February 28, 2013.  You can download the reprint here (no opt in required): http://www.forrester.com/pimages/rws/reprints/document/90001/oid/1-LMIK8X
  • 61% of SMBs who responded to a recent survey are using cloud-based solutions today, with an additional 5% planning to add cloud services in the next six months.  69% of SMBs with fewer than 20 employees and 55% of SMBs with 250 to 999 employees are using cloud-based applications today. North American SMBs are more likely to use cloud-based applications co these services than EMEA (64% compared to 56%). Source: State of SMB IT 1H 2013 Semi-Annual Report On Small And Midsize Business Technology Plans & Purchase Intent (Opt-in required): http://www.spiceworks.com/marketing/state-of-smb-it/ The following is a graphic from the report:

figure 1 smb cloud adoption

  • SMB spending on cloud solutions will grow by almost 20% over the next five years, with 3 in 10 midsize firms adopting public cloud solutions.  IBM is offering a free download of the IDC report, Cloud Computing in the Midmarket: Assessing the Options in 2013 (no opt-in required): http://idcdocserv.com/995  IDC’s graphical definition of how their Primary Market and Secondary Market IT Product Taxonomy maps to the NIST Taxonomy is shown below:

figure 2 smb cloud adoption

  • Cisco predicts the U.S. SMB commercial-services market addressable by service providers will grow to more than $200B by 2015. Also included is an analysis of how fundamental differences in business segments drive IT behavior, as the following table illustrates. Source: What Do SMBs Want from Commercial-Services Providers? Insights from Cisco’s U.S. Research on SMB Services Delivery  Link:http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/sp/SMB-Cloud-Survey.pdf. Please click on the image to expand it for easier reading.

figure 3 smb cloud adoption

  • Hosting and cloud services provider Parallels projects that the worldwide SMB SaaS applications market was $14.5B in 2012 today and will grow to $33.8B by 2015, attaining a 32% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR).  Please see the following illustration of a breakdown by region over the forecast period.  Source: Profit from the Cloud 2013 Global Parallels Global SMB Cloud Insights  Opt-in required, Link:  http://www.parallels.com/fileadmin/parallels/documents/smb-reports/2013/2013_SMB_Brochure_Global_web.pdf.  Please click on the image to expand it for easier reading.

figure 4 smb cloud adoption

  • The latest research note from Bain & Company predicts revenue growth for SaaS companies will triple between 2011 and 2014.  The note also includes a revenue projection by category and is shown below. Source: The cloud reshapes the business of software by Ravi Vijayaraghavan http://www.bain.com/Images/BAIN_BRIEF_The_cloud_reshapes_the_business_of_software.pdf.  Please click on the image to expand it for easier reading.

figure 5 smb cloud adoption

  • SMEs overwhelmingly prefer to buy or acquire  these critical systems (43%) rather than lease or pay for use (23%) in an SAP-sponsored survey by Oxford Economics.  The study found that the tools most commonly used by SMEs are business management software (48%), mobile (46%), and analytics (44%). Cloud computing adoption is expected to jump from 35% to 47% in three years. An infographic summarizing the results is below. You can get the survey results here: http://cdn.news-sap.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/SAP-SME-analysis-presentation.pdf . Please click on the image to expand it for easier reading.

figure 1a smb cloud adoption

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