Saugatuck Study Predicts Every Business Category On The Cloud By 2015

Saugatuck Technology, Connecticut based Research and Consulting firm, released a new report today titled Key SaaS, PaaS and IaaS Trends Through 2015 – Business Transformation via the Cloud based on the analysis of global surveys, interviews, etc.. The interesting prediction of this report is that all categories of business computing will move to cloud by 2015. Seeing the current trends, this prediction is not altogether surprising. In fact, ERP has been considered to be the last frontier for SaaS because of the resistance coming from those organizations that are otherwise open to SaaS. It has been found that there is a surge in interest among enterprises towards SaaS ERP. This is just one example and, clearly, we are seeing trends which could culminate in every business computing category having a cloud based offering by 2015.

Other key findings of the study include:

• By 2015, there will remain no business computing category that hasn’t moved to the Cloud – with 65 percent or more of all NEW business application / solution decisions Cloud-based or Hybrid by 2015
• The hybrid business portfolio will be dominated by Cloud solutions in 2015, as the on-premise segment transforms from the driver of transactions to the repository of business data
• While Cloud-based development, or PaaS, will be somewhat slow to emerge, SaaS will remain the dominant Cloud delivery model through 2014, as enterprises of all shapes and sizes transition to a new way of managing their application portfolios
• Pervasive mobility and social networking together will change the landscape of enterprise SaaS and Cloud Business Solutions
• By 2012, many of the fears associated with IaaS (lack of standards, transaction and data/security integrity) are resolved, with customers realizing that its value lies less with cost savings and more with agility (for large enterprises), and service levels and compliance (for SMBs)
• Through 2014, 65 percent of Private Cloud deployments will be packaged vendor offerings delivered as a drop-in appliance

These and other prediction are part of the report (Premium Report) and I definitely agree with most of them. Even though I am not sure that we will see security and standards issues of IaaS to be completely resolved by 2012, I am confident that we will be at a much better level than where we are today. Today’s hybrid clouds will be the launchpad for a more widespread public cloud infrastructure adoption in 2012.

It is easy to dismiss these predictions as overly optimistic. However, we should keep in mind that the rate of innovation in the current decade will be several order of magnitudes more rapid than what we saw in the last decade. Just take the case of smartphones and see how fast they have evolved in the last few years since the release of first iPhone. Technology is going to leap forward at a much higher pace and any optimistic prediction of today will sound more conservative in couple of years. Ladies and Gentlemen, tighten your seat belts and get ready for a speed ride to a fast moving future and don’t be surprised if you see many of these predictions come true when you get down.