Public cloud computing provides more than a silver lining for IT industry

Thursday, June 30, 2011

The rapid uptake of public cloud computing services among U.S. companies should prove to be a bellwether of the IT industry at large, according to research from Gartner.

The tech analysis firm recently revised its estimates for the total to be spent on IT services in 2011 to $846 billion, a significant upturn from last year's total of $793 billion.

Growth rates for public cloud computing, however, were even rosier-looking, the researchers said. They expect the technology to post increased sales four times faster than the rest of the IT sector.

While the public cloud should remain a relatively minor percentage of IT spend for the near future - Gartner currently projects 5 percent or less through 2015 - the technology's impact on businesses utilizing it could be enormous.

Experts say that, with the development of more robust cloud security standards and formalized uptime guarantee mechanisms, the growth rate for the technology could climb even higher. The novelty of the public cloud has made for a still-fluctuating marketplace, with few general standards in place.