Everything-As-A-Service — How The Cloud Is Defining A New Normal

The IT industry is growing fast, driven by an explosion in spending on post-pandemic digital transformation projects.

Research from ISG indicates that global spending on IT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in the first quarter of 2021 has grown by 11% since last year – $17bn of spending globally in a quarter.

Where this gets really interesting is the numbers focused on cloud-based services. Of that entire $17bn, $10bn was spent in the cloud, reflecting a 15% year-on-year increase. The first quarter of 2020 was not really affected by the Covid-19 pandemic because most European and American lockdowns did not start until the middle of March, so these growth numbers really reflect a pre-pandemic state. With so much “new normal” investment now going into technology it is likely that growth will accelerate this year.

The advisory company McKinsey published a major report suggesting that recovery from the pandemic will be digital. McKinsey suggests that IT spending is moving away from five-year plans and traditional investment in infrastructure and into the cloud. Modern organizations need agility and this is exactly what the cloud can offer.

Many executives have been wary of buying cloud-based services. They wanted systems in-house so they can exert more control and have less data out there in the Internet. Now it seems that the opposite is true. Companies that cannot change quickly are now the ones that look risky. Buying services from the cloud, as and when your company needs them, allows you to pivot and reinvent how your company works with no infrastructure spending required.

Resilience is one of the key themes of the post-pandemic business environment. Organizations need to be able to change quickly – who could have imagined the challenges of 2020 as we were celebrating the end of 2019? The companies with rigid infrastructure plans may no longer even exist.

But how do you catch up?

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CC Photo by Ales Krivec