Author: Chee @ Netway, small business IT specialist: passionate about productivity
I’ve been working with small business computing and the Internet for nearly 15 years now. I’ve seen many “big things” come and go. Today’s top headlines is simply a regurgitation of yesterday’s news, so nothing really surprises me anymore. So when something takes me by surprise, I get rather surprised myself.
Cloud Computing is one thing that have taken me by surprise in the last few months. The technology behind Cloud Computing is not all that interesting but the impact of Cloud Computing has been breath-taking to say the least.
- Pundits are predicting that 25% of all software are going to be distributed in the “clouds” by 2012.
- Microsoft accepts that the revenue from the cloud offerings are going to surpass their Windows revenue (currently around $15billion worldwide) by 2013.
As you can read for yourself, the impact is huge to say the least. For most of my small business clients, cloud computing represents an opportunity to acquire enterprise-class infrastructure and software that they previously would not have dreamed of. Many of the software that are now available for little more than what you’ll pay for your monthly broadband connection used to cost many tens of thousands of dollars. To give you an example, Microsoft SharePoint, used to be the domain of big business, can now be accessed at around $8/month/user. That’s $80/month for 10 users. That’s a price point that smaller business can contemplate. It’s easy to justify $80/month worth of cost savings resulting from the utilisation of SharePoint, so the investment should be a worthwhile for most businesses, large or small.
Perhaps what’s more surprising than the incredible pricing resulting from the Cloud Computing evolution is the magnitude of investments that technology vendors have made in this area. One particular unnamed vendor, well known for their dominance of the desktop operating system and office productivity suite market, has invested more than $3 billion just in data centres alone. Why would a vendor that has nearly monopolised the desktop operating system and office productivity suite market spend $3 billion in something that will eventually cannibalise it’s own monopoly? This is an interesting question that I’ll leave for another day.
Whether Cloud Computing is going to succeed, only time will tell. The amount of money plunged into Cloud Computing makes it difficult to imagine how it can fail. Succeed or fail, the impact has already been felt. It’s a great time for small business owners to dive in headfirst to take advantage of the incredible savings and opportunities already here.
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