The power of cloud computing is being appreciated by small businesses and larger organizations across Europe. But it seems that French groups are particularly receptive to the benefits of migrating to the cloud as reports suggest that the value of the market exceeded two billion Euros, or about £1.67 billion.
This is according to a report published by the IFA (Invest in France Agency), which also believes that with governmental investment, it might be possible for cloud computing to account for around six per cent of the total IT services industry and software provision market in 2012.
In 2010, about €672 million of the cloud computing market in France was generated by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), according to analysts at Nexima. More and more small organizations are seeing the benefits offered by the cloud, as a great way of saving money and enjoying a level of scalability which was not possible before, with processing capacity purchased in the same way as traditional utilities, rather than sourced in-house.
Growing Cloud Adoption
France is not the only country in which the cloud is helping businesses and organizations to save money, as many UK groups are also reaping the rewards of cloud migration. This week it was reported by the Guardian that Suffolk County Council has become one of the latest local authorities to outsource its data storage and desktop software to a cloud provider.
Council spokesperson, Duncan Farley, said in an interview that “the move had been made not only to save money in a time when budgets are being squeezed by austerity measures, but also to free up employees and resources, so that more time could be spent on more productive tasks.”
Collaboration between councils is made easier thanks to the cloud, with Suffolk announcing that it was now better able to work in partnership with councils in Norfolk and elsewhere, in order to push through local projects with fewer delays.
Mark Adams-Wright, who is the CIO of Suffolk County Council, said that “cloud hosting and storage was clearly useful within individual organizations, but warned that it could only be exploited to its full potential if more groups are actually signed up to the same platforms.”
He also praised the process of working in the cloud for enabling real time monitoring of the progress of various initiatives, as well as the efficiency improvements which came as a result.
Public Sector Benefits
Public sector organizations are not the only ones which can benefit from cloud adoption, particularly with the costs that are associated with maintaining internal IT systems, where a business is responsible for the maintenance and expansion of their own hardware capabilities.
Growth of the cloud industry is anticipated not only in France this year, but also in the UK, where IHS iSuppli has predicted strong growth for cloud server sales over the next three years.
In 2010, the sale of cloud-based technology accounted for about five per cent of the market, but by 2015, analysts forecast that this will have risen to 15 per cent. It should be obvious from this that growth is strong, but it is also clear that the cloud will remain a relatively small part of the market for the foreseeable future.
Visualization does dictate the rise of the cloud and the gradual redundancy of physical servers, but for many SMEs and larger UK-based businesses, the best approach is to harness the best of both worlds, sustaining some in-house systems for direct data access and security, while using the cloud for tasks which require a greater deal of flexibility and accessibility for those in the field.
This article was written by Daisy Group plc, who provide business communication and hosting solutions including managed hosting, cloud computing and Colocation to business customers across the UK. Our 3 UK Data Centres in Manchester, London and Southampton provide 24/7 support 365 making Daisy the natural choice for business hosting solutions.
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