IBM Google Microsoft all are making big
bets on cloud computing that's for good
reason research firm Gartner forecasts
public cloud revenues to exceed two
hundred sixty billion dollars in 2020
for years Amazon's AWS led the market
but that lead is starting to slip as
other firms make moves to bolster their
cloud computing offerings in October
Microsoft surprised onlookers when it
won the US military's jedi' cloud
contract it could be worth 10 billion
dollars over 10 years weeks later Amazon
filed a protest of this decision to the
US Court of Federal Claims
in July I BM spent 34 billion dollars to
acquire Redhead and boost its cloud
business so why are tech firms going to
battle for cloud services to understand
you've got to know the basics well I'd
like any market that grows it's strong
because it offers a value proposition to
people that they find attractive and so
they shift their spending cloud
computing at its core is about changing
the way that businesses manage data
everything done online shopping video
texts it all takes data the data is
processed and behind the scenes
computers called servers managing that
equipment takes time energy and money
when a business moves to the cloud it's
really just outsourcing in other words
tech firms like Amazon handles some IT
services so businesses can focus on what
they do best
startups who use a cloud provider won't
have to spend as much on a custom data
center they can use resources from a
third party in-house IT has to maintain
enough server space to account for peak
demand that could mean that your company
has a bigger data center than it needs
on a consistent basis instead cloud
computing lets companies pool their
resources the companies use as many
servers as they need and only pay for
what they consume companies that use the
cloud can benefit from the remote
management of data in places like
Ashburn Virginia Amazon IBM and others
host some of their data centers and less
populated areas like this both energy
and land can be cheaper here and say a
city center you even see groups like
Facebook in the NSA opening private data
centers in small towns in Utah there's
potential for lower costs the views
aren't that either
cloud computing is tougher for some
businesses than others in the years
after the launch of AWS businesses like
Netflix lyft and slack launched products
with intense IT demands they were a
natural fit for cloud computing some
companies who are moving to the cloud
today are bigger and are in more
regulated industries like health and
finance they're companies like JP Morgan
which operates under strict standards
from regulators like FINRA in 2017 Dana
DC was the chief information officer at
the time he moved portions of the
financial Giants data to the cloud his
next task will be even more formidable
do the same for the Defense Department
so I've mentioned we have a need for an
enterprise cloud so we have massive
compute capability where we can start to
store our data in a more common way and
make it accessible the multi-billion
joint enterprise defense initiative is
supposed to centralize the military's
technology and reap gains and innovation
getting there will mean untangling years
of different IT systems that will take
time money and expertise which is why
Microsoft's potential win is so
significant Amazon is no longer the only
big name in cloud computing Microsoft
Azure cloud service was announced three
years after Amazon AWS took an early
lead
more than a decade has passed an AWS
still Dwarfs asher and revenues but more
deals are on the horizon the cod markets
are still relatively small so their
growth rate naturally is going to be
higher and we do see that growth rate
coming down slightly over time as the
cob markets get bigger but you know the
strong growth rates are still driven by
the fact that people prefer cloud models
over the traditional models for a lot of
their workloads which is why you see the
largest firms in tech betting big on the
cloud billions of dollars hang in the
balance
you