Spending on public cloud services could be more than $180 billion by next year, says the IT research group Gartner as quoted in InformationWeek.

The cloud allows for quick scalability to meet demand.

Companies can quickly scale cloud services and storage up or down as needed.

The public cloud will grow 45% annually over the next five years, while on-site computing will grow by just under 9%, according to Barron’s Tech Trader Daily and Piper Jaffray.

Cloud providers can efficiently, accurately and quickly manage upgrades, backup, disaster recovery, maintenance, security and more.

According to a Cisco survey, if IT decision makers could choose only one application…

● 25% would choose storage● 20% would choose ERP

(enterprise resource planning)● 16% would choose email● 15% would choose collaboration● 14% would choose other

Companies using the cloud can save on capital costs because they don’t have to buy any (or as many) servers, software, etc.

Companies concerned with being environmentally sound can choose green IT (data centers powered by renewable energy, like a wind farm for example.)

According to an NSK survey of 3500 IT executives, more than 80% saved money by moving company business to the cloud.

Nearly 15% of IT companies in the NSK survey downsized staff after moving to the cloud, thereby saving even more money.

Cloud computing allows IT costs to be more transparent and expenses can be divided among department budgets.

Almost all of those surveyed by RightScale, 94%, use cloud computing. Close to 60% of those use a combination (public and private) cloud solution, 30% use public cloud only and less than 10% use private only.

Using the cloud helps small businesses and entrepreneurs access the latest, full-featured technology, quicker and at lower cost, than they could if they had to purchase the tech outright.

Versus 25% in 2012, by 2020, 60% of storage capacity is

expected to be in cloud apps, according to Seagate, the

industry’s leading producer of data storage hardware.

Using cloud computing, companies can operate without a

large IT team in-house.

An estimated 1 exabyte of data is currently in cloud storage, according to Seagate and

SiliconAngle. One exabyte is equal to 1000 petabytes (PB), or

1,000,000 terabytes, or 1,000,000,000 gigabytes

A whopping 90% of IT professionals surveyed saw an improvement in either security,

quality or efficiency after moving to the cloud, according to NSK.

The cloud allows businesses to be use remote workers. Employees can work from wherever they are

and share information, documents and applications in the cloud.

Employees and freelance consultants can use their favorite devices (and multiple devices) to access the cloud data or apps.

According to Thales e-Security more than half of the 4000 businesses

surveyed worldwide use the cloud for confidential information sharing and

storage - and 60% of them believe that security is the responsibility of the cloud

provider.

Small or large firms can save a significant amount fairly quickly on software and energy expenses by

moving email to web mail and getting antivirus protection via cloud software.

About 60% of new spending on cloud computing is by North American

businesses. Western European users account for about 25% and this trend is

growing, according to Forbes and Gartner

By the end of 2014, businesses in the United States will spend more than $13

billion on cloud computing and managed hosting services.

More than 60% of businesses use the cloud for IT operations. Approximately

75% of businesses surveyed said service availability improved after moving to the cloud, according to

Security Week

According to EMC, nearly 40% of all information in the digital universe will be

touched in some way by cloud computing companies.

The number of cloud providers is huge: 2200+ cloud services are being used by

3 million people in major business sectors such as finance, health,

technology, manufacturing, media, and services.

91% of users surveyed said the cloud makes it easier to meet government

compliance requirements, according to Baseline.

More than 33% of survey respondents said that accessibility to cloud

information with multiple devices was the main reason they adopted cloud

computing, according to Ramco.

According to Baseline, 75% of companies surveyed experienced

improvements in their network availability.

The top cloud file sharing services are DropBox and Google Drive, and the top

collaboration services are Office 365 and Gmail, according to the Cloud

Security Alliance.

Survey respondents stated that the fastest areas of growth in cloud

applications will be in the IT areas of big data, backup, help desk operations,

mobile, system management and security, according to North Bridge

Growth Equity Venture Partners and GigaOm Research.

GigaOM predicts the total world market for cloud computing will be

approximately $160 billion by the end of 2014, which is up about 125% from just

3 years ago.

Businesses can add cloud services as needed, for instance, you might move

email first, but keep your data files on a local server and use a cloud-based

system for backup.

About 65% of companies surveyed said that switching to cloud solutions

reduced waste and lowered energy consumption, according to Ramco.

Although data security and intellectual property rights are concerns when choosing a cloud provider, 94% of businesses found that IT security

actually improved after switching to the cloud, according to Security Week

quoting a ComScore survey.

CSC surveyed 3,500 IT decision makers. 80% of respondents said they saw improvements in IT performance

within 6 months of switching to the cloud.

The private cloud typically offers more control, flexibility and performance but

public cloud services may provide specific applications at a lower cost. Many businesses use a combination.

In 2013, 64% of cloud activity was related to banking, partly due to the introduction and adoption of mobile

banking. This was closely followed by shopping at 63% of cloud activity, social

media at nearly 60%, online gaming accounted for 45% of cloud activity.

Nearly 30% of cloud activity was due to photo sharing and almost 20% due to

file sharing, according to NSK Inc.

When evaluating a cloud provider, make sure you understand the details

like the data storage location, how backups are done and how data is

secured. Get details about the provider’s disaster planning and also what

service levels are guaranteed.

More than 60% of cloud users said their levels of privacy protection increased, according to Security Week quoting a

Microsoft study.

The cloud allows companies to shift employees to other tasks like data

analysis, strategic planning or sales.

SaaS (software as a service) is the most popular of cloud services, used by about 65% of companies surveyed by

GigaOM and North Bridge.

Nearly 40% of respondents plan to increase their training investment to

support the expansion of cloud computing in their business, according

to GigaOM and North Bridge.

Cloud advertising is the largest segment of the cloud services market, making up almost 50% percent of the market in 2012, with $310 billion to be

spent through 2016, according to Gartner.

Gartner predicts that, through 2016, the most widely used cloud services

segment (after advertising) will be business process services (BPaaS,

nearly 30% of total market), followed by application services (SaaS, software as a service at nearly 15%), cloud system

infrastructure (infrastructure as a service, called IaaS, at about 6%),

cloud management and security service (at about 3%), and application

infrastructure services (PaaS, platform as a service at 1%).

By 2020, private and public clouds will be common and will exchange data

seamlessly, according to EMC.

When surveyed by Citrix and Wakefield Research, consumers said the cloud

would benefit the economy by lowering costs for businesses and lowering

prices for them (35%), spurring small business growth (32%) and generating jobs (said 26% of Millennials and only

19% of Baby Boomers).

More than 75% of survey respondents expect hybrid cloud solutions to be the core of their cloud strategies within five

years, according to GigaOM.

Among those reluctant to use the cloud, the top reasons were cost (34%), security issues (32%) and privacy

concerns (31%), according to GigaOM.

Despite all of the cloud usage, many members of the public don’t realize

when they are using it. According to a survey by Citrix, 95% of consumers

said they never use the cloud, but when asked, said they do engage in online

shopping, social media, mobile banking and more.

According to Wakefield Research, a little over 50% of respondents, including

a majority of Millennials (born in the 1980s and 90s), think that stormy

weather interferes with cloud computing.

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50 Things You Absolutely Need To Know About the Cloud