Predicting Cloud Computing Adoption Rates

From conservative, single digit adoption rates to hockey-stick projections of exceptional growth, analyst firms, venture capitalists and government ministries are weighing in on how they see cloud adoption progressing.

While each of the adoption rate predictions vary significantly in terms of their methodologies and results, all rely on the assumption that SaaS applications including CRM will continue to gain momentum.  The user adoption rates vary on how fast the momentum is, yet all share this assumption.  Speed, increased user adoption rates, and the ability to more closely align software to business goals are cited most often as the biggest benefits.

Where the projections vary most is whether enterprises will eventually migrate the majority of their applications to the cloud or not.  Forrester, Gartner and others see a hybrid cloud architecture emerging in the enterprise and forcing the issue of legacy systems migration by 2015.  As would be expected, vendor-driven research sees an “all or nothing” world in the near future.

Sanity Check

Wanting to see how reliable the figures were showing rapid cloud adoption in the enterprise, I did a quick sanity check.  Taking the  distribution of sales by segment for Salesforce.com and their annual revenue growth rate, then normalizing it across all segments, enterprise emerges as their strongest segment by a wide margin in 2015.  It had a 15%+ compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2011 – 2015 just taking their current sales by segment distribution of sales and extrapolating forward.  Data points like this and the market factors behind them is why SaaS is often used in these studies as a leading indicator of broader cloud adoption.

Adoption Rate Round-Up

• CDW recently published their Cloud Computing Tracking Poll Report reporting 37% adoption in enterprises followed by higher education (34%), healthcare (30%), federal government (29%),  state & local government (23%) and SMBs (21%).Source and opt-in for research results: http://www.cdw.com/shop/tools/surveys/survey.asp?SurveyKey=D808B2971F634B5A96E452FE7E6FA165

• Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry 2010, the cloud computing market in Japan is expected to grow to U.S.$29.2 billion in 2015. Gartner has projected cloud adoption in Japan will represent 12 percent of the global cloud services revenue. Source: http://www.biztechreport.com/story/1202-cloud-services-asia-pacific-region

• Forrester found that SaaS will outgrow all other cloud services, achieving 37% adoption in 2011 growing to 50% by 2012. In previous studies Forrester has shown that SaaS is a major growth catalyst of ongoing investment in IaaS and PaaS in enterprises. Source: Source:  Forrsights: The Software Market In Transformation, 2011 And Beyond Shifting Buying Preferences Lead To New Software Priorities by Holger Kisker, Ph.D. with Pascal Matzke, Stefan Ried, Ph.D., Miroslaw Lisserman  Link: http://bit.ly/ijJy70  The following table is from the report:

• Microsoft Global SMB Cloud Adoption Study released in March, 2011 is one of the most comprehensive done this year on this topic. Of the many findings, the study predicts  39 % of SMBs expect to be paying for one or more cloud services within three years).  One of the best studies on cloud adoptions done this year Source: Study Results Document (PDF (22 pages): http://bit.ly/gN8yTx

• North Bridge Venture Partners, GigaOM PRO and over a dozen research partners completed the study The Future of Cloud Computing 2011. The study found 13% expressed high level of confidence in cloud computing for enterprise applications, with 40% experimenting and 10% saying they will never use cloud-based platforms as they are too risky. A presentation of the results can be found here:

The Future of Cloud Computing 2011

View more presentations from Martin Walsh

Source: http://futureofcloudcomputing.drupalgardens.com/2011-future-cloud-computing-survey-results

Ovum predicts that multinational corporations (MNCs) will see cloud computing grow to 61% by the calendar end of 2011. Source:http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2011/06/are-big-companies-actually-adopting-cloud-computing

• Springboard Research (Forrester) completed a study of cloud computing adoption in Asia finding 31% of companies with 50 or fewer PCs will adopt cloud-based applications in 18 months, 56% with up to 500 PCs.  The key findings are available for download from the source URL below the infographic.

                                     Microsoft Asia is making this available for download here: http://bit.ly/jWjOj1

• TechTarget published their analysis of virtualization and cloud computing adoption in the study, State of virtualization and cloud computing: 2011. Of the many findings, a few of the most significant is how pervasive VMware ESXi 4 and later (vSphere) is throughout enterprises today.  The study also shows that 7% of those interviewed had implemented cloud computing in 2010, growing to 9% in 2011 – quite conservative compared to many of the other adoption rate analyses completed.  You can find the results here:http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/feature/State-of-virtualization-and-cloud-computing-2011

• VMware and The Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) project UK cloud adoption being around 48% in 2011/12, growing significantly in the next three years due to anticipated SaaS adoption by SMBs.  Source: http://www.cloudindustryforum.org/uk-sme-cloud-adoption-set-to-increase-in-line-with-european-businesses opt in for the research:http://www.cloudindustryforum.org/register-your-details-to-download-our-white-papers

• Yankee Group has found that in 2011, 41 percent of very large enterprises (more than 10,000 employees) have already deployed or are considering deployment of platform as a service (PaaS) within the next 12 months, compared to just 32 percent in 2010. They have also found that mobility is most significant factor driving cloud adoption in the enterprise. Source:http://professional.wsj.com/article/TPCHWKNW0020110722e77q0004d.html\

Courtesy – Louis Columbus

An Outlook - Call Centre Software Market

The market for call centre software is only expanding. This because companies realize that keeping in constant contact with customers will help them enjoy a steady growth. According to the Everest Research Institute, the market for contact centre outsourcing has grown rapidly to a US$55 billion opportunity. And if a Frost and Sullivan research is to be believed, the call centre outsourcing market is set to reach $27.5 billion in 2013, up from $20.7 billion in 2006. Business Insight opines that Indian Agents Positioning is projected to rise over the next five years, from just fewer than 180,000 in 2004 to nearly 365,000 by 2009.

Having mentioned such wonderful projections, the contact center projects are also likely to feel the impact of recent “temporary” recession. On the other hand, contact center technology remains the best lever for extracting more value from employees and make better use of customer data.

The need for innovation remains, and attempts are constantly on to extend the reach of customer contact and to make it more and more affordable. Few reports suggests that while service has been a key differentiator for a number of companies, how the organization manages and maintains its customer relationships will be of even more important if an organization is to remain solvent and competitive. Hence continuous and sustainable innovation would be required from technology provider.

The idea is not only to drive sales but also to evolve a lasting customer relationship that works for a longer duration with better results. It starts from getting the right calls to evolving the appropriate responses that are required to meet the client’s needs. It would be imperative for call centre to

• improve customer satisfaction levels, thus enabling companies to increase lifetime customer value;
• increase revenue generation by providing business users with the customer information necessary to make relevant offers to each customer; and
• enable companies to cut costs through advancements in operational efficiency.

Contact center and communications technology vendors are well placed to assist organizations in building the customer-centric enterprise. Traditional contact center outsourcing markets are maturing in their adoption of these services. However, newer industries like retail, manufacturing, power, etc appear poised to engage these technologies like never before. According to few reports the largest single emerging vertical investor in outsourcing services through 2012 will be the travel and hospitality sector with next largest portion to be energies and utilities. Hence there might be temporary slower rate of growth however I do see the future promising, provided organization can bring value to its customer and its customer’s customer.

Cincom Acquire shortens and accelerates inquiry-to-cash cycle

Worldwide software provider Cincom Systems (www.cincom.com/manufacturing) announces the first release of its new selling and business acquisition software, Cincom Acquire^TM (www.cincom.com/acquire). The Cincom Acquire Solution Suite is the only end-to-end selling and business acquisition solution for companies that sell complex products and services. It is designed to fill the gaps in traditional CRM- and ERP-based systems strategies such as guided selling, channel and distributor collaboration, sales and product configuration, quotation and proposal management, project and bid management, and contract and order management.

Collaborating for Growth

Built on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server architecture, a leading enterprise collaboration platform, Cincom Acquire supports collaborative selling processes. Our customers’ product management, engineering and marketing divisions can now align information and strategies, and move that information closer to the sales cycle. All the applications and processes that Cincom Acquire delivers are accessible through well-known Microsoft desktop applications with which customers and end users are already familiar.

Cincom Acquire integrates with “out-of-the-box” Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It also easily integrates with other Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems.

Cincom Acquire’s core components have already assisted manufacturers selling complex engineer-to-order or configure-to-order products successfully streamline their sales, design, and proposal processes by delivering critical product and sales knowledge to the point of sale, while significantly reducing “quote to cash” time. Cincom has helped manufacturers reduce proposal generation time from five days to 15 minutes, decrease time to close a sale by 80 percent, and cut lead times from 14 weeks to six weeks.

Cincom Acquire is currently nominated for Microsoft’s Office Business Application of the Year.

Today’s announcement was made at Microsoft Convergence, Microsoft’s premier Microsoft Dynamics event. For more information about Cincom’s products and solutions for complex manufacturers, visit www.cincom.com/manufacturing.

Technorati Tags: Cincom,ERP,CRM,Microsoft,Sharepoint

Cincom Synchrony Awarded "Best of Show" at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO East 2008

Cincom Synchrony™ (www.cincom.com/synchrony) Won a "Best of Show" award at Technology Marketing Corporation's (TMC®) INTERNET TELEPHONY® Conference and EXPO East 2008, held at the Miami Beach Convention Center, January 23-25. Cincom received the "Best of Show" award in the Call Center 2.0 category for its Synchrony call center and customer experience management solution, which was also a recipient of TMC's 2007 Product of the Year award announced in January.

Cincom Synchrony is a unified agent desktop that helps deliver an exceptional customer experience and improve effectiveness in the contact center. Synchrony streamlines handle times and improves service levels by giving agents immediate access to all relevant customer information -- including underlying disparate applications. Inbound and outbound interaction management provides consistency across all touch points and enables comprehensive reporting and analytics for improved customer experience management.

The Best of Show awards are presented to companies unveiling the most impressive new products or new releases at the show. Each winner displayed and demonstrated their product on the INTERNET TELEPHONY EXPO show floor, and the namesake magazine will also feature the award recipients in its March 2008 issue.

Cincom Synchrony has earned numerous awards over the past few years including the prestigious 2007 Product of the Year Award and 2006 Editors Choice Award from Customer Interaction Solutions magazine.