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Gartner: Cloud Computing Is Highly Disruptive

Gartner analyst Jim Tully claims that cloud computing will soon emerge as a highly disruptive force in the technology sector. "Enterprises are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use, service-based models," or cloud computing, which he says will spark "dramatic growth in IT products in some areas" and "significant reductions in other areas."

In an interview with The New York Times, Tully elaborated on the points he made in a report on the subject. "On one level, this whole cloud thing is about shifting assets away from enterprises and to service providers," he said. This means strong growth for corporate services providers like Salesforce.com, as well Google, Amazon, IBM and others. Cloud services will enable companies to offer these services in a pattern similar to the way electricity was adopted in the early 1900s, Tully said.

"On that basis alone, the impact on overall IT spending would be neutral to negative," Tully said. "But all sorts of new uses and new companies may spring up on the back of the cloud phenomenon. And no one knows what those might be yet. There's a big unknown. We can't put a metric on it." But one thing's for sure: Software sales will decline markedly.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »

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