The Cloud as an experiment is over, according to Bill McNee, Founder and CEO of SaaS research specialists Saugatuck Technology. Speaking at SIIA’s “Maximize – Beyond the Cloud” conference in San Francisco this month he argued that technologies such as Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Apps, Mobile, social and advanced analytics are clearly now moving towards the mainstream and “we are now entering a period of massive growth.” 
The Cloud as an experiment is over, according to Bill McNee, Founder and CEO of SaaS research specialists Saugatuck Technology.
Speaking at SIIA’s “Maximize – Beyond the Cloud” conference in San Francisco this month he argued that technologies such as Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Apps, Mobile, social and advanced analytics are clearly now moving towards the mainstream and “we are now entering a period of massive growth.”
He presented new international research from Saugatuck showing that the rate of Cloud adoption by enterprises is accelerating: “more than 60% of enterprises we surveyed will have at least half of their infrastructure and apps in a Cloud by 2018, up from less than 30% in 2014,” according to McNee.
McNee went on to outline “three key megatrends” that he claimed would drive enterprise adoption through the balance of the decade as well as the opportunities that he believes these will create for ISVs.
The first he identified was the emergence of an “API (application programming interface) Economy” within which by 2015 “virtually all software vendors will become pseudo platform vendors as they accelerate the delivery of rich APIs to expose and consume external services/data.” He predicted that by 2017 “70% of new software solutions will be assembled and composed (extensively leveraging APIs), rather than being built using traditional methods.”
This will create a number of new opportunities for ISVs as users of software will need help integrating APIs, as well as connecting into those APIs to offer add-on services. IT organisations will also need help to use emerging API management and security services to make the API Economy workable. It will also create opportunities for Cloud providers and MSPs, with a range of new service requirements including infrastructure/middleware maintenance.
The second megatrend McNee identified is “The Internet of Things” (IoT) and he predicted a surge in innovation as device makers, app developers, solution providers and their ecosystems sort out the best opportunities for large/sustainable revenue. For many companies the IoT represents a market opportunity to gather new sources of relevant, high-quality information that they can use to run their businesses more efficiently, create new products, or sell new services.
In McNee’s view “through 2017, the most successful B2C and B2B sensor and wearable initiatives will be vertically focused, with a very tangible ROI. Opportunities for ISVs will stem from enabling a personal IT network environment that includes wearable, portable and sensor-driven devices and has huge implications for enterprise IT, Big Data and advanced analytics.
Finally he identified “Digital Business” as the third key megatrend arguing that “by 2017, medium and large enterprises will need to develop a formal Digital Business strategy – as success demands critical (and holistic) new thinking across many dimensions of the business.” The key thing here is for businesses to move beyond using the Cloud to deliver process improvement and cost savings to innovative and transformative uses of Cloud, mobile, social, advanced analytics and sensor technologies to create business advantage. Developing applications to support businesses create value and make this transition will again provide considerable opportunities for ISVs.
What the future holds beyond the Cloud will be a theme IT Europa will be returning to over the coming year and will be a focus for discussion at events such as the Managed Services and Hosting Summit 2014 (www.mshsummit.com )which IT Europa will be staging with Angel Events on 26 Sept at the Pullman St Pancras hotel and at the European ISV Convention 2015 next March (www.isvconvention.com )