An unplanned, widespread move to working from home would have brought businesses to a grinding halt had large investments in cloud computing not been made over the past ten years, said GlobalData, a leading UK-based data and analytics company with offices around the world. The company’s latest report, COVID-19 Impact on Cloud Services, reveals that the investment could now pay an unexpected dividend by transforming the way some businesses operate. Since mid-March of 2020, cloud-based services for remote workers have kept much of the world working, forcing organizations that were previously opposed to remote working to embrace the idea. GlobalData forecasts that the cloud services market will be worth $661 billion by 2024, having grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19% between 2019 and 2024.
David Bicknell, Principal Analyst in the Thematic Research Team at GlobalData, added: “The shift to remote working caused by the pandemic has left offices empty and pushed companies to rely on technology to keep their operations running. Cloud services’ suppliers have had to step up and bear the brunt of a transformed business landscape. The home-working genie is now out of the bottle. The rush to remote is now driving changes in the way businesses operate. Companies that would scarcely have considered the idea of their employees working from home, have now been forced to re-think their opposition and sanction the use of cloud-based tools like Slack and Zoom for collaboration.”
GlobalData’s Cloud Services ‘scorecard’ reveals that companies likely to enhance their position in cloud services over the next year include: hyperscale infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba and IBM; cloud-based collaboration and application providers; telecom operators providing cloud services; cloud connectivity partners; and co-location data centers. “The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted several examples of processes that can be digitized and virtualized. Google has told job seekers it will conduct all interviews virtually via Google Hangouts for the foreseeable future. Corporate video conferencing is enabling both legal and medical case discussions, while tele-medicine is being used to provide COVID-19 remote diagnosis and treatment. The necessary wider move to the cloud will now pose questions for organizations over their future consumption of IT resources. Some may already have concluded that if they can run virtually now, why can’t they do it permanently?”
UK-based GlobalData, with offices worldwide, is used by 4,000 of the world’s largest companies, including over 70% of FTSE 100 and 60% of Fortune 100 firms. Its data, expert analysis and solutions – including the healthcare, consumer, retail, financial, technology and professional services sectors – help corporate leaders make better business decisions that positively impact their business success.
COVID-19 has brought cloud services to the forefront: GlobalData report
