Enterprise Cloud FEATURED ARTICLE

According to an article by Mary-Lynn Cesar at SeekingAlpha, there are a number of cloud market conditions that are lining up and could end up creating a climate of rapid mergers and acquisitions. The growing market figures as well as the expenditures set the framework of presence of major corporations. As evidenced by the massive profits reported by companies like Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) (AWS), Google, and Microsoft, the race to win the profits of commodity cloud is fierce. Providers are joined by manufacturers of massive network systems, massive storage, and software designed for cloud environments. More than just big business, the cloud is a big opportunity, and businesses have gravitated to these constructs and services to enable their companies and workforces with savings, insight, and mobility.

The state of the market also has a number of young, hungry companies that have produced new ways of looking at cloud capabilities. A flood of investment money has helped vault companies into the spotlight, but in many ways, the companies have not realized the valuation that might be expected given all the market momentum. Already, 2016 has seen a tech stocks plummet more than a half of a trillion dollars to kick off the year. Corrections are useful in separating the contenders from the pretenders, and there are companies that will endure this. Finally, the nature of these smaller companies is to be nimble, efficient, and to utilize a different way of doing things. This mix of conditions may indeed be ripe for rapid shopping, where big companies add to their portfolios thanks to the opportunity of the market prices and the desire to supplement their own value proposition.

The good news is regardless of what the pricing fluctuations may produce, the cloud is here to stay. Innovation will continue, regardless of what name is on or in the cloud itself. There are countless uses for cloud services that benefit the enterprise and produce meaningful results, and it is clear that the cloud adoption path is irreversible. It’s only a matter of who the checks get cut to.