Cloud services to grow in popularity

Spending on hosted data management services is expected to increase at a rapid pace this year, analysts have claimed.

A market forecast by the International Data Corporation (IDC) says that the while global IT spending will post growth of six per cent in 2011, the total outlay for public cloud computing services will increase by five times that amount.

Stephen Minton, vice-president of worldwide IT markets at IDC, explained: "This will be a big year for the cloud … it will be a change in the way companies are doing their computing in the long term."

However, the expert added that not all companies will be completely sold on the idea of moving to the hosted management software. Concerns over the security of corporate data are expected to act as a barrier to adoption for some businesses.

Despite these worries, the expert suggested that the majority of organizations would see "real opportunity" in private cloud services and he predicted that businesses would increasingly look to move "to widespread usage of the public cloud".

Posted by Rachel Wheeler