New study with an eye-opening finding

From Tata Consultancy Services comes a new study with an eye-opening finding: that the United States and Europe lag behind the rest of the world in cloud computing adoption. This is surprising because many of the companies that have been driving and leading the cloud computing phenomenon are US-based, just as Amazon Web Services, RackSpace, Microsoft, and Oracle — not to mention the countless vendors offering Software-as-a-Service options.

The cloud computing action taking place these days?

Where is most of the cloud computing action taking place these days?  Latin American companies are the most aggressive adopters of cloud computing, the study of 600 companies finds. The average large company in Latin America has nearly two fifths of its total applications in the cloud. Asia Pacific follows closely behind with over a quarter. Opposite, less than one fifth of the average US company's applications are hosted in the cloud. In Europe, the figure is closer to one tenth.

Customer-facing business functions are garnering the largest share of the cloud application budget, the TCS study as well finds. Marketing, sales and services capture anyway two-fifths of the budget across the four regions, with companies citing the desire to get closer to clients through cloud marketing applications as one example.

What is driving cloud computing among the current corporate adopters?  Speed and agility — not cost-cutting top the list. In the US and Asia-Pacific, companies cited the standardization of software applications and business processes as the main driver for shifting on-premise applications to the cloud. In Europe and Latin-America, the ability to ramp systems up or down faster was the motivation.

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hmmm… i wonder why? perhaps it’s privacy. people are starting to get smart about the internet. especially with google’s privacy tactics. they are worse than facebook.

I am an author and independent researcher, covering technology, information innovation trends and markets. I as well can be found speaking at business IT, cloud and SOA industry events and Webcasts. In recent years, I had the possibility to keynote the International SOA and Cloud Symposium in Amsterdam, and SOA Congress in Germany. I am as well one of 17 co-authors of the SOA Manifesto, which outlines the values and guiding principles of service orientation in business and IT. Much of my innovation work is in conjunction with Unisphere Research/ Information Today, Inc. for user groups including SHARE, Oracle Applications Users Group, Independent Oracle Users Group and International DB2 Users Group. I am as well contributor editor to CBS interactive, authoring the ZDNet "Service Oriented" site, and CBS interactive's SmartPlanet "Business Brains" site. In a previous life, I served as communications and research director of the Administrative Management Society, an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields. I am a graduate of Temple University.