Non-IT companies to enter cloud service fray

The cloud computing arena will get increasingly crowded as Gartner analyst predicts 20 percent of non-IT Global 500 will externalize their business processes and monetize them as software-as-a-service by 2015.

SINGAPORE--As companies enhance their business processes and, over time, become specialists in specific niches, they will repackage these processes into software-as-a-service offerings to their competitors and become cloud service providers, an analyst said.

Brian Prentice, innovation vice president at Gartner, said that regardless of the verticals they are in, non-IT Global 500 companies that have an "interesting" business process would be able to monetize it by making available the service through cloud computing, exactly through SaaS.

"Earlier, I would ask these companies that want to monetize their business processes if they are ready to become a software company, and many would say 'no'. Today, with cloud computing, these companies can sell interesting business processes via the cloud without having to dilute their core competencies," the analyst noted.

During his presentation, Rosell-Jones likened the cloud computing arena but to the car industry of Detroit in the 1970s. Automobiles at that time were churned out in mass volumes, similar to today's SaaS- or infrastructure-as-a-service-based offerings.

Web sales from social engagementsPrentice as well observed that social media and mobile computing trends will play an increasing role in spurring companies' Web sales. He predicted that about 50 percent of companies' Internet-based income will be generated by their social presence and mobile apps by 2015.

Prentice added the "advent of social bots" is emerging as an outlet to drive consumer engagement and provide value-add in business-to-consumer relationships.

Social bots, he explained, are simply automated ways of "crawling" information on the Web and social networking sites just as Twitter for commonalities among Internet users. By making sense of these patterns, companies can better understand what their target customer base's needs and wants are.

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