Cloud Adoption Fueling Enterprise Software Industry Growth

Cloud computing has enabled businesses in several industries to increase productivity and reduce costs, but it's also impacting the ways enterprises deploy software and developers create programs.

Global Industry Analysts, a publisher of off-the-shelf market research, recently released a worldwide study regarding the enterprise software industry. According to the report, the global business software market will ascend to $384.8 billion by 2015, largely due to the emergence of cloud computing.

"Cloud technology is an emerging paradigm computing concept that enables both information technology infrastructure and software to be delivered directly over the Internet as a service," the research firm said in a press release announcing the study. "Epitomizing 'frictionless' self-service transactions, the cloud delivery models have irreversibly changed how software is developed, distributed and consumed."

Companies of all sizes and cloud vendors are positioned to benefit from the rise of cloud-based software and infrastructure, the source said. For enterprises, migrating critical software like customer relationship management and business intelligence will enable them to improve flexibility and reduce licencing fees, while making it easier for vendors to scale services based on the number of users.

According to the study, cloud providers who offer Software-as-a-Service products will be poised to experience immense growth during the next few years, as SaaS adoption is expected to skyrocket among businesses. Implementing the SaaS model allows companies to access hosted applications in a cloud environment. Enterprise resource planning, accounting, human resource management and CRM are among the most popular programs businesses are deploying in the cloud, experts say.

Increased adoption of cloud-based software is one of many reasons why the overall cloud market is rapidly expanding and experts predict it will continue to surge. According to a recent Strategy Analytics report, the global cloud market will ascend from $31 billion in 2011 to $82 billion by 2016.