The market for cloud technology and integrated services is currently
transforming from the hype cycle to testing, piloting, and implementation by
larger enterprises. Given the potential for significant cost savings, smaller
and medium sized organizations are also becoming early adopters of this
technology. The emerging market for cloud services is being driven by the
economic downturn in North America, continuing globalization, government
edicts, consumer acceptance of technology, and the growth of the extended
enterprise. Cloud technology enables organizations to limit the large capital
expenditures previously associated with costly data centers and applications
and transform these costs into operating expenses paying for technology
resources only as needed. In addition, using the cloud enables end users to
accelerate time to market since it uses pre-existing virtu... (more)