How the Cloud Is Changing the IT Business Climate

At this juncture, it's pretty clear that cloud computing will become a mainstream means of delivering IT services. Less clear is how much of the cloud is going to manifest itself in the form of public cloud services versus private cloud deployment. In advance of the Ingram Micro Cloud Summit 2016 conference, IDC and Ingram Micro are sharing research results that suggest that in the next 24 months some form of cloud computing will account for 43 percent of IT spending. In fact, IDC forecasts explosive growth in "greater cloud" spending—encompassing everything from the core platform to IT services—in the next several years. Just as interestingly, IDC also notes that 50 percent of the workload in the cloud represents use cases for IT that were not available in the client/server era. But perhaps most challenging of all for solution providers across the channel, the report also notes that nearly two-thirds of IT organizations now engage a sales representative after they have already made up their mind about a purchase. Channel Insider looks at key findings from the research.