The following post comes to us from Paul A. Ferrillo, counsel at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP specializing in complex securities and business litigation, and is based on an article authored by Mr. Ferrillo and Dave Burg and Aaron Philipp, both of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
There are four competing business propositions affecting most American businesses today. Think of them as four freight trains on different tracks headed for a four-way stop signal at fiber optic speed.
First, with a significant potential for cost savings, American business has adopted cloud computing as an efficient and effective way to manage countless bytes of data from remote locations at costs that would be unheard of if they were forced to store their data on hard servers. According to one report, “In September 2013, International Data Corporation predicted that, between 2013 and 2017, spending on pubic IT cloud computing will experience a compound annual growth of 23.5%.” [1] Another report noted, “By 2014, cloud computing is expected to become a $150 billion industry. And for good reason—whether users are on a desktop computer or mobile device, the cloud provides instant access to data anytime, anywhere there is an Internet connection.” [2]