Welcome to the Cloud Industry
Technology companies are the catalyst for dramatic change across all industries and sectors. Their ground-breaking innovations alter businesses and business models, connect people with services, and require entire industries to reimagine their futures. However, they must tap into new markets while improving operational efficiency and managing risk while meeting customer expectations. In addition, they must continually foster creativity and quickly and efficiently flex to changing needs and economic environments in today’s rapid, unpredictable landscape.
The cloud continues to be a top strategic imperative for organizations globally, creating a heightened demand for cloud experts as organizations progress from adoption to maturity. Yet, learning in the cloud is fundamentally different from traditional upskilling and frequently requires developing more specialized expertise.
SaaS solutions are among the fastest-growing segments in the IT industry. Working on a subscription basis and centrally located on a remote cloud network, software-as-a-service (SaaS) models are becoming the go-to for many organizations for various reasons, including flexibility and affordability. Recently, the pandemic drove more remote work than ever, increasing the need for Software as a Service (SaaS)
Cloud Growth
Understanding this is key to our outbound efforts to create value-based relationships.
There is a reason new career categories deal solely with data collection, analysis, and processing: Big Data Scientist, Category Manager, Data Strategist, or expert in Artificial Intelligence.
Among cloud options, the outlook for SaaS is arguably the brightest. After all, the overall growth of the SaaS industry will remain consistent through these years as more companies adopt SaaS solutions for various business functions, extending far beyond the initial SaaS territories of core engineering and sales applications. Moreover, as the first cloud service to take off, SaaS significantly leads other cloud services. Gartner estimates that SaaS will continue to maintain this dominance for years.
For example:
- Salesforce alone grew from $161 billion in January 2020 to $251 billion in September 2021.
- Similarly, Shopify’s evaluation in early 2020 was $52.1 billion compared to more than $185 billion today—that’s 225% growth in 20 months!
- Notable industry giants that are missing from this list include Microsoft and Oracle. It’s important to realize, however, that a significant portion of their revenue comes from selling on-premises Software—so while they are giant tech companies, calling them SaaS providers is a misnomer.
However, this demand for subscription-based pricing models is spurring legacy companies to rapidly migrate their software solutions to a SaaS consumption model.
This means strong potential for the growth of SaaS products in the coming years as their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) matches that of the on-premise software deployment models. As a result, organizations dominating the enterprise software space—IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP—will likely maintain their market share for enterprise software products. In addition, many customers can use the same product capabilities with the feasible subscription-based pricing model.