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We are at a tipping point where the cloud is no longer a destination, but an innovation platform. Once characterized just by the efficiencies gained, the cloud is now the catalyst for disruptive business transformation.
Cloud conversations have shifted to higher business value and accelerating new innovative business models and processes. This convergence, along with new entrants, is causing major disruptions across industries. Using the cloud, organizations can extract maximum value from their data and apps, use new sources of data, such as video and the Internet of Things (IoT), and take advantage of an open hybrid cloud to increase the speed of new innovations.
One of the biggest successes in this transformation has occurred in the area of application development. IBM alone now has more than 20,000 developers signing on every week on our cloud. Evans Data forecasts there will be more than 25 million cloud developers by 2020. And Gartner researchers estimate that more than 90% of new applications will be built for cloud delivery.
These trends, along with the adoption of hybrid clouds, are converging rapidly. Market research firm IDC says 80% of organizations are headed to hybrid models, which integrate any cloud or any existing system they might have on premise.
An open source renaissance has coincided with the rise of the cloud. Open source technologies and practices enable an army of geographically dispersed developers to learn common development techniques. Bringing together this broad base of talent working on a common goal significantly speeds development time and time to market.
As is common in the computer industry, major financial companies have been among the early adopters. Financial companies understand that technology advances can give them a crucial advantage in the fast-moving money markets, and they accept the risks of unsuccessful technologies in order to get the benefits of the winners.
By participating in open source, not only are businesses attracting the best talent, they are also gaining access to potentially millions of willing participants within an ecosystem who work together to solve complex software problems.
The cloud-enhanced benefits of open source accelerate the “fast path to the unicorn,” which is the notion that innovation can propel a company of any size to differentiate successfully.
Yet, more than 80% of US companies surveyed last year cited a shortage of software developers, primarily because there was a lack of qualified talent locally. Attracting developers from around the world who can build next-generation applications and services is important for any organization.
In addition, an open-cloud approach will enable companies to extract deeper insights from vast quantities of structured and unstructured data that they are capturing every day. An open environment can take advantage of the ability to integrate analytics into business processes in real time, allowing companies to be more agile.
The key to successfully using open source in organizations is to empower developers to build their own community and to give them the right tools to flourish.
– By Angel Diaz, PhD, Vice President of Cloud Technology and Architecture, IBM
Click here to learn more about how IBM is ushering in a new era of business.
This post is sponsored by IBM.
