What's next for cloud computing

Cloud computing

30th June| 6 mins

Key Takeaways

  • 70% of organisations using cloud plan to increase their cloud-spending in the wake of COVID-19*
  • 18% increase in spending projected in 2021 to $304.9bn, up from $257.5bn last year**
  • $1trillion in revenues for IoT by 2025***

As our lives become more digital, the need for remote access to the information that keeps business and communities moving is increasing exponentially, putting cloud computing front and centre of our everyday lives.

Pandemic accelerates cloud adoption

During the sharpest economic contraction in recent history, the cloud computing market demonstrated resilience, growing faster in 2020 than in 2019. The pandemic has led to huge business transformations with the cloud industry witnessing significant growth over 2020 and beyond. As hundreds of millions of us were asked to stay home, cloud computing was given the opportunity to prove itself, and it delivered: allowing us to not miss a beat, scaling in step with the world’s dramatic increased demand and helping millions of businesses seamlessly transition to a ‘new normal’.
The Cloud continues to tap into massive swathes of our economy and society, affecting how many of us use many of the fundamentals of everyday life. Everything from contact tracing to food delivery services, remote medicine, to working (and playing) from home has been revolutionised and improved by the Cloud.

Capabilities Beyond Storage

By now we are well aware of the power of the Cloud, it's reach is far beyond just storage capabilities. The Cloud can enable Enterprises and businesses to:

Build Applications – The ability to build and publish applications across various platforms without having to worry about internal server capabilities as the service grows, allowing for incredibly quick development and release of applications.

Deliver SaaS – Allowing users to access software they have a subscription to from any device with simply their log-in information, increasing the ability to work on multiple devices from virtually any location.

*Source: Gartner (November 2020)

**As above

***Source: Gartner (November 2019)

Data Security 

The strong focus on security from cloud providers helps keep you in business while working from home. It also allows users to transfer data securely while offering the option to back-up and restore data if any user-based technology fails them.

The largest providers in the cloud computing game are AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud, and IBM. While AWS was the first to really develop in this space and grab a large market share, all these providers have seen increases in usage due to the pandemic as remote working and video conferencing usage skyrocketed.

Future of the Cloud

Throughout 2021 and beyond, we expect to see cloud computing adoption accelerate as more businesses adapt their businesses to adopt cloud technology, and the delivery of data from the cloud to our devices becomes more integrated into our daily lives. The Cloud has become  arguably the most important trend in the software and information technology industry globally. 

We believe the growing relevance of the Cloud was merely accelerated by the global pandemic, and future growth of this phenomenon is underpinned by several factors.

To find out more download the First Trust Cloud Computing Outlook 2022!

Any references to specific companies should not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities in said companies, nor assumed to be profitable.

Download the Cloud Computing Outlook 2022


Cloud is the backbone of the data-driven, application-based technology ecosystem that has been a key growth area in the past two years.

During the sharpest economic contraction in recent history, the cloud computing market demonstrated resilience, growing
faster in 2020 than in 2019.

So can this growth continue, and if so, what are the key future drivers? 


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