IT pros should focus on largest public cloud providers

The cloud has seen massive rates of adoption among IT professionals this year, and it will spread even deeper into entrenched industries over the next 16 months, according to a new report from Forrester Research. Despite ongoing consolidation, the research firm reports that the cloud vendor landscape is too crowded and IT professionals should increasingly hedge their bets on major public cloud providers such as Amazon, IBM and Microsoft.

CIOs and IT leaders should be wary of small, specialized players due to their narrow focus and the increased risks these companies carry around longevity and security, Forrester reports. The market research firm predicts there will be a significant decline in the number of players providing infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud services and management software by the end of 2016.

While Google is making headway in the enterprise space with ongoing developments in its Google for Work suite of applications, Forrester doesn’t place the company in the upper echelon of today’s leading cloud vendors. “Despite excellent technology and scale, Google will only begin to develop momentum in large-enterprise business in 2016,” the report’s authors write.

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