According to a study published by Goldman Sachs, spending on cloud computing infrastructure and platforms will grow at 30 per cent CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) from 2013 to 2018 compared with 5 per cent growth for overall enterprise IT.
Forrester also says that global SaaS software revenues are forecasted to reach $106 billion in 2016, which represents an increase of 21 per cent over projected 2015 spending levels. Therefore, this is clearly a lucrative market for investors to back with either fixed odds or spread betting (what is spread betting explained).
To ensure you don’t miss this moneymaking opportunity, here is a look at the companies spearheading cloud computing growth in 2016, which could all be worth a financial punt.
Zendesk
With clients such as Shopify and Groupon, it is clear that Zendesk requires your utmost attention. On top of that, it was one of the highest performing cloud computing stocks of 2014 when measured by share price gains, up a whopping 82.95 per cent.
Zendesk has enjoyed impressive success over the past couple of years thanks to its customer-centric product, which provides companies with an elegant self-service support system that drives engagement and helps build strong relationships. These days, more and more online users exclusively buy from the brands and businesses they trust implicitly, which can only come about from reliable two-way communication.
CoreOS
In a blog post on InfoWorld, David Linthicum believes that alongside training and certification, the continued rise of cloudops and the ongoing explosion of containers will be the biggest cloud trends of 2016. Therefore, start-up CoreOS could be set to enjoy an extremely prosperous year.
In the words of Colm Keegan, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), “they have created, in effect, an operating system for managing containers that integrates security and management features that aren’t available with Docker [operating system-level virtualisation software].”
Qualys
Yet another firm that had one of the highest performing cloud computing stocks of 2014, Qualys could well repeat this success over the next 12 months too, as its network security, asset discovery, and compliance monitoring product features are becoming increasingly important for numerous businesses.
Recently, Zacks Investment Research upgraded Qualys from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating, which could be an indication that a number of investors are ready to make a move.
Velostrata
While it would be foolish to disregard big names such as Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Microsoft, investors could benefit from greater returns with relatively new companies instead, such as Velostrata. Having recently come out of stealth mode, this data-driven start-up isn’t very well known but could well improve and enhance cloud functionality for several businesses.
“One of the concerns that you hear regularly is that if you push data into the cloud, it will be hard to get it back, and potentially costly,” says Keegan. But Velostrata has developed a tool that analyses lost data and helps transfer it to public cloud environments like AWS and Google Cloud Platform.
