Data collection, analytics, online commerce among cloud’s ‘killer’ apps

A recent CNET article from author James Urquhart discussed several “killer” applications cloud computing offers its users, which included data collection, analytics, and online commerce and communities.

Urquhart believes 2010 provided the initial push for cloud computing as an effective managed IT service among businesses and consumers. However, 2011 will see the IT field truly figure out how to use the technology.

As many recent articles have discussed, the cloud offers its users the ability to process large sets of data, store that data and offer companies a pay-as-you-go model for pricing. The cloud also offers users real-time data to analyze trends in efficiency, accessibility and various other fields.

With online commerce and communities, which Urquhart believes most businesses or consumers think of when referring to “killer applications,” the cost of failure is low. Since the cloud offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, users have options for “building, hosting, scaling [their] concept” and if they indeed fail, companies won’t have sunk capital costs to absorb or offload. However, if companies do succeed, the cloud offers scalability to grow with the company as it does. Thus, the cost of paying for IT services is low and the associated risks of a startup are even lower.

The success of cloud computing is seen in recent reports, which estimate the technology’s public market revenue will reach $29.5 billion by 2014.