The time is now for cloud computing, says IDC

While delivering his keynote address to a large audience at the IDC Directions conference in San Jose, California, the company's senior vice president and chief analyst Frank Gens stated the technology world is at another crossroads.

Twenty-five years ago, PCs and desktop computers began their integration into daily business and home office life, leaving many to debate the risks and benefits of adopting such systems. While hindsight has rendered this debate comical, Gens stated that the same crossroads is upon the technology world, this time involving cloud computing.

"IT companies looked at what was happening, made some strategic decisions and chose a direction. As you can imagine, some of them gauged what was happening correctly, and some did not. Now, 25 years later, we're again at a crossroads, and taking the correct path is as crucial now as it was then," said Gens.

Gens stated that companies must soon embrace the cloud as a managed IT service, as the technology's market develops and expands to include mobile devices and other new technologies.

As a recent eWeek article sums this crossroads up, "in 2011, it's either the cloud way or the highway."

The cloud's success has led many research firms to predict big things for the market in the upcoming years. IDC estimates the public cloud market will reach $29.5 billion by 2015.