Cloud computing helpful for retail industry

A recent article from Silicon India discussed how cloud computing has several benefits for the global retail industry. 

Retailers continue to search for more effective methods for their day-to-day responsibilities and look for better ways to reduce cost. As it stands, retailers typically deal with many applications and overlapping IT functions, so when they enter new markets segments, the cost of keeping up with these applications also rises. Thus, as the report states, subscribing to a managed IT service, such as cloud computing, can be beneficial and cost-effective.

With a cloud computing structure in place, retailers no longer have to sustain the complexity of managing several individual systems over the tens of thousands of computers they might already have in place. In addition to network management, cloud computing servers can also provide analytical results to retailers, which identify trends among seasons, brands, categories and more.

Overall, the cloud has plenty to offer retail stores, as it does many other businesses and sectors. This fact has led global market intelligence firm IDC to estimate the cloud's market will be worth $2.4 billion by 2015.