Research company Gartner has predicted that the global cloud services market could be worth more than €76bn (US$100bn) annually worldwide by 2014. Against the backdrop of this prediction, one Irish entrepreneur in the cloud computing space, Eamon Moore, believes the emerging area of cloud services will offer “limitless” business growth potential for start-ups. He also said he is hoping to expand the headcount at his new start-up Cloud Compare to 12 employees.
Moore was speaking at a breakfast briefing at the Irish Management Institute (IMI) in Dublin this morning to coincide with the launch of Cloud Compare.
Pointing to the aforementioned Gartner report, Moore alluded to his start-up, which he described as a cloud services brokerage with strong ambitions to capitalise on the global cloud services market.
Based on his own industry experience, he said that a key element of tapping into this market is a greater understanding and awareness of what cloud is and how it can help business, commerce and the Irish economy as a whole.
“Far too often, organisations and businesses are encouraged to switch to cloud services for the wrong reasons,” he said. “Cloud is about more than technology, it’s about business opportunities.”
Moore said that, once he saw the market opportunity in creating a firm that could advise clients on how the cloud could help their businesses in what he described as a “jargon-free way”, he decided to embark on the IMI diploma in cloud strategy.
“And with the support of Enterprise Ireland, Cloud Compare is the result,” he explained. “Our immediate ambitions now include expanding our staff to 12 and aggressive market growth.”
Other self-starters in the cloud space
The IMI briefing also included talks from from Barry Murphy of Sendmode and Shay Moran of ACTcloud.
Murphy described how his company is expanding the notion of SMS marketing from just messaging to targeted customer engagement, tracking mobile marketing campaigns and real development of customer relationships.
The cloud-based engine room behind this, said Murphy, essentially allows Sendmode to do more business with existing resources.
Shay Moran said his company ACT used the cloud to evolve into its next phase of development, with the start-up having carved out a niche in the access control market. ACTcloud and its visitor management product was the result.
Moran said that he shifted his business’ strategic focus from access control to visitor control, tracking visitor movements and automating the reception and notification stages of visitor management.
The IMI breakfast briefing took place at the IMI on Sandyford Road, Dublin 16.
