Here at Silverstar Analytics we are massive advocates of cloud computing. With cloud computing, you eliminate headaches of hardware and software. The shared infrastructure means it works like a utility: You only pay for what you need, upgrades are automatic, and scaling up or down is easy. Read more on why cloud computing is a revolution for retailers here.

A insightful report on the state of cloud adoption in the Enterprise market has just been released by Verizon. The full slide deck can be found here. The key points are

• 65% of enterprises are using cloud computing today.
• 71% of those enterprises that are using cloud computing today are using it for production apps.
• 74% of those enterprises that are using cloud computing say it has given them a competitive advantage.
• Year-on-year growth of enterprise cloud spending is currently at 38%.
• 32% of enterprises said that business agility was their prime driver.
• 35% of enterprises believe in the benefits and cloud computing and are adopting aggressively.
• By 2017 71% of enterprises will be using cloud for external facing production apps.
• By 2017 73% of enterprises expect to put half their workloads in the cloud.