The pros and cons of cloud-based computing were explored at the Business Cloud Summit 09 in London on 2nd December. High profile speakers at the event included Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite and Martin Bellamy from Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, as well as speakers from Microsoft, Google and Oracle.

With a recent Gartner report estimating that worldwide cloud services revenues would increase by 21% in 2009 to exceed $56.3 million, cloud-based software is the fastest growing sector within the business applications market and is now a mainstream part of many organisation's IT strategies.
As Marc Benioff told delegates, "The real question is are you going to build for the future or the past? If you're building for the future, you need Cloud Computing."

Phil Brown, MD of Youmanage, commented, "When it comes to people management software, cloud-based services offer clear advantages for customers, not just in terms of cost savings, but also by virtue of its increased flexibility, ease of implementation and ubiquitous access. That's one reason why we're seeing such strong growth even during the economic downturn. Businesses need to work smarter and services such as Youmanage offer them the ability to do that while at the same time reducing costs."

For a summary of the content presented at the Business Cloud Summit 09 click here.