News from the Cloud: SAP’s Cloud prospects brighten after executive changes

A monthly round-up of highlights from our sister site, BusinessCloud9.com.

NetSuite’s Nelson bullish despite continuing losses
5 Feb – With a net loss of $23.3m on revenues of $166.5m for the year to 31 December, 2009 was a tough year for Cloud ERP software provider NetSuite. While its revenues increased 9% on the previous year, the net loss increased by 47%. But things were even tougher for its main rivals, according to CEO Zach Nelson.

HR View: a Cloud-based workforce
4 Feb - Research group Gartner predicted that by 2012, 20% of firms will own no IT infrastructure whatsoever. To date, the debate about Cloud-computing has focused on the flexibility and financial benefits, but it is likely to have much wider implications for people management and HR strategy, the analyst said.

Debate over BI in the Cloud continues
3 Feb - Business intelligence (BI) software-as-a-service sales are expected to grow at 20%-plus - three times the rate of on premise equivalents - over the next few years, but industry analysts are arguing over how long such offerings will take to make a real market impact.

Obama looks to the Cloud to cut US national IT budget
2 Feb – President Barak Obama’s White House is turning to the Cloud to reduce its IT budget. For 2011, the Obama administration hopes to get by on an IT budget of $79.4bn,  a planned reduction of 1.6% that goes against the double digit increases in previous years.