10. Findings
There is no arguing that “cloud computing” is gaining a
great deal of momentum. Worldwide, cloud services revenue
is forecast to reach $68.3 billion in 2010, a 16.6% increase
from 2009 revenue of $58.6 billion, according to analyst firm
Gartner Inc. So what does this mean to the accounting
profession? What are the benefits and risks? Who are the
vendors in the proverbial sky, and how do you know you can
trust them with your data—or your clients’ data, for that
matter cloud computing enables the sharing of it resources,
making the total cost of a service variable with use (pay as
you go). This enables it cost to be funded as an expense
rather than as an investment. Jiaqiduan et al in
proceedings of the 2012-13 courses on advanced resource
planning summarized the benefits and drawbacks of
cloud-based versus traditional systems as detailed in the
table 1 below