The recession has in many ways been a catalyst for organisations to rethink and restructure not only their businesses but also the way in which they engage with customers, primarily because of the need to control or drive down costs. Cloud computing at least theoretically, has been available for many years but the recession has made many companies and IT departments rethink ways to lower costs. So the whole idea of cloud computing has matured and is now being adopted by more organisations.
Economic downturns can often act a catalyst to change in that people and organisations seek to reduce costs and this to a large extent has been fuelling the demand for cloud based services. In this sense, cloud computing is rather like outsourcing and hosting services which moves the responsibility and need for specialist resources to another, albeit specialist company.