Cloud computing is a growing part of business today, with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) seeing tremendous growth. At a recent webinar presented by SmartBooks CEO Calvin Wilder and ComputerSupport.com’s Kirill Bensonoff titled, 2014 Cloud Trends Every CFO Needs to Know, Chief Financial Officers across the country learned essential facts about cloud computing today.

Cloud Marketplace Valuation

As of 2014, IaaS is the leader in growth in the marketplace, having jumped 45 percent between 2012 and 2013. Both IaaS and SaaS are multi-billion-dollar businesses, with SaaS having been used by 63 percent of companies in 2013. By 2016, SaaS is expected to be a $30 billion business.

Salesforce.com, Google, and Microsoft are leaders in SaaS, with all three cloud services being used by many businesses today. As 2014 begins, however, there are a few emerging cloud players, including Desktop as a Service (DaaS), which experts predict will become a serious player in the industry this year. Other emerging cloud players include file-sharing service Egnyte, virtual datacenter DinCloud, Java PaaS company CloudBees, and sign-on service OneLogin. For the financial sector, a debate is ongoing as to whether SaaS is better than Terminal Server. NetSuite and QuickBooks are both popular SaaS services, leaving each business to determine which service works best for them.

Pricing Trends

Amazon Web Services, a leader in IaaS, is driving price changes throughout the industry. From 2006 to 2014, AWS has cut its prices more than 30 times, with 2013 bringing an 80 percent price drop in some instances. To remain competitive, Microsoft Azure and Google both cut pricing–a move that benefits the consumer market tremendously.

So how can your business take advantage of these price drops? One way is to realize it isn’t all about the price. Businesses must look at which company offers the best Service Level Agreement (SLA), what the SLA covers, and whether or not the SLA has “teeth.” Minimal downtime should be a top priority for businesses, with businesses looking at the history of any service to determine which service will be the most dependable.