The market for cloud services amongst SMEs in Poland should reach zł.2.4 billion by 2015 Shutterstock

Cloud computing, to put it simply, is a service that provides customers a virtual space for bandwidth or storage. It can have many uses, like running software, or routing internet traffic, or even hosting whole websites on outside servers called "clouds." And since data and traffic consumption is increasing rapidly, some companies might choose to outsource their web services instead of upgrading their infrastructure.
In a study conducted by Parallels, the market for cloud services amongst small and medium-sized businesses in Poland was worth zł1.15 billion in the spring of 2012. Over the next three years it should reach zł.2.4 billion, with 67 percent of companies planning to outsource their IT tasks.
In 2013, the global cloud computing market will be worth $150 billion, and in 2014, 60 percent of internet traffic will be routed through virtual clouds, according to technology research firm Gartner.
Meanwhile, the European Commission forecasts that from now till 2020, 2.5 million new jobs will be created in the cloud computing sector.

Head in the clouds

When Oktawave, a Polish cloud service, offered a free trial service in spring of last year, nearly 1,500 companies signed up. On the first day of commercial use, back in November of 2012, 10 percent of them switched to a paid model. The company's CEO, Maciej Kuźniar, however, won't reveal official data on earnings.
"They're not impressive right now, but we plan on being profitable in Q3/Q4 of 2013," he told Gazeta Wyborcza. That's when the company wants to expand to other countries, and their priority markets are Germany, France, Spain and the Czech Republic.
Oktawave claims speed amongst its biggest advantages. Octawave's internal tests showed that its product is twice as fast as that of most major companies. The company sees its location as an advantage as well - all of the firm's servers are located in Poland, so all the data will be stored and regulated according to Polish and EU law.
So far, the project has cost zł.4.5 million, with zł.800,000 coming from EU funds. The global leaders in cloud computing are Amazon, Microsoft and Rackspace.

Jacek Ciesnowski