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As we close the books on 2015, tech industry watchers are opening a new chapter full of exciting predictions for the future. Cloud computing is helping organizations big and small meet their business objectives now more than ever, especially in emerging markets. Additionally, IT shops will have more than half of their operations hosted in the cloud by the end of 2016.

Data from IDG Enterprise indicates that 56% of a company’s IT environment will be hosted in the cloud by the end of next year (up from 44% today). 8% of the 962 IT decision makers interviewed for the study said their entire IT environment was in the cloud. Companies use a mix of public, private and hybrid cloud services, with the private model being mostly preferred by enterprises. Now, here’s what we think sounds particularly interesting, not just for hot shot enterprises but for medium-sized players as well.

Emerging markets ideally placed for cloud investments

A global annual report by Odin which identifies trends in the industry notes that cloud apps and services are on a clear ascension path as more and more businesses find ways to capitalize on SaaS, IaaS and PaaS, speeding up their operations, reaching markets faster, and reducing costs typically associated with in-house IT. Many are still clinging to their on-premises tools, but an increasing number of businesses are also courageously parting ways with legacy solutions.

The reason? Jacek Murawski, VP EMEA at Odin, indicated that players in emerging markets are “ideally placed” to take advantage of the cloud’s scalability and flexibility, because they can now afford to skip building an IT infrastructure in-house altogether, bypassing traditional concerns associated with capital expenditure costs. All they do is focus on harnessing the benefits of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

Cloud allows small businesses with a vision to leapfrog competitors that have been slower both in vision and in execution. The data shows that this pattern is most visible in mobile communications and mobile business applications. Other findings from the Odin report include:

• IaaS has the biggest market share globally, accounting for $37.8 billion and is expected to be worth $56.2 billion by 2018
• Business applications (SaaS) are projected to achieve a high compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next three years (25.9% per year) from a current value of $24.2 billion
• Unified Communications, sitting at $19.4 billion are expected to grow up to $29 billion

Decision makers’ biggest fear is just a myth

The growth and increasing availability of cloud will play a central role in reshaping the global IT landscape in the next three years. The biggest challenge, industry watchers say, remains security and control. However, more and more security experts are going on record calling this – and many other cloud concerns – a myth. Compared to a typical company’s IT department, cloud providers have far greater expertise and more technical resources to counter cyber attacks.

The economies of scale often make cloud security tougher than in-house solutions used by individual IT departments. The argument that cloud infrastructures are somehow inherently insecure fails to cover things like organization size, existing in-house expertise, what your competition is, need to scale, and other variables that go into making the decision to deploy cloud services. Plus, APIs can now tailor applications to the specifics of any environment.

With security fears decreasing and cloud adoption showing no signs of stopping, analyst projections about the state of cloud computing moving into 2016 are not only plausible, but maybe even conservatory. We’re looking forward to what the New Year will bring for the cloud.