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Technology almost evolves by itself these days. Wherever you look, the systems currently in use are being obsoleted by a last-minute invention.

Cloud computing is probably the best example of this. It’s the very definition of “larger than the sum of all parts” and it is growing alarmingly fast, as new features get added every day, new scenarios emerge, and whole terabytes of data get sucked into clouds everywhere every second. Service providers stand to gain immensely, but only if they play their cards right.

A huge market opportunity

Infoholic Research has some numbers to support this. It reported recently that the Cloud Infrastructure Market will be worth $207 billion by 2020. The US is the biggest driver by territory and manufacturing is the biggest driver by usage, being responsible alone for $72.84 billion by 2020 at a CAGR of 13.7% for the forecast time-frame 2015-2020.

Next in line are Latin America, Western Europe, Central Eastern Europe (CEE), Middle East & Africa and Asia-Pacific. As for the other industries supporting this growth, Infoholic says banking & financial services are also very big investors in the field. So what exactly is causing cloud computing to balloon like this? Best they can figure, analysts have their sights set on Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

“The ever-changing innovation environment in the internet of things (IoT) market gives a lot of scope to start-ups to offer new devices and services to its customers, which in turn helps in the growth of the cloud infrastructure market as the majority of these start-ups will use cloud services as it is cost effective and start-ups get access to the latest technology,” said Pavan Mudholkar, senior analyst.

Go all in or don’t go in at all

But there’s a problem. While cloud adoption is certainly on the rise, many institutions are doing it for all the wrong reasons, In a post for Cloudave.com, cloud expert Randy Bias appropriately points out that enterprises today have their minds set on slashing costs left and right, and they’re migrating some of their operations to the cloud to achieve that. However, instead of warming up to all that the cloud has to offer, they’re only cherry picking features.

According to Bias, if you’re “only” trying to get a cheaper Vmware, reduce your datacenter costs, doi private cloud first and public cloud later, have teams engaging in CYA and stalling tactics, get “more automation” for second platform applications, or consider “third platform” a tiny fraction of your application needs, you’re doing it very wrong.

The key to a successful approach to the cloud is to get your executive team on board, educate and instigate them, and go all in to give yourself a competitive advantage, not to save a few bucks. Innovation doesn’t come from cutting costs.