Will Cloud Lead to Use of Fewer Applications?

Could a widespread shift to cloud computing actually reduce the number of applications used by enterprises or consumers? In an enterprise context, at least, that might happen.

Over time, many companies’ IT landscapes have become cluttered with obsolete IT systems and applications that no longer deliver full value to the business, but still are used. In survey of IT executives conducted by Capgemini, 85 percent of respondents said their application portfolios were in need of rationalization.

A shift to cloud delivery would logically help solve those sorts of problems, as it would be easier to buy and use only the apps an enterprise really needs, today, instead of what those enterprises thought they needed in the past. Applications in a cloud environment

In principle, cloud-delivered apps for consumers might be created and managed in the same way, as it is relatively easy to update and change apps without lots of grief on the part of end users. Since latency can be a key issue for many cloud-delivered apps, there is an advantage for app providers that optimize cloud apps for latency performance, and that should often include stripping out bloat.