Last year Gartner released numbers that pointed to the growth of cloud computing from 2011 to 2016, specifically, the growth of cloud computing by vertical industry.  According to Gartner, anticipated growth opportunities put these industries at the top when it comes to global IT spending, which includes cloud computing:

$84,074M – Banking & Securities

$70,683M – Communications, Media & Services

$63,589M – Manufacturing & Natural Resources

$34,611M – Insurance

$24,907M – Transportation

Healthcare did not make it to the top 5, but that vertical is at about $15,000M, just behind transportation.  However, healthcare as a whole is expected to jump up significantly in both cloud spending and IT spending.  The changing regulatory pressures will drive this trend, along with the opportunities to reduce costs in healthcare IT.

Although healthcare was once considered an industry that would not adopt cloud computing due to systemic security, legal, and privacy issues, that no longer seems …