Industry clouds give CIOs on-ramp to gen AI

Going vertical

While seemingly providing commoditized feature sets, industry clouds have been proving their business value in part by laying the foundation for innovation at companies across a range of industries. Going vertical with cloud solutions gives many companies advantages they would not have had otherwise, analysts say, including a quicker route to the cloud and purpose-built features that cater to their specific needs.

“For RBC, they’re utilizing key capabilities like client interaction, information and data management, and Slack alongside as a communication platform that facilitates collaboration and information sharing within RBC Wealth and externally with clients,” says David Mario Smith, founder and principal analyst of Inflow Analysis.

And, with access to features such as Einstein, CIOs choosing industry clouds may be able to accelerate innovation further.

Salesforce, which launched its first industry offering — Financial Services Cloud — in 2016, boasts 14 industry clouds and has “brought in thousands of industry experts” in support of its expansion efforts, says Jeff Amann, EVP and GM of Salesforce Industries, who co-founded industry cloud pioneer Vlocity, which Salesforce acquired in 2020.

The company, which generates roughly $5 billion in revenue from its industry cloud offerings, claims that 45% of its industry cloud customers are new to Salesforce, and it competes against the likes of Oracle, SAP, and ServiceNow across a growing range of verticals, along with hyperscalers AWS, Microsoft, and Google.

IDC analyst Nadia Ballard says enterprise software vendors such as Salesforce were the leading vertical cloud providers in 2022 but lost some share in 2023 to large cloud service providers, which have boosted their industry-specific offerings and financial incentives to existing cloud customers. SaaS vendors ended up in second place, with 41% of respondents to IDC’s Industry Cloud Path 2023 survey saying they use an industry cloud from an enterprise software vendor, Ballard says.