Roundup of Insightful 2012 Cloud Predictions From the Experts
Hybrid cloud, SOA, Multi-tenancy, Private cloud, Public cloud, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS).
Will the cloud continute to gain momentum in 2012? How will the cloud help IT organizations meet the challenges of 2012? Can the cloud ensure access to applications and data from any device, across any network, at anytime and still mitigate risk, protect data, ensure privacy and meet compliance demand?
How much of today's IT services are destined for cloud computing delivery? Will this ultimately mean for IT a greater level of integration and intimacy with the business?
Regardless of the hype surronding cloud, it still remains an emerging technology and one implemented primarily by innovators and early adopters (see how infographics tell the story). While it can be said that 2012 is looking to be dynamic on all levels, here is a roundup of insights, expectations, and predictions for what 2012 may have in store for the cloud.
Have your own predictions for the cloud? See the cloud trend going another direction? Share your insights below
1. 2012 Is The Year The Cloud Becomes Mature (Forrester)
Predictions by: Holger Kisker, Ph.D.
Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Predictions in a nutshell:
- Multicloud becomes the norm
- The Wild West of cloud procurement is over
- Cloud commoditization is creeping up the stack
- Collaboration will emerge as a key business benefit for cloud computing
- We will see the next wave of SaaS solutions in PLM, BI, and SCM
- The cloud market will grow beyond $60 billion
- Private clouds will go beyond virtualization
- The first cloud brokers will emerge
- Large enterprises will take the lead in cloud markets
- The lines between cloud and on-premises licensing models are blurring
Opportunities: IT's new responsibility will be the flexible sourcing of business needs with internal and external IT resources. The future will be hybrid models of own and external cloud resources so there will be plenty of work for future IT. Cloud moves IT upwards in terms of business value for the enterprise. It's a big opportunity for CIOs and their teams.
Link: See the predictions
2. Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2012 and Beyond
Predictions by: Daryl Plummer
Managing Vice President, Gartner fellow
Predictions in a nutshell:
- By 2015, the prices for 80 percent of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge.
- By 2015, low-cost cloud services will cannibalize up to 15 percent of top outsourcing players' revenue.
- By 2016, at least 50 percent of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client instead of a desktop client.
- By 2016, 40 percent of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service.
- At year-end 2016, more than 50 percent of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud.
Concerns: The continued trends toward consumerization and cloud computing highlight the movement of certain former IT responsibilities into the hands of others.
Link: See the predictions
3. 451 Research Unveils Predictions for Enterprise IT in 2012
Predictions by: Simon Robinson
Research Director, 451 Research
Predictions in a nutshell:
- Enterprise cloud adoption moves from the playground to production
- Virtualization becomes mission-critical
- Cloud security questions linger
- Cloud drives agenda and consolidation in hosting
- Data, data everywhere – cloud to IT's rescue?
Opportunities: Economic concerns will weigh heavily on the minds of IT decision-makers this year, and will increasingly drive customers toward considering cloud-based approaches. Indeed, 2012 could be when the cloud comes of age, and for the first time will really begin to nip away at traditional IT deployment models in enterprise environments.
Link: See the predictions
4. 10 Cloud Predictions For 2012 (CRN)
Predictions by: Andrew R Hickey, CRN
Predictions in a nutshell:
- The Cloud Goes Social
- Mobile Marries Cloud
- Cloud Job Demand Grows
- The Rise Of Dark Clouds
- Welcome Next-Gen PaaS
- The Cloud Acquisition Train Keeps Rolling
- The Cloud Storage Revolution Will Be Televised
- Multi-Cloud Management Gains Importance
- Open Source Takes Hold In The Cloud
- Hybrid Cloud: The Best Of Both Worlds
Opportunities: Come 2012, the demand for cloud computing skills and cloud-focused personnel will continue. In preparation of the cloud job boom of 2012, many high profile vendors, like HP, launched cloud-specific certifications to recognized IT personnel up to snuff in the cloud.
Link: See the predictions
5. Top 12 Cloud Trends Of 2012 (InformationWeek)
Predictions by: Alistair Croll
Conference Chair, Cloud Connect and Partner, Bitcurrent
Predictions in a nutshell:
- The Move To Platforms
- The Move Out To Public Clouds
- The Advent Of Big Data
- Spikiness
- Consumer Expectations Come Back To Roost
- Here Comes One Really Messy Leak
- Disaster Recovery And Scaling Are The New Drivers
- An SLA Detente
- The Rise Of Real Brokerages.
- Inception, The Brain In The Vat, And Hardware.
- What Can't I Put In The Cloud?
- Infrastructure, Code, And Data Are Intertwined
Opportunities: 2012 will be a realization that virtual machines are simply a stepping stone to a world in which we write code rather than wrangle boxes. The best IT teams will be those that embrace private and public platforms as a service and worry about real issues such as lock-in, usage costs, and compliance atop such systems.
Link: See the predictions
6. Cloud predictions for enterprise IT in 2012 (SearchCloudComputing)
Predictions by: Jo Maitland
Senior Executive Editor, SearchCloudComputing, TechTarget
Predictions in a nutshell:
- On-premises email becomes archaic
- Expect more cloud security challenges
- Consumerization of IT and cloud converge
- IaaS wars: AWS vs. VMware vs. OpenStack
- Hybrid cloud gets real
- Private clouds create more headaches
- Cloud hype ends, disillusion begins
Concerns: The bring your own trend entering the workplace is changing the economics of IT by shifting IT assets from inside the data center, outside, to the cloud. Figuring out the total cost of ownership and management for these new modes of IT consumption will keep forward-looking CIOs on their toes in 2012.
Link: See the predictions
7. Five Cloud Predictions for 2012 (ZDNet)
Predictions by: Ken Hess
ZDNet
Predictions in a nutshell:
- The Future is Mobile
- The Clouds Will Open
- No One Size Fits All -(Hybrid model grows in popularity)
- Cloud Doesn't Have to be DIY - (Bigger role of managed cloud services)
- SaaS Options Fill Out
Concerns: Cloud security paranoia is bloated. That security paranoia is largely unfounded but just like connecting to the Internet back in the 90s, entering your credit card info into e-commerce sites or flying in planes versus driving in cars, perceptions change with time. Security is a major concern, but you shouldn't allow your business to be paralyzed by security fears.
Link: See the predictions
8. 10 Cloud Predictions for 2012 (APM Digest)
Predictions in a nutshell:
- 1. Cloud management comes to the forefront
- 2. The term “cloud management” will not disappear (yet)
- 3. APM will be built for the cloud
- 4. 2012: the year of the PaaS
- 5. Expansion of performance benchmarking
- 6. CMDB evolves to handle cloud
- 7. Monitoring transactions everywhere
- 8. Managing service levels across the globe
- 9. Cost monitoring becomes key to public cloud management
- 10. Mature virtual networking technology will not arrive in 2012
Opportunities: Expect benchmarking capabilities offered by the cloud to expand. With access to the cloud's real time data, this data can then be mined and analyzed at a detailed level, making performance management in the cloud precise and efficient for improving the business.
Link: See the predictions
9. 2012 Predictions, Cloud Edition (ReadWriteWeb)
Predictions by: Joe Brockmeier
Enterprise Audience Development Manager, ReadWriteWeb
Predictions in a nutshell:
- Patent Nastiness
- Storage Shortage
- It's the APIs, Stupid
- Acquisition Targets
Opportunities: It's not hard to predict that some companies in the cloud space will be picked up in 2012, but it's a little harder to guess which ones.
Link: See the predictions
10. 2012 Cloud Predictions - the real-time data shift and subsequent New Year hangover
Predictions by: Chris Mayer
JAXenter
Predictions in a nutshell:
- Microsoft moves into IaaS from PaaS
- Cloud operations will move towards real-time data
- The flood of real-time data will overwhelm everyone
- Hybrid cloud will become a real thing
- Marketing will continue to exceed the reality of the cloud.
Opportunities: Users really want to have data filtered and put into thresholds that help them make sense of volumes of information. This will introduce a whole new camp of startups and products focused on reducing noise and increasing meaning in the data.
Link: See the predictions
11. The Road Ahead: Cloud and IT Predictions For 2012 (Forbes)
Predictions by: Carl Eberling
CTO, Quest Software
Predictions in a nutshell:
- Google and Microsoft will strongly challenge Apple's lead in the IT mobile market.
- Microsoft will find traction for Office 365 in the small business community, but will see overall slow adoption.
- Software as a service growth will help drive wider adoption of cloud services.
- Cloud service providers must dispel key concerns over compliance, security and access management controls with better tools and practices, improved monitoring and solution certification.
- Microsoft Hyper-V will gain share and begin overcoming VMware's market dominance.
- Cloud usage will remain limited because of concerns about security, control and the maturity of the technology.
- IT organizations will change how they operate and computerize on-site security because of growing use of cloud-based applications and more smart phones and tablets.
- Employees will face increased monitoring of their social networking activities with adoption of more reporting solutions and granular controls, as most organizations are blind to the breadth and depth of social networking use, and abuse, within their employee base.
Concerns: Cloud service providers are dealing with the same challenges that exist in any data center, with one major difference – with today's portable workloads, we need to make sure portability doesn't allow that which previously was certified to become broken.
Link: See the predictions
