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What are your cloud predictions for 2012?
Just finished reading James Staten's Top 10 Cloud Predictions for 2012 over at his Forrester Research blog. I'm not sure I quite agree with all of his predictions, but he does offer some interesting perspectives nonetheless.
So with 2012 just around the corner, what are your predictions for one of our most beloved topics here on Focus - cloud computing?
Will it be a year of explosive growth, or are we still hesitant to dip our toe into the cloud pool? Will major players emerge to take on Amazon, or will Werner Vogels and his team continue on their path to world dominance? Will we finally have a definition for cloud computing that at least TWO people can agree upon? Will 2012 be a year of outages, or will we finally enjoy a year where we can focus on how to leverage the benefits of the cloud? Who will take the lead in managing the cloud? Are we finally going to put data in the cloud instead of just talking about it? And what about that security thing... is it time to get over it?
Predictions anyone...? Don't be bashful... :)
Best Answer
- Recommended by:
- Lauren Buchsbaum
With mobile technology and the proliferation of smartphones and tablet PCs, most of us already rely on cloud services and applications without thinking of them as such. I now do nearly all my personal and business banking transactions online and curse when I have to cut a paper check and make out an envelope to pay a bill (sorry USPS - love ya, but ...) My sales and marketing team runs on Salesforce.com, Mail Chimp, Jigsaw, and all the top social sites - aided by other cloud apps that interface between them! Our timekeeping system is in the cloud (which, ironically, could not synch with the Quickbooks cloud app, so we were forced to keep QB on our network.) Our new website will be hosted by a cloud service, incorporating content from our Wordpress Blog, which already is ... We interface with all of these applications seamlessly, with never a thought to the notion, "Oh, look, I'm entering the cloud!"
Having said that, most of our real nuts and bolts business applications - Microsoft Office and the programming and graphic development tools we use - still reside on our individual PCs. And they will stay that way until such a time that we are convinced we can achieve get equal or better productivity at an equivalent or lower cost.
My common sense prediction is that cloud services that can prove they have reached that tipping point - reliably offering business-critical functionality that offers more productivity for less money than current-state spend - will continue to gain a foothold, especially among consumers and small to mid-sized businesses and organizations.
I'm really glad you mentioned mobile technology, Chris, as I noticed that wasn't something mentioned in the article that Robert had linked to. Thanks for also bringing up some real examples of how your company uses cloud and SaaS platforms -- I always love to learn about actual application of these technologies.
- Recommended by:
- JP Morgenthal
There are too many perspectives to cover everything "Cloud" in this post. But there are some high level observations that come to mind ..
1. There will be outages and security breaches in Public cloud providers. I think that is a no-brainer. How that will affect the overall market for public cloud services remains to be seen. Lemmings come to mind.
2. In the aggregate, there will be more data put in public clouds. Whether that is from large backups or small increments like millions of mobile phone pictures,or email, or online services like Office 365, the total amount of Public cloud data will grow substantially.
3. Private Cloud computing adoption will accelerate dramatically. The cloud architecture has many benefits and those benefits will be brought inside the corporate firewall for more control and security.
4. The price point for adopting Private Cloud will drop substantially. People will be able to buy self-healing, self-service private clouds that run 20 virtual servers on commodity hardware for under $5,000.00. Moore's law will kick in hard here.
5. The word "Cloud" will actually be used more in 2012 than 2011 - hard to believe, I know. Large companies seem to be in a shouting match of who can say "cloud" the loudest and the most times in a given day and that will only increase. Don't laugh when you see a cloud offer on a cereal box or a household appliance.
6. The computing industry will demand that some governing body create a cloud taxonomy that everyone can use. Today, the word "cloud" is a perfect example of "the tower of babble" and even the industry will get sick of it and demand more specificity around key terms. The groups efforts will have minimal success.
I have a lot more, but those are the highlights ...
- Recommended by:
- JP Morgenthal
Robert, glad you brought up this question. 2012 is going to be one of the most eruptive years in Cloud Computing. Not just for the typical cloud migration, infrastructure as a service, private/hybrid and app as a service considerations.
The major explosion is in Big Data and Cloud Analytics (combined with mobile/smart device access) which is going to change the landscape of data enormously. We have been laying the foundation with different databases (NoSQL) and analytics across truly distributed nodes and accepting new players in the open source community. The amount of data (Big Data) we are going to be able to access and analyze is many folds over anything we have seen to date and with new unstructured paradigms, our ability to look at new data sources without requiring schema in real time is going to change the landscape massively. We are already seeing and will be seeing major acquisitions in the area of Big Data Analytics and predictive analytics. The funding of these new startups is shooting up massively in Series A and B VC funding and more importantly, enterprises are accepting new Big Data Analytics paradigms moreso now than every before. This trend has been rapidly evolving and we will be seeing much more in 2012 and beyond. My blogpost tomorrow at www.LindaBernardi.com tomorrow shares a few of these thoughts and the discussion of course continues. I would love to see more predictions of course, as finally cloud is enabling major innovation!
Cloud is here & is rampant, across B2C and B2B experience. My engagement & experience on various client projects, have clearly seen rapid redesign & development of their architecture around Cloud adoption, from their traditional IT deployment models.
The model of Cloud, private, public, Hybrid is a debate, something will continue for years on, however CLOUD as a bare concept is well entrenched within the corporate & in my experience the CxO are being evaluated on what they did on the CLOUD to bring efficiencies, cost-reduction, operational enhancements et. al.
- Recommended by:
- Alan Dash
My predictions for cloud can be found in this link – but you’ll need to have a sense of adventure and a sense of humor (http://www.docstoc.com/docs/100648617/The-Future-of-Cloud-Computing). My guess is that someone in government is going to put a critical function “in the cloud” and there will be an unplanned outage, significant data loss/corruption, or security event. This will cause a retreat from the technology which is due, in part, to over-hype of the benefits and under-performance of the service providers to gain profits.
The net change will be a slow migration – which I think is really the prudent choice right now.
People will discover the joy of being backed up. They will not suffer catastrophic loss of data even if their machine gets stolen or catches fire. They will join a cloud service for other reasons but they will love the backup.
What I'm hoping for is less need for services to interface with one another and more services to provide an "all-in-one" experience. I use HootSuite to manage my social interactions and that application allows efficient use of my time and resources. However, it doesn't solve all of my cloud needs. I'm a backup fanatic, so I use Carbonite and Dropbox which I can access from any device at any location. Same with Google Docs, only add some additional functionality. Microsoft 365 is another such product. I still find myself wanting more, though. Right now, we are having to work with multiple products across various platforms in hybrid applications. I don't think 2012 will provide everything I want with the security that most of us crave, but it will be a year of explosive growth.
We've been in talks with several major financials and relateds, all of whom are abandoning cloud (or seriously considering abandoning it) due to security concerns.
The irony of this is not lost on if this is accurate. Seems to be that this is one of the few industries that have been profitable due to certain favorable government assistance. Oddly enough they are not feeling the need to seek out cost reducing directions for IT. If they did they would find a way to make cloud work for them and not hide behind inaccurate generalities. Instead, they would seek to create a community cloud that could meet their security requirements as the intelligence community its doing. But, hey, when you have unfettered access to free money, why bother.
The Cloud hype bubble will burst leading to a shakeout of major players who cannot afford to play. The resulting Data Loss from these second tier players bailing will further damage Cloud benefit believability. Apple and Microsoft will benefit; Cisco, already teetering, will go over the edge. Oracle will sue someone. Google won't suffer losses but its stock price will take a hit. Private Clouds: EMC (VMware) won't survive Hadoop.
I believe the mobile space will start to become more cloud like inasmuch that providers will no longer be so much of a deciding factor in decision making for consumers and will take a bigger backseat to the front end 'solution' (PDA, contract bundles, servicing).
My top 5 prediction for Cloud 2012 are :
1. Cloud Business Model will get more mature with more standardization in place
2. Cloud based Gaming will be in demand
3. Business Apps on the go through various smart devices like; smart phone, tablets and handy laptops will be in more demand
4. Carrier will play big role in making the data available from cloud to end devices, therefore Cloud and Carrier will bundle the service offerings
5. S/w licensing model for Cloud will be more mature and flexible
FWIW: "Cloud Bursting (Cloud Technology Adoption in 2012)" http://technologymarketers.com/StatingTheObvious/cloud-bursting-cloud-technol...
Enjoy!
I would read a few other books like Ron Paul's END THE FED and Bob Wiedemer’s AFTERSHOCK. These books may paint you a different but I believe accurate picture of what 2012 could look like financially. it's important people understand what the Federal Reserve and the government are doing to this country and how it will impact our pocket books (and beyond...possible food/water shortages etc...) in the future. I may be a bit off base with the reply and for that i apologize; it is my belief though that nothing can be more important than seeking the truth about the US government and central banks around the world are basically imploding America by design. I will also say this, 2012 holds a pivotal presidential race, if we don’t elect a true statesmen that will actually be a leader and make the tough decisions to fix the problems caused over the pas 3o years, we are doomed economically. There is only one man that has been telling the truth and has predicted our economic woes with military precision over the past 4 decades, and that is Dr. Ron Paul. He will not bow down to special interest because he isn’t funded by them. Let’s help put this man in office and turn this thing around so we all can prosper.
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People love technology prognosticators. Frankly, my hope for cloud in 2012 is that it's a year of focusing on the real issues of adoption. Hopefully, there will be very little drama, whether it be in the form of major acquisitions or investments by VC or pending disasters. The cloud offers both financial and technology benefits, but achieving these goals will require some very pragmatic changes on behalf of the IT industry in how it provides service and delivers products. I hope we finally get past mail, web and social as the primary cloud drivers and see a few major enterprise application migrations as these will indicate maturation occurring.
Given the economic conditions around the world, I see more businesses and governments turning to cloud computing to alleviate some of the redundancy and financial strain. However, if the core operational considerations are not accounted for, cloud is going to give a few organizations a black eye and support the contingent against moving to cloud.