There is no doubt about the worldwide cloud adoption. According to the National Inflation Association, cloud computing is currently a $74 billion industry that accounts for 3 percent of global IT spending, and it’s expected to become a $150 billion market by 2013. Moreover, cloud computing is creating a million new jobs globally. IDC came out with a Microsoft report that projects that spending on public and private IT cloud services will generate nearly 14 million jobs worldwide from 2011 to 2015. Nearly 1.2 million of those new cloud-related jobs will be created in the U.S. and Canada, the same study stated.
While cloud computing’s impact on technology, businesses, jobs and economy starts to be more powerful there are several key trends which can be identified:
The personal cloud will replace the personal computer at the centre of users’ digital lives. Earlier this month Gartner published a report, The New PC Era: the Personal Cloud, which predicts that by 2014, the personal cloud will replace the personal computer. This study highlights five “mega-trends” that are driving the shift in focus from personal computer to personal cloud. First, in the consumer space, Gartner predicts that cloud services will be on 90 percent of personal consumer devices by year 2015. Thus, consumers can store, connect, stream, and synchronize content across multiple platforms at different locations. Other trends include an increasing number of companies having a hybrid plan to connect private and public clouds, more choices for companies looking to make their way into the cloud, alternatives for sourcing and value shifting in the cloud. In addition, the statement of many analysts and companies as the primary benefit of cloud to be lower costs is changing into considering that the top benefit to be is speed and agility.
Big Data involves more than just managing volumes of data. Big data workloads will force many companies to consider alternatives to traditional databases, and cloud deployment models will simplify the rollout. So, large cloud databases will centralize huge amounts of information and analytics will be moved to the cloud too at a faster pace than we expected, but mainly in the private cloud for large enterprises.
Executives demand reliable cloud data security. As attention to Big Data expands in 2012, so will the concerns about protecting both the security and integrity of this data source. This year I am expecting at least one messy breach of data for which cloud will get the blame. That will spur regulators into action and refresh policies by enforcing two-factor authentication and password
generation. I also think that, with the wider adoption and the increasing awareness of cloud, providers will need to focus on security innovations.
The growth of Mobile Cloud. The greater number of people operating their social and professional lives via mobile devices and tablet PCs is going to speed up the demand for faster, more user friendly and storage applications.
The move to platforms is increasing. PaaS (platform-as-a-service) will have further boost in popularity and necessity as it continues to provide companies with scalable data translation and transformation on a cloud platform. The best IT teams will be those that embrace private and public PaaS.
There are many other trends related to each type of cloud (public, private and hybrid) that can be discussed. I believe that the most important and certain thing here, is that in 2012, more companies will continue moving their business processes to the cloud, intensifying expectations for cloud data integration and data management as a part of a company’s information infrastructure.
