Every cloud has a silver lining - Current cloud computing trends and opportunities

Every cloud has a silver lining - Latest cloud computing trends and opportunities

Will 2013-2014 be the year when the executives can stop spending sleepless nights worrying about cloud security and start looking into their bills from the providers of cloud service? Well, Columnist Bernard Golden says so and apart from this he has many other predictions for 2013 and 2014. This has certainly been a curious and interesting year for cloud computing. While the technology has gradually moved into mainstream consciousness, there are many vendors who are simply frustrated with the pace in which different enterprises are adopting to cloud computing. Although widespread agreement on the importance of cloud computing is present, there are many vendors who see business organizations and companies pursuing internal cloud implementation projects at a very slow pace. The vendors are getting impatient with this pace.

2014 is expecting to be an inflection point for cloud computing, though not in the process in which many IT organizations do. One can easily predict that cloud computing trends of 2013 will gradually become more vivid in 2014 and will also prove to be agitating to occupants, no matter which side of the vendor or the buyer table they sit on. Cloud computing can also prove to be more disruptive to the order of things than what anyone predicts and this might prove to be uncomfortable for many.

Commodity infrastructure in the form of a service

IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service is what most IT professionals mean when they speak about cloud computing. IaaS is also referred to as Cloud Infrastructure service and this is considered as the core of cloud computing technology. Forrester, an analyst firm anticipates that they will generate greater potential for making revenue which has been clearly seen from Amazon Web Services, the undisputed leader in commodity IaaS. Rackspace, the second largest commodity IaaS provider also reveals an increase in the revenue from $31.4 million to $37.1 million since the first quarter of 2011.

Things to look out for in 2014 - A peak into the future trend

1. “Enterprise Cloud” would become a drinking game: This year, there have been vendors who make countless number of confident anticipations about the importance “enterprise cloud” but once the enterprises realize that their trusted vendors have some shiny cloud products in stock, they’ll start purchasing like frenzy companies. This New Year or 2014 is going to be a do-or-die year for all the attractive powers of enterprise who are using cloud computing technologies. By the end of 2014, most people will certainly realize that reiterating the phrase “enterprise cloud” is insufficient as a strategy of the vendor.

2. Companies realize that cloud computing actually is what it is: One big realization on the part of enterprise has been that the business units have adapted to public cloud computing isn’t going to go away. There are many who continue to implement internal clouds with the prediction that once the internal offering is done with, it might become the default choice of the developers. In 2014, there will be a unanimous recognition that the developers have all embraced public cloud computing due to it’s speed and agility. In a nutshell, this will rather mean re-engineering which will be more difficult than purchasing a new product with the hopes that it will soon make one’s private cloud as tempting as the public alternatives.

3. Heterogeneous and hybrid cloud computing will come to the forefront: 2014 will be a home to the fact that the enterprises are never going to settle down with a single cloud computing technology or a provider. By definition, the enterprises are heterogeneous and complex technological environment. They actually collect multiple products in a given technology environment randomly and irrationally. There are many IT organization and CSPs that have predicted that the entire world would standardize on a single technology but this won’t happen anyway. The harsh reality for all the enterprises is that they will use multiple cloud computing technologies that will be spread among different environment, whether heterogeneous and homogeneous.

2014 as a year of change and transition

We’re actually in the middle of a multi-year shift from the traditional static computing environments to a new form of agile working environments that is based on infrastructural rental accompanied by careful operation. This New Year, 2014 will be a year in which transition will reach a point where the entire discussion among the enterprises will revolve around cloud computing.

In any kind of innovation, during a certain point of time, the weight of evidence will gradually become overwhelming enough. Every new platform will solve all the shortcomings of the previous generation and same is the fact with cloud computing technology. It is innovative and powerful but it has blemishes of its own kind. However, 2014 is the year we start addressing the actual drawbacks of cloud computing, their complexity of change and their challenges.

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