2012 - the year in the cloud
Whilst Cloud Computing is still very much in its infancy, I expect great things are still to come for the industry once cruelly referred to as "just another fad". Below, I outline my predictions for the year ahead and where I see Cloud Computing technologies heading in 2012.
The economic crisis will be the number one driving factor for the increasing uptake of Cloud Computing
We are continually being subjected to the doom and gloom of the economic turmoil. Recently it was documented that Britain could be stripped of its AAA credit rating, because of the fact that it is not immune from the Eurozone crisis. Such a lack of confidence in the economy trickles down to the individual companies on the frontline who are finding it increasingly difficult to secure credit from the banks. In short, businesses simply do not have the upfront capital that they had five years ago to invest in new infrastructure or refresh their networks, and are therefore instead looking for more cost-effective alternatives.
It is for this reason that businesses will turn to Cloud Computing in increasing numbers in 2012. Thanks to the lower cost monthly retainers associated with Cloud computing contracts, companies taking their IT infrastructure to the Cloud can benefit from reduced capital expenditure, instead focusing on more manageable, operational expenditure investment, which will enhance cash flow throughout the month.
The IT team's responsibilities will inherently change
The increasing use of Cloud Computing will elevate IT in business, so much so that the responsibilities of the in-house IT team may be fundamentally different to those of their traditional role. Historically, the IT team has spent much of its time maintaining the company's infrastructure, which arguably, should never have been a primary role. IT employees should be brought into the company to ensure that it is making best use of its IT systems, and if they are continually locked in a server room, attempting to keep the infrastructure up and running, then they are not able to concentrate on application development, which if done successfully, can ultimately enhance the IT function.
There has traditionally been a lack of appreciation of just how much time and resource is invested in an IT team to carry out this sole responsibility, and when budgets are tight, this simply is not acceptable. The advent of Cloud Computing has allowed organisations to take their IT infrastructure to the Cloud via virtualised servers and data backed-up offsite in a secure location. Overheads can be quickly reduced by removing those members of the team whose responsibilities have been outsourced to the Cloud vendor, allowing the organisation to keep only those individuals that contribute to the application side of the IT department, and thus deliver a near-immediate ROI. Furthermore, the hassle of the infrastructure maintenance is removed, leaving a consolidated IT team to concentrate on application development and improve the overall IT functionality.
Private and hybrid Cloud solutions will proliferate faster than public Cloud models
As the Cloud computing industry matures, there is a greater appreciation for the different types of Cloud solutions available on the market that have been created to suit various business requirements. As such, businesses are starting to understand that whilst a public Cloud solution will deliver fantastic value for money and accessibility to data from any location worldwide, public Cloud vendors are simply not able to offer SLAs on performance, and as such, business critical applications should not be placed in a shared environment, of which both its location and "neighbours" are unknown. Within a hybrid Cloud solution however, customers can opt for a private Cloud model to specify their SLAs around security, whilst also placing certain non-business sensitive data in a public Cloud environment to benefit from the associated low costs, improved performance and continually accessible applications.
The industry will become increasingly competitive
As the demand for Cloud computing rises, so will the number of Cloud solutions coming to market, and the industry for Cloud vendors will therefore become inherently more competitive. Indeed, we are already witnessing a fierce price war in the public Cloud industry, with many of the smaller companies simply being priced out by the Cloud giants, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google. There will be a similar war amongst private Cloud vendors as the marketplace becomes more established and defined, but this will not occur until this particular sector of the Cloud industry has been commoditised, which could be 2013, or even 2014.
Tenders will become more explicit
Two years ago, prospective customers were going to Cloud vendors not knowing what questions to ask, or even what was available on the market. Today however, as the industry becomes better known and understood, prospects know exactly what solution they are after, and they are therefore requesting precise specifications in their tenders. Rather than going to a Cloud vendor and merely asking them to build a Cloud environment for them, with little appreciation of what this might entail, we are increasingly seeing more sophisticated tenders, which include specific demands for private clouds, hybrid clouds, Platform-as-a-Service solutions and "Cloud applications" that can be brought in to link business processes together.