Cloud computing has been one of the biggest buzz phrases in technology over the past couple of years. Some are of the opinion that that’s all it is, hot air and marketing hype, but they are a rapidly dwindling group. C-level execs and IT professionals have been getting on board the cloud train in increasing numbers, a trend that is not likely to abate in the coming 12 months.
Cloud technology, particularly open source cloud technology, is seeing enormous investment, encouraged, in part, by that other buzz-word of the moment, Big Data. There will, however, be some significant evolution in the cloud computing market. We’re going to highlight some of the most pertinent changes we expect to see in 2013.
Private Cloud Growth Will Continue
In spite of the massive success of public cloud services, executives are still wary of handing over the keys to the kingdom to outside organizations. Planning requires predictability, and the level of control that private clouds, built on top of technology from Oracle, IBM, and VMWare, offer is still a significant draw. With data security and privacy being of huge importance, businesses will continue to prefer the more expensive private cloud, while developing APIs to provide external access.
Significant Cost Reductions
We’ve already seen Amazon slash the prices of some of its AWS services, and that’s a trend that will continue as competition grows. In November, Amazon reduced prices on its S3 storage service, among others, in response to Google’s introduction of competing services. As the cloud computing sector continues to mature, new players will enter the market. The pressure toward interoperability and standardization will reduce the friction of moving between providers, and prices will be pushed down by the competitive ecosystem.
Cloud Subscription Models Will Evolve
In an era where businesses need to be agile, and increasing competition puts pressure on cloud providers, we can expect to see enterprise cloud subscription models develop in a direction favoring the buyer. One size fits all subscription models with tiered packages will be phased out to be replaced by pay-as-you-go models.
Mobile Will DriveCloud Adoption
BYOD, telecommuting, and widespread use of mobile devices will have a huge impact on the adoption of cloud-based technologies. The necessity of workers accessing data and software while on the move and on their own devices will drive the development of cloud-based software services to accommodate them.
Personal Cloud Use Will Grow
Both in the consumer and enterprise space, users will become more reliant on cloud technology and applications. Obvious examples are Evernote and DropBox. Businesses will need to remain vigilant of the security implications of employees taking advantage of popular cloud services on their own devices while working.
What do you think are going to be the most significant cloud trends this year? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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Guest blog article written by Graeme Caldwell — Graeme works as an inbound marketer for Nexcess, a leading provider of Magento and WordPress hosting. Follow Nexcess on Twitter at @nexcess, Like them on Facebook and check out their tech/hosting blog, http://blog.nexcess.net/.