In the article The future of cloud computing: 9 trends for 2012, Andrew Nusca of ZDnet uses data from a recent North Bridge Venture Partners survey to frame a discussion on the trends that are affecting the future of cloud computing.
And as we’re halfway through 2012, I thought this list was a timely checkpoint that offered insight into how perceptions and business behaviors are changing with regard to the cloud. Below is the skeleton list, but Nusca elaborates on all of them in his article.
- The cloud is mature — for some
- Scalability is driving adoption
- Security remains the main hurdle
- SaaS leads in dollars spent
- But PaaS and IaaS aren’t far behind
- Efficiency is the name of the game
- But the savings picture is fuzzy
- Public or private clouds? Both, actually
- Big data is the elephant in the room
These are definitely topics that are on the lips of cloud writers lately, and many of these discussions lead to talk of hybrid clouds (this is actually where trend #8 above takes the conversation). While Cloudtweaks talks about the need for hybrid clouds and their various use cases, Gartner has actually referred to the hybrid cloud as an imperative. Business 2 Community puts it this way:
According to polls, enterprises are already looking beyond private cloud to hybrid cloud computing (not cloud bursting, per se, but resource pool expansion). Interest in hybrid is affecting architecture plans and vendor selection today …
And if there’s one thing most sources agree on, it’s that hybrid cloud solutions–like Skytap Cloud–are taking root. The hybrid cloud model is the best of both worlds (private plus public cloud)–users are empowered with the intuitive self-service they want, while IT gets the full visibility and control they need to ensure security and efficient resource usage.
Nusca’s piece also goes on to talk about category disruption, the three biggest cloud drivers, and factors that are inhibiting adoption. Read more about all nine trends at ZDnet.com.
