What is next for Cloud Computing?

While use of the cloud today is generally associated with the ability to reduce costs and improve efficiency, widespread adoption of this technology is projected to have a transformative effect on all businesses of all sizes.

"We're seeing efficiency gains continue, but we're also starting to see the emergence of new capabilities," says Steve King, a partner at Emergent.

"Cloud computing is a major technology trend that has permeated the market over the last two years. It sets the stage for a new approach to IT that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they'll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models," said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "Cloud computing has a significant potential impact on every aspect of IT and how users access applications, information and business services."

"The trend and related technologies continue to evolve and change rapidly, and there is continuing confusion and misunderstanding as vendors increasingly hype 'cloud' as a marketing term," said David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "This level of impact, confusion, uncertainty and change make cloud computing one of Gartner's top 10 strategic technology trends to address."

Gartner has identified the following cloud computing Trends that will be accelerating, shifting or reaching a tipping point over the next three years and that users must factor into their planning processes:

Cloud Investment Optimization

The cloud promises to deliver a range of benefits, including a shift from capital-intensive to operational cost models, lower overall cost, greater agility and reduced complexity. It can also be used to shift the focus of IT resources to higher-value-added activities for the business, or to support business innovation and, potentially, lower risks.

Cloud Services Brokerage

As cloud computing adoption proliferates, so does the need for consumption assistance. A cloud services brokerage (CSB) is a service provider that plays an intermediary role in cloud computing. Interest in the CSB concept increased last year, and Gartner expects this trend to accelerate over the next three years as more individuals, whether they are in IT or a line-of-business unit, consume cloud services without involving IT.

Cloud-Centric Design

Many organizations look first for opportunities to migrate existing enterprise workloads to a cloud system and/or an application infrastructure. This approach may provide benefits where the workload has a highly variable resource requirement, or where the application naturally lends itself to horizontal scalability. However, to fully exploit the potential of a cloud model, applications need to be designed with the unique characteristics, limitations and opportunities of a cloud model in mind.

Cloud Computing will influence future Data Centers and Operation Models

In public cloud computing, an enterprise is acting as a consumer of services, with the cloud services provider handling the implementation details, including the data center and related operational models. However, to the extent that the enterprise continues to build its own data centers, they will be influenced by the implementation models used by cloud services providers.

Cloud Access Security Brokers

Cloud access security brokers are on-premises or cloud-based security policy enforcement points placed between cloud services consumers and cloud services providers to interject enterprise security policies as the cloud-based resources are accessed. In many cases, initial adoption of cloud-based services has occurred outside the control of IT, and cloud access security brokers offer enterprises to gain visibility and control as its users access cloud resources.

Hybrid Cloud Computing

Gartner defines a hybrid cloud computing service as a cloud service that spans both private and public cloud implementations, or both on-premises private and off-premises private or public cloud implementations. A hybrid cloud service can, among other things, synchronize and/or replicate data between public and private clouds, and migrate services on a continuous basis between public and private clouds. 

Over time, hybrid cloud computing could lead to a unified model in which there is a single "cloud" made up of multiple cloud platforms (internal or external) that can be used, as needed, based on changing business requirements. Gartner recommends that enterprises focus near-term efforts on application and data integration, linking fixed internal and external applications with a hybrid solution. Where public cloud application services or custom applications running on public cloud infrastructures are used, guidelines and standards should be established for how these elements will combine with internal systems to form a hybrid environment.

In the past three years, private cloud computing has moved from an aspiration to a tentative reality for nearly half of the world's large organizations. Hybrid cloud computing, however, is where private cloud was three years ago — aspirations are high but deployments low. 

What is next for Cloud Computing?

More application availability on the cloud: With most new software being built for cloud from the outset, it is predicted that by 2016 over a quarter of all applications (around 48 million) will be available on the cloud.

Increased growth in the market for cloud: According to Gartner, the cloud is here, and it is accelerating globally. Based on their forecast for 2011-2017, Gartner expects adoption to hit $250 billion by 2017.

More hybrid cloud adoption: Gartner proposes that 50 percent of enterprises will have hybrid clouds by 2017. As we see more and more companies adopt cloud, we see CIOs crafting well-thought-out strategies that include cloud.

Increased development for the cloud: More development is going to go to the cloud. According to Evans Data Corporation, there are more than 18 million software developers worldwide yet less than 25 percent are developing for the cloud today. Especially when you consider that 85 percent of the new software being built today is for cloud according to IDC

More innovation because of cloud: Increased competition in the cloud space will give way to better products, services and innovation.

References

http://thoughtsoncloud.com/2014/05/future-cloud-computing-5-predictions/http://www.inc.com/graham-winfrey/why-the-cloud-will-transform-small-business-by-2020.htmlhttp://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1971515http://www.itbusinessedge.com/slideshows/show.aspx?c=95261http://www.randgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/cloud-computing-computer-button.jpghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-industry-insights/cloud-computing-trends-2014-state-cloud-survey