Although the potential of cloud computing is impressive, the scope and depth of impact and the level of acceptance over time are uncertain and require frequent revisions of the strategy being taken by the company in each case.

In this sense, Gartner has identified five trends of cloud computing that is accelerating and can be seen as a turning point in the next three years, so that users must be taken their migration to the cloud into consideration in their planning processes.

“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 new report, “Five Trends in Cloud Computing that will affect its cloud strategy through 2015” attempts to provide some clarity to identify five key trends that they believe will have a dramatic impact on cloud strategy over the next three years:

Decision Framework Vs Cloud Optimization

Cloud brings with it a host of benefits such as lower costs, greater flexibility and very low complexity, in addition to direct resources to areas of higher added value while reducing the risks. However, these potential benefits should be carefully examined and compared to the challenges and threats, including security, lack of transparency, concerns about the performance and availability, restrictions on the licensing and integration needs.

Hybrid Cloud Computing

The hybrid cloud refers to the coordination and combination of outsourced cloud computing (public or private) and the internal infrastructure of the company. The hybrid cloud computing could lead to a unified model in which there is a cloud formed by several cloud platforms that can be used based on changing business requirements. Policies and regulations require that many organizations take advantage of a combination of public and private cloud services. Organizations must define a strategy for how to integrate these environments and hide complexity from users.

Facilitate Cloud Consumption

Gartner believes that instead of opposing the application of technology in the cloud at the departmental level, IT departments should partner with companies of clouds and position themselves as cloud agent services (private operators). Establishing a positive relationship would increase the likelihood that IT business units can provide advice and support when necessary.

Cloud-Centric Design

Organizations cannot optimize the value of the cloud by simply changing the applications to a cloud-based solution. Companies should also not forget to seek first the opportunity to migrate workloads of existing application infrastructure in the cloud.

The architecture should be designed from scratch to take into account the unique challenges of the cloud and benefits. This approach can provide benefits when companies have highly variable resource requirements.

Gartner advises that companies should look beyond migration workload of the organization to create cloud applications optimized to exploit the full potential of the cloud to deliver world-class applications.

Future Data Centers and Operating Models

Business should start taking cloud advantages into consideration when they define their data center model and how it will go to operate in future. Cloud computing can significantly change the operating model of data centers.

The research company is in the opinion that companies should start thinking about implementing cloud infrastructure in their future data centers setup.

Various studies from market leaders and research firms proclaimed the importance of cloud to improve agility, reduce cost and energy, simplify complexity, and provide reduced administrative tasks to IT department.

The Gartner report signifies the reality of cloud computing and organizations should take into consideration their requirement, specific needs, environments and constraints to implement cloud models.