Because cloud computing is still in its early state, we can expect a few organizations taking advantage of being the first ones to take advantage of it. However, it is expected that by 2020 a lot of organizations are already in the clouds. Since is just around the corner, Forrester, an analyst group, says that the cloud computing industry will be worth around $150 billion by 2020, up by $115 billion from 2011. There will also be a great demand from business organizations as well as an increase in technology developments which will support cloud computing. Processing power will also experience a rapid increase which will eventually reduce the price of cloud computing projects. It is also expected that supercomputing will experience a big boom by 2020. On the organization level, a new breed of Chief Information Officers will emerge as they will take charge of cloud computing directions on an enterprise scale.

By 2020, software will be separated from hardware which will make it difficult for a Chief Information Officer to draw his organization’s infrastructure map because software will be completely independent from hardware through platform-as-a-service. Aside from that, a lot of hardware will be available and independent software applications will be more complex and larger because these applications will take advantage of economies of scale. Modular software will be emphasized which will allow each component to be modified without the need to shut down the entire application.

Social media will also experience an evolution as software development is expected to have attributes much like the social-media applications we have now. It means that software and infrastructure will be developed depending on the demands. Switch, server, and storage will be provisioned automatically. Low-cost hardware is also expected by 2020. Upgrades and replacements will be executed quickly. Cloud service providers will be able to take advantage of such changes. With low-power ARM chips, enterprise software will experience an upward trend as the data centers will be able to use power-thrifty processors which will be able to lower electricity bills.

Interconnection within the data center is also expected to be cost-efficient as well as very robust. Larger applications can be circulated which will allow faster data communication at a much lower cost. Basic tasks in the data center can be automated so that corrections and changes in hardware and software can be effortlessly done. Competition among large cloud computing providers will still be fierce which will prove to be beneficial to everyone. Radical technologies can be developed and that each cloud will eventually service a specific purpose.

Chief Information Officers are expected be of a different breed by 2020. They will shake up businesses and are expected to provide the much needed boost for cloud computing services. Cloud computing is also expected to developed various specializations. Today, it is only divided into software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and infrastructure-as-a-service. By 2020, more services will be categorized and the IT ecosystem will be broader with more cloud computing providers targeting specific industries.