Gartner and IDC, two of the respected authorities in cloud computing recently released their fearless, bold predictions for 2012.
Huge Data Storage
“Big Data will earn its place as the next ‘must have’ competency in 2012″ (IDC). It’s difficult to question that statement if the basis is only the current trend right now. The statement remains questionable because the IDC data only comes from the big data problem in relation to its demand. IDC predicted 2.43 zettabytes of data will need to be created in 2012. These data storage demand will be used mostly for social media like videos, photos and music files.
“2012 is likely to be a busy year for Big Data-driven mergers and acquisitions” (IDC). This prediction is hot spot because a lot of acquisitions have and are still taking place. Among the companies that are ripe for any merger include NoSQL, Red-Hot 10gen, Kognito, ParAccel, Cloudera, Infobright, Quantivo and Attivo.
“Through 2015, more than 85 percent of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage” (Gartner). This prediction may be a little off because at the moment most of the Fortune 500 companies are already experimenting like what they did with Hadoop. Gartner added that companies who are investing heavily on big data storage may not fully utilize it to their advantage because they may not be ready for it.
Cloud Computing
“In 2012, 80% of new commercial enterprise apps will be deployed on cloud platforms” (IDC). 80% is very high, but if the focus of this figure includes web startups the numbers may be reasonable.
“Amazon Web Services will exceed $1 billion in cloud services business in 2012 with Google’s Enterprise business to follow within 18 months” (IDC). This prediction may already be happening with Amazon Web Services, but wit Google this may come around by mid of 2013. IDC feels that the mergers will be more appealing with Saas companies other than PaaS. One of the major mergers that will take place is the acquisition of Microsoft of NetFix.
“By 2016, 40 percent of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service” (Gartner). This trend will be a solid tie up for cloud vendors and insurance services to affirm their security claims.
“At year-end 2016, more than 50 percent of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud” (Gartner). Although Gartner feels this is because of the cost savings, others say that this is due to the improved cloud security platform. More and more companies may feel that placing more data in the cloud is secure and very useful, which is backed up by improved certification and insurance policies.
“By 2015, the prices for 80 percent of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge” (Gartner). This is a business model that Amazon Web Services started and is not being utilized by other cloud services. Its framework is developer- based that relies on simple pricing schemes plus additional charges.
