2011 is marked in the calendar as “Year of the Cloud” for its remarkable contributions in businesses and advancements in cloud computing. In fact, cloud computing has been adopted by various businesses globally and many product and service providers have focused on cloud-based business ventures. The question everyone is asking now is how will cloud computing affect life and business in 2012. How will the common phrase “Cloud First; But Show Me the Money,” be generally accepted. This trend is a result of the global crisis pushing many enterprises to be tight on the budget particularly with IT technology.
As 2011 comes to a close, here are predictions for cloud computing in 2012.
Cloud Becomes a Common Thing – Cloud will lose some of its luster as it becomes common word and the standard of doing things. Cloud computing will change the way work is done and will become the acceptable platform for the delivery of services. Cloud will now be an accepted paradigm shift as new buzzwords surface and make new trends.
Cloud ROL Demonstrate First Policy – The government will increase pressure on cloud vendors to opt for show cloud platform first. As people become more dependent with the cloud, instances like the outage that took place with Amazon Web Services places more public scrutiny to the cloud infrastructure.
Cloud First Policy for Businesses – The cloud first government policy will also generate the same pressure from business owners to the cloud vendors, and as cloud computing becomes the standard it will gather more demands from the public users.
Private Cloud will Gain more IT Role in any Business – IT that used to be a backdoor support for businesses will gain an important role in daily operations and serve a key role in sales and marketing strategies. IT people will also have expanded roles that will call for managing and controlling responsibilities.
Private Cloud will Gain Leverage over Public Cloud – Business owners will find it more significant to use cloud computing for their internal IT infrastructure. This will speed up their internal applications and will also gain them more workload efficiency.
Integration of Services between Providers and Consumers – As the cloud platform becomes the standard for any business the line that separates between providers and consumers will eventually fade. This is, as services from private individuals and large corporations are offered to the world through the Internet. This is, in fact already the trend, but in 2012 this will gain more popularity.
IT Role will become Complex and Integrated – IT people will perform both the roles of a facilitator and competitor in the cloud platform. Companies can now decide where to put IT, whether it is for the primary provider or for a competitor’s IT department. As companies continue to cultivate partnerships IT roles also become more complex from managers to consultants for both providers and competitors.
Economic Strength from the Cloud Business Platform – As businesses migrate to the cloud it will accelerate economic growth. This is from the savings that companies keep by just subscribing to applications rather than investing huge amounts of money for servers and software. Startup companies will also rise as cloud computing services are offered for free on the Web.
Public Cloud will be more Secure as a Platform – Businesses will find data center storage as more secure than the old storage platforms that even required staff and complex cloud security protocols. Although in the beginning the cloud storage encountered huge scrutiny they are now seen as a better alternative.
Cloud will Revolutionize Outsourcing – As outsourcing becomes the new trend for work, cloud computing will make it more efficient and reliable for both employers and freelancers. As IT services become the “on demand” work there will be more micro-outsourcing deals around the globe. This will make outsourcing the work option for most businesses that can count on reliable, scalable and cost-efficient means of doing business.