It’s that time of the year when analysts, pundits and others release their cloud computing forecasts for the upcoming year. Not to be out done, here are my top 5 predictions, originally published in Cloud Computing Journal, for 2013:
1. Democratization of Big Data – while the concept of Big Data is not new – analytics tools and data sources are combining to bring the great epiphany to almost every department and every company. The democratization of big data is assisted by new cloud computing environments with fast networks, giant instance sizes and minute based billing. Companies that don’t collect and analyze data will lose market share.
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2. Local software installs end. ISVs that don’t offer their product in the cloud in some way will not win new customers and will not renew 50% of existing contracts. The difference in 2013 is that the CFO and CEO now understand cloud computing – excuses will no longer be tolerated. Requests for new servers, RAM and server upgrades will be met with a veto. They also know that all new software today that is getting VC funding is SaaS – currently over 90% of new apps.
3. Every employee gets to bring their own devices and now their own software. The consumerization of IT continues to cross every stodgy IT boundary in 2013 with users demanding faster software refreshes, and better devices which in turn drives modern user interfaces – which drives more SaaS and Cloud Computing deployments. In-house software teams, already taxed with big data projects will be churning out UI updates and mobile access faster than ever.
4. “The Internet of Things” – is contributing to many trends from operational software for instrumenting every stage of value creation in the manufacturing process to the thousands of measurements that consumers are creating, many of which they are unaware of. This trend continues to accelerate as new applications and the analytics the big data trend is driving. Life gets more connected and more connected than ever before, only the privacy movement can slow this movement down.
5. First generation cloud computing providers will lose customers as they feel the heat. From early cloud adopters which are sick of complex, non-standard deployments to the early mass market users arriving on the cloud in 2013, both groups simply demand more flexible server sizes, flexible networks, faster performance than the first generation of cloud services offer. Cloud computing finally lives up to its promise – complete automation, complete flexibility and fine-grained minute based billing. All of this flexibility will drive an even larger wave of existing IT environments to the cloud – as IaaS and the public cloud becomes the default choice of the early majority.
Do you agree or disagree with any of my predictions? Do you have any predictions of your own? I’m interested in hearing what you think.
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