Cloud Computing predictions for 2012

By The Open Group Cloud Work Group Members 

With 2012 fast approaching, Cloud Computing will remain a hot topic for IT professionals everywhere. The Open Group Cloud Work Group worked on various initiatives in 2011, including the Cloud Computing Survey, which explored the business impact and primary drivers for Cloud within organizations, and the release of Cloud Computing for Business, a guide that examines how enterprises can derive the greatest business benefits from Cloud Computing from a business process standpoint.

As this year comes to an end, here are a few predictions from various Cloud Work Group members.

Non-IT executives will increasingly use the term “Cloud” in regular business conversations

By Penelope Gordon, 1 Plug

In 2012, the number of non-IT business executives seeking ways to leverage Cloud will increase, and consequently references to Cloud Computing will increasingly appear in general business publications.

This increase in Cloud references will in part be due to the availability of consumer-oriented Cloud services such as email and photo sharing. For example, the October 2011 edition of the Christian Science Monitor included an article titled “Five things you need to know about ‘the cloud’” by Chris Gaylord that discussed Cloud services in the same vein as mobile phone capabilities. Another factor behind the increase (unintentionally) highlighted in this article is the overuse – and consequent dilution – of the term “Cloud” – Web services and applications running on Cloud infrastructure are not necessarily themselves Cloud services.

The most important factor behind the increase will be due to the relevance of Cloud – especially the SaaS, BPaaS, and cloud-enabled BPO variants – to these executives. In contrast to SOA, Cloud Computing buying decisions related to business process enablement can be very granular and incremental and can thus be made independently of the IT Department – not that I advocate bypassing IT input. Good governance ensures both macro-level optimization and interoperability.

New business models in monetizing your Information-as–a-Service

By Mark Skilton, Capgemini

Personal data is rapidly become less restricted to individual control and management as we see exponential growth in the use of digital media and social networking to exchange ideas, conduct business and enable whole markets, products and services to be accessible. This has significant ramifications not only for individuals and organizations to maintain security and protection over what is public and private; it also represents a huge opportunity to understand both small and big data and the “interstitial connecting glue” – the metadata within and at the edge of Clouds that are like digital smoke trails of online community activities and behaviors.

At the heart of this is the “value of information” to organizations that can extract and understand how to maximize this information and, in turn, monetize it. This can be as simple as profiling customers who “like” products and services to creating secure backup Cloud services to retrieve in times of need and support of emergency services. The point is that new metadata combinations are possible through the aggregation of data inside and outside of organizations to create new value.

There are many new opportunities to create new business models that recognize this new wave of Information-as- a-Service (IaaS) as the Cloud moves further into new value model territories.

Small and large enterprise experiences when it comes to Cloud

By Pam Isom, IBM

The Cloud Business Use Case (CBUC) team is in the process of developing and publishing a paper that is focused on the subject of Cloud for Small-Medium-Enterprises (SME’s). The CBUC team is the same team that contributed to the book Cloud Computing for Business with a concerted focus on Cloud business benefits, use cases, and justification. When it comes to small and large enterprise comparisons of Cloud adoption, some initial observations are that the increased agility associated with Cloud helps smaller organizations with rapid time-to-market and, as a result, attracts new customers in a timely fashion. This faster time-to-market not only helps SME’s gain new customers who otherwise would have gone to competitors, but prevents those competitors from becoming stronger – enhancing the SME’s competitive edge. Larger enterprises might be more willing to have a dedicated IT organization that is backed with support staff and they are more likely to establish full-fledged data center facilities to operate as a Cloud service provider in both a public and private capacity, whereas SME’s have lower IT budgets and tend to focus on keeping their IT footprint small, seeking out IT services from a variety of Cloud service providers.

A recent study conducted by Microsoft surveyed more than 3000 small businesses across 16 countries with the objective of understanding whether they have an appetite for adopting Cloud Computing. One of the findings was that within three years, “43 percent of workloads will become paid cloud services.” This is one of many statistics that stress the significance of Cloud on small businesses in this example and the predictions for larger enterprise as Cloud providers and consumers are just as profound.

Penelope Gordon specializes in adoption strategies for emerging technologies, and portfolio management of early stage innovation. While with IBM, she led innovation, strategy, and product development efforts for all of IBM’s product and service divisions; and helped to design, implement, and manage one of the world’s first public clouds.

Mark Skilton is Global Director for Capgemini, Strategy CTO Group, Global Infrastructure Services. His role includes strategy development, competitive technology planning including Cloud Computing and on-demand services, global delivery readiness and creation of Centers of Excellence. He is currently author of the Capgemini University Cloud Computing Course and is responsible for Group Interoperability strategy.

Pamela K. Isom is the Chief Architect for complex cloud integration and application innovation services such as serious games. She joined IBM in June 2000 and currently leads efforts that drive Smarter Planet efficiencies throughout client enterprises using, and often times enhancing, its’ Enterprise Architecture (EA). Pamela is a Distinguished Chief/Lead IT Architect with The Open Group where she leads the Cloud Business Use Cases Work Group.