With just over 3 weeks to go until Christmas, it's that time of year again when analyst and research firms dust down their crystal balls and offer up their predictions on the state of things to come - many of which are predictably Cloudy.
Gartner, for example, reckons that by 2015, low-cost Cloud services will cannibalise up to 15% of top outsourcing players' revenue. Similar to what happened with the adoption of offshore delivery, it will be incumbent upon vendors to invest in and adopt a new Cloud-based, industrialised services strategy either directly or indirectly, internally or externally. The projected $1 trillion IT services market is at the beginning of a phase of further disruption, similar to the one the low-cost airlines have brought in the transportation industry.
It also predicts that by 2016, 40% of businesses will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of Cloud service. Gartner argues that inspectors' certifications will eventually become a viable alternative or complement to third-party testing. This means that instead of requesting that a third-party security vendor conduct testing on the enterprise's behalf, the enterprise will be satisfied by a Cloud provider's certificate stating that a reputable third-party security vendor has already tested its applications.
At year-end 2016, more than 50% of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public Cloud, argues the research firm which estimates that more than 20% of organisations have already begun to selectively store their customer-sensitive data in a hybrid architecture that is a combined deployment of their on-premises solution with a private and/or public Cloud provider in 2011.
And with an eye to a renewed Green agenda, Gartner suggests that by 2015, the prices for 80% of Cloud services will include a global energy surcharge. Noting that some Cloud data centre operators already include an energy surcharge in their pricing package Gartner analysts believe this trend will rapidly escalate to include the majority of operators — driven by competitive pressures and a "me too" approach. The knock on effect is that business and IT leaders and procurement specialists must expect to see energy costs isolated and included as a variable element in future Cloud service contracts.
Meanwhile rival analyst firm IDC predicts that 2012 will be a year of Cloud platform wars. The research firm says competition will characterise the world of Cloud services in 2012 as the strategic focus shifts from building infrastructure to the creation of application platforms and ecosystems. Here the battle for enterprise platform dominance is just getting underway with established players like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle facing serious challenges from Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com, and VMware.
As evidence of this challenge, IDC expects Amazon Web Services to exceed $1 billion in Cloud services business in 2012 with Google's Enterprise business to follow within 18 months.
IDC also expects a merger and acquisition (M&A) feeding frenzy as these companies seek to gain a competitive edge. Look for Microsoft to buy a content/media cloud, like Netflix, to provide a marketplace for its apps and content. Other prime targets for acquisition include Cloud Application/SaaS companies, like Workday, NetSuite, and Taleo.
First off the mark back in October was Nucleus Research which predicted that Cloud will change the nature of development. It noted that first Cloud made development faster, then more iterative. It now predicts that Cloud will make development even more virtual to a situation where companies don’t care where the developer is as long as good code is delivered on time. Crowdsourcing efforts and the integration of social networking tools into the development environment will, predicted Nucleus, provide opportunities for talented developers no matter where they live and challenge traditional systems integrators that are used to hiding behind billable hours and big bang projects.
