Happy new year to fellow Cloud technologists, vendors, capitalists and enthusiasts! There are almost too many Cloud year-in-review and Predictions to keep track of, and I apologize for adding yet another to the list, but these three predictions were inspired by a variety of sources, including smart work colleagues, respected industry voices and random online sources. I've tried to give credit where it's due. I look forward to sharing another very exciting year in the cloud community with you.
1. Cloud becomes the default IT platform – We’re seeing growth estimates of 20-30% for public cloud offerings, and anywhere from 10-15% of IT spending being redirected to the cloud, so it should be a safe bet that Cloud will continue to grow in 2011. But 2011may be the tipping point where for most companies, IT Project leaders will have to start considering a cloud option for every new project, and perhaps will be required to present the more demanding business case for On-Premise deployment versus the default of using Amazon, Azure or a SaaS provider.
2. Hybrid cloud becomes the key battlefield – For now, most investment has been clearly either internal ‘private’ cloud or external SaaS, PaaS or IaaS, and never the twain shall meet. IT teams in 2011 will have an epiphany that it all needs to connect together, whether because of performance, compliance or manageability. Expect to see wide adoption of heterogeneous cloud management tools, continued investment and growth in the WAN optimization and cloud gateway space, as well as the convergence of SAN/LAN/WAN capabilities within underlying networking gear.
3. Cloud M&A Peaks – Fueled by a low growth environment and cheap capital, we can expect to see a number of acquisitions across the IT landscape, including mega deals like Oracle buying Salesforce.com and/or CSC, IBM buying NetApp, HP buying SAP. And specific Cloud-related deals will also rise, with vendors filling networking and capabilities gaps, such as Cisco buying Riverbed, Dell buying Brocade, and Cloud management tools like Rightscale, Abiquo and Joyent being snapped up and folded into the IT management suites of IBM and HP.
Special thanks to: Brook Reams http://brook.reams.me/, Datapipe http://www.datapipe.com/, IDC www.idc.com, Channel Buzz Canada http://www.channelbuzz.ca
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