Cloud computing 2013: how to navigate without a map
1. Cloud computing 2013: how to
navigate without a map
By David S. Linthicum
December 18, 2012
Cloud
2. Introduction
The year 2012 was another time of growth for cloud computing, and most of the larger providers gained a
bigger share of the ever-increasing market. We saw some outages, some acquisitions, and a lot of cloud
washing.
Overall, the state of cloud computing is still hype-driven and confusing. There are no clear maps or paths
to follow toward successful adoption of the cloud, but an awful lot of people are being asked to make the
journey. In 2012 CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, and even boards of directors pushed corporate IT to figure out the
cloud. This led to many Global 2000 IT organizations testing out cloud computing with small and
nonstrategic projects. The real work, however, will start in 2013.
At the same time, small businesses can’t get enough of cloud computing. Given the budgetary constraints
and the drive to do more with less, small business has become the largest segment of growth in the public
cloud computing market. While Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and Rackspace led the way,
new cloud upstarts began to fill in the technological gaps.
In 2013 IT organizations that support large enterprises will have to figure out how to successfully get
mission-critical systems onto public and private cloud computing platforms. Many would love to look to
the existing white-belted salesmen from Oracle, IBM, SAP, or other big software providers to help. But
there’s a new set of companies like Amazon that they need to consider as well.
Larger enterprises are waiting for the more-established enterprise software players to get their cloud
computing acts together. A few will, but most won’t find success in the cloud, which will become apparent
in 2013. Why? Selling technology as a service within a pay-per-use model is a huge cultural shift from
large enterprise license agreements and multimillion-dollar deals closed 10 minutes before midnight at
the end of the quarter. Cloud computing will be disruptive to the point that it kills off the larger software
beasts that currently dominate enterprises.
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3. Following the trends and technologies into the
New Year
The way the industry will use cloud computing technology in 2013 is not a matter of prediction but more
a matter of following the existing adoption patterns and trends into the New Year. Those trends,
discussed in detail below, include:
Continuing growth and acceptance of consumer-oriented clouds
Leveraging public clouds for small tactical projects within larger enterprises
Continuing rise of cloud standards and confusion
Merging big data and cloud-based resources
Moving to a private cloud and calling it “hybrid”
Asking for cloud forgiveness, not cloud permission
The rise of industry-specific clouds
The lines between IaaS and PaaS continuing to blur
Cloud security and governance moving from not being thought about to being afterthoughts
Continuing growth and acceptance of consumer-oriented clouds. This refers to the growth of
cloud providers such as Dropbox, Box, Apple’s iCloud, and others that focus on providing cloud-storage
services to normal, everyday consumers. Dropbox has been bragging about some large growth numbers
recently, but all will be experiencing a huge amount of interest in 2013 as end users and businesses seek
to find ways to synchronize their files among desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Count on new
features in the next year, such as support for integrated systems within automobiles and smart TVs and,
hopefully, new security features for both data at rest and in flight.
Leveraging public clouds for small tactical projects within larger enterprises. The companies
in the Global 2000 still distrust public clouds, and they will continue to leverage them only for small
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4. tactical needs, such as storage, in 2013. The aversion to public clouds will continue, based on groundless
fears. It will take time, not technology, to correct that misperception. Typically, big IaaS clouds will be
leveraged, including Amazon Web Services’, Google’s, and Rackspace’s, and some will go for HP’s brand-
new cloud computing service.
Continuing rise of cloud standards and the confusion around those standards. OpenStack
and CloudStack will continue to garner interest in 2013, and enterprises will seek to move into the clouds
that promise to avoid dreaded lock-in. However, as more and more technologies leverage OpenStack or
CloudStack in 2013, we’ll see that it’s more about committing to an ecosystem rather than an instance of a
technology. Thus, in 2013, while the promise is there, the ability to actually avoid lock-in is not.
In 2013 enterprises won’t gain much in the way of a truly open cloud. Rather, the real winners will be
those technology providers looking to jump into the cloud that don’t have to start from scratch. A base set
of IaaS code is available, as is the support of a growing community. Those who will gain the most from the
use of the OpenStack and CloudStack standards will be Cloudscaling, Citrix, Rackspace, Nebula, and
Piston Cloud, as well as big players such as IBM and HP.
Merging big data and cloud-based resources. This merge will accelerate in 2013. This includes the
appearance of a bunch of multi-petabyte enterprise databases that will begin to appear in public clouds.
This appearance will occur for a few core reasons, including the cost to support a highly distributed
Hadoop cluster and the need for elasticity in support of very intense uses of the data.
Mostly this will be basic analytics and the linking of those analytics back to business processes. IaaS
clouds will be the largest benefactors of this trend, including Amazon Web Services and Rackspace.
However, most IaaS clouds will see this trend and provide or enhance big data services to drive deeper
into this market.
Moving to a private cloud and calling it “hybrid.” This trend will be the way cloud computing is
sold in 2013. You don’t want to move to a public cloud. However, you also don’t want to admit that you’re
moving to a private cloud, since many in the industry don’t consider them real clouds. So, you’re moving
to a private cloud that will “one day” link up to a public cloud, thus you claim you’re going hybrid.
While this is the right approach for many enterprises, their refusing to use public cloud services removes
much of the value of cloud computing. However, the reality is that most of cloud computing occurs on
private clouds with the vision of leveraging public clouds at some point in the future. No matter what you
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5. think of private clouds, they will continue to grow in 2013, with companies such as Eucalyptus,
Cloudscaling, and Nebula leading the parade.
Asking for cloud forgiveness, not cloud permission. In 2013 we’ll see a ton of cloud computing
leveraged within larger enterprises through rogue projects such as using a public IaaS cloud to meet
storage needs or building a business application on a public PaaS provider. The projects run outside the
control of enterprise IT. These off-the-books projects will be applications built on PaaS platforms, such as
Engine Yard, Red Hat, and Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk. Or they will be built on storage rented from
Rackspace or Google.
Whatever the reasons, much of cloud computing’s growth will emerge in 2013 from those not sanctioned
by IT but nevertheless tasked to solve a business problem. They will find cloud computing the best path to
meet their goals. IT will have to pull in many of these projects at some point. We project that will occur
toward the end of 2013 as the business demands it.
The rise of industry-specific clouds. In the next year we’ll see the rise of mature IaaS and PaaS
clouds that are purpose-built to serve specific vertical markets, such as health care, finance, retail, and
manufacturing. Cloud computing providers will take this approach to meet the demands of the
specialized security, processes, and compliance requirements for each vertical market, as well as to sell
more products into those markets.
The lines between IaaS and PaaS continuing to blur. In 2013 the IaaS clouds will continue to add
PaaS services, such as Elastic Beanstalk showing up in the Amazon Stack. We will also see PaaS players
offer IaaS-type services. For example, Google App Engine has already started offering these services by
adding storage, database, and more application-hosting capabilities. This trend will continue in 2013, as
those who select PaaS products look for more-holistic services from both PaaS and IaaS providers, so
much so that these two distinct clarifications of cloud computing merge into one type of service.
While this was a mere trend in 2012, the combination of these services is a foregone conclusion in 2013.
That’s good news for the larger players that can afford to purchase or build additional services. It’s
obviously bad news for the smaller players that have to stick with a niche. Thus, count on a great deal of
merger and acquisition activities in this space in 2013.
Cloud security and governance moving from not being thought about to being
afterthoughts. While we were so focused on just getting cloud systems up and running, security and
governance planning fell by the wayside. In 2013 the industry will be fixing many of these oversights, and
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6. security and governance will begin to make more sense and receive more attention from those
implementing cloud-based systems.
In 2013 there will be a renewed focus on security, specifically on technologies that provide identity-based
security with cloud computing in mind, including Ping Identity and Symplified. For most enterprises, this
is a fundamental change in how they manage, govern, and secure their core systems. At one point simple
and traditional security solutions were a fine fit. However, today we need to deal with services, hardware,
data, users, and even mobile devices through the use of identity-based approaches just to keep track of it
all.
Cloud governance is a bit more complex, and the area will grow substantially in 2013. It’s about managing
resources, typically creating automated policies to make sure that everything is doing what it should be
doing and everyone is being monitored and controlled. The types of technology offerings within the
marketplace today vary greatly, with the leading companies including RightScale, enStratus, and Layer 7.
Again, all take very different approaches to cloud governance and cloud management.
Creating your own map into 2013
The world of cloud computing will continue to grow along very familiar patterns in 2013. This type of
technology is not adopted suddenly, and most of the growth will be steady and sustainable. The cloud
computing revolution will be more of an evolution, and I suspect that’s for the best.
The way to get ready for the continued emergence of cloud computing in 2013 is to take a look deep into
your data, processes, workloads, and applications to determine just what your needs will be. Then,
prioritize the effort to look at the potential for cloud computing and the areas of IT that will benefit most
from the use of cloud computing technology, whether it’s public, private, or hybrid. Understand the
resources you have on tap, consider what you can really accomplish over 2013 and beyond, and then set a
course.
For instance, an IT shop takes steps to understand the storage requirements of the business, near and
short term, including the cost of creating and maintaining storage on-premise and when using public
clouds. With this information it’s easy to figure out what technology to leverage, including cloud
computing. Then, using this information, put the plans in place to begin a stepwise migration over time to
the cloud as it makes sense for the business.
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7. By default, most existing cloud projects started without a road map. Those maps still aren’t precise, but
more details are being drawn in every day and the journey is no longer as perilous or filled with
unknowns. The pioneers have taken the arrows. Now it’s time for more companies to start their journey
and join the migration.
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