Top 10--Cloud's Transformational Impacts in 2013

Did you read the interesting insight Top 10 Transformational Impacts of the Cloud in 2013 delivered by the tech major NJVC?

Here are the top 10:

1. Cloud technologies will converge.

2. Custom software will hit the cloud.

3. Integration will become the new “killer app.”

4. India and outsourcing countries will drive industry adoption of PaaS worldwide.

5. Major data centers will go undergo a “survival-of-the-fittest” scenario.

6. Health IT will adopt PaaS to replace niche “dinosaur” apps.

7. Organizations will rapidly adopt cloud services brokerages.

8. The U.S. government will re-think major IT contracts.

9. Innovation and entrepreneurship will hit overdrive.

10. Cloud adoption will move from an option to a "must have."


Read the whole report for a better insight.

Differentiate Business and Tech Need

Did you adopt Cloud because Business dictated it or was it a technology requirement and decision? If it is the former, then the approach might lead to a potential failure. The reason being that such cloud initiatves moved with no clear requirements or metrics to measure the objectives or a strategy to keep in pace with the technological need of the organization.

Cloud calls for a paradigm shift from legacy to the latest. It calls for a different approach to procure, deploy, monitor, manage and control IT.

It is important to remember that Cloud should not be a standalone decision of Business or Tech, rather it would be a joint approach and decision so as to seamlessly integarte the technological need with the business objectives of the organization.

Cloud Workforce Challenge

Organizations are adopting cloud at a good pace. But the challenge is finding the appropriate and experienced people in the cloud domain. No wondor finding a cloud professional seems to be a challenge for the HR.

But one thing organizations need to keep in mind is that cloud is a new tech so obviously finding the appropriate professional for the role would be challenge at least for the next two years. Hence, in this scenario it would make sense for the organizations to hitch their cloud wagon with some experienced vendor. Or if you want to do it on your own, better train your own workforce and take them to next level of cloud competent professional.

Build Your Cloud Strategy before adopting

Recently, I have been seeing reports of a number of companies facing issues with Cloud. Upon closer inspection, it seems that those companies seemed to have adopted Cloud without really having a strategy or planning out the Cloud roadmap.

The main reason being that it is easy to adopt Cloud nowadays-- just go on the web, search for a vendor and pay!! Bingo, you are on Cloud!!

But you seem to be missing the basic tenet of management-- have a plan, have a strategy!! Without a plan or a srategy you will end up in a mess. Remember Cloud gives you easy access to tech and apps, but it's not magic wand to take care of your unknown issues.

So plan, build a stratgey and then adopt Cloud!! And then you will see the magic of Cloud 

BaaS for Mobile apps developers

BaaS or Backend as a Service has come as boon for the mobile app development industry. The mobile developer and organizations are extremely skilled in creating or developing customer facing interfaces, but the back-end becomes a challenge for them.

BaaS can potentially take care of all the back-end infrastructure requirements of the mobile apps industry, and enable the organizations to focus on their core skill. Interestingly, back-end-as-a-service not only gives you the flexibility and scalability but also provides you with an integration platform into the existing enterprise services.

This Cloud service has captured a niche market, and is exciting enough to make a large number of vendors add it to their lists of growing Cloud offerings.

Manage Your Cloud Access with Simple Cloud Identity Management

Identity Management is a big task for the Cloud solution providers. Currently out of the 4 As (authentication, authorization, account management and audit logging) of Identity Management, Authentication is only usually used to provide access to cloud solutions. So for enterprises it is a big challenge to determine which standard protocol to use to create/delete/control/manage cloud identities.

The Simple Cloud Identity Management (SCIM) protocol seems to be ideal for Cloud identity management. It reportedly enables smooth integration and also easy to develop, and is based on strong authentication, authorization, and privacy principles.

Please do share your experiences with Simple Cloud Identity Management!

The recent Gartner forecasts show that Cloud is on a high in India. Here are the pointers of the report:

 

• The public cloud services market predicted to grow at 32.4 percent in 2012 to total US$ 326.2 million.
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is the largest segment, and is expected to grow to US$ 115.6 million in 2012.

• Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is expected to grow from US$ 35.2 million in 2011 to US$ 42.7 million in 2012.
• BpaaS (business process-as-a-service) is expected to grow to US$ 112.1 million in 2012 from US$ 90.3 million in 2011.
• By 2016, cloud computing services will become the largest single segment within the public cloud services market in India, growing to US$ 140.8 million, and accounting for about 14 percent of total public cloud services spending.

EC: Improve Cloud Contracts

I have often emphasized on the need for clear and simple contracts and SLAs for the Cloud. Many of the cloud vendors provide contracts and present SLAs that can confuse and mislead the organizations looking to adopt cloud solutions.

The European Commission (EC) has woken up to the fact that Cloud computing needs better contracts. EC has asked the cloud firms to provide improved contracts which can help avert costly legal disputes and do away with privacy concerns. This step by EC will give a major boost to the cloud industry which can help organizations cut cost but improve their technology. This can also help the cloud industry help build trust among the organization that are apprehensive of adopting cloud due to still floating rumors about security & privacy concern.

Secure Your Personal data on Cloud

Read this excellent article Tips on secure cloud computing. As you move your personal data to the cloud, it’s very important that you secure them. If you lose your personal data, that would be your biggest loss. So secure them; and the steps taken, can be very simple and basic . When you walk out of your house, you close your doors, windows and then lock the front door securely; maybe, you even put on your security system so as to ensure that robbers/thieves cannot go inside the house when you are away. Basically, you will have to go with the same mentality to protect your data in the cloud, and to ensure against loss/theft.

High on Cloud

North Bridge Venture Partners recently announced the results of its second annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey. The 2012 survey captures current industry perceptions, sentiments and emerging trends in cloud computing.

 

Key Findings in the Survey include:

• Companies are accelerating their trust in cloud solutions.
• Scalability remains the top reason for adopting the cloud. Business agility ranked second among drivers for cloud adoption.
• Security remains the primary inhibitor to adoption in the burgeoning cloud marketplace , followed by regulatory compliance and vendor lock-in.
• Software as a service (SaaS) is currently, and is expected to remain the primary type of cloud investment.
• Platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will see significant growth in the next five years.
• The top 3 areas in which “cloud formations” are coming together are backup and archiving, business continuity, collaboration tools, and big data processing.
• Cloud users are shifting sentiments with regard to public vs. hybrid cloud platforms.
• With an increase in trust of the cloud, big data is emerging as a major focus for vendors and end-users alike.

Reqs for Cloud Apps

We talk about the cloud and its benefits all the time. But to get the benefit of cloud adoption, there are certain requirements. In nutshell-- you need a Cloud application but do you know what you should look to ensure that you make the right choice?

Before making the decision, ensure:

a) Whether the application is multi-tenant in true sense. The main benefit of the cloud applications is that many could access the application without any issues or creating problems for each other. It’s like staying in an apartment with many tenants that too in harmony.

b) Is the solution really scalable? You as an organization would grow, and can the solution keep in pace with your growth? Hence scalability becomes a major requirement.

c) Can it integrate seamlessly? Unless it integrates without any issues with your business critical applications and into your organization, there won’t be much help in using the solution.

d) How secured is it? You would not want any security breaches or intrusion into your systems. So security forms a critical concern.

e) Can it be deployed easily and quickly? Faster deployment saves money and time, and ensures that your systems are up for business faster.

f) Do you have control over it?

Personal Cloud to beat the PC

Tech Research Firm, Gartner recently declared, "The personal cloud is poised to eclipse the PC as the hub of consumers' digital lives by 2014 as rapid growth in the use of apps and services introduces a new paradigm for how people store, synchronize, share and stream content."

Michael Gartenberg, Research Director at Gartner mentioned, “The personal cloud isn't a single offering, but a reflection of consumers' expectation that their content will flow seamlessly as the result of a combination of services that overlap the consumer, business and government domains. It encompasses content storage, synchronization, sharing and streaming, as well as context-based access.”

Competition in the personal cloud market to grow in the following areas:
Mobility and Location: Contextual devices and platforms are evolving, giving consumers the ability to access relevant information from the location of their choosing on their favorite devices.
Platform Independence: The result of the move from PC to the cloud will be that the core purchase driver for consumers will shift from the operating system to the nature and function of the personal cloud services available to a platform. Platforms will not be judged solely by number of apps, but also by the availability of core personal cloud services for business and personal needs, for both content creation and content consumption.
Seamless Synchronization: Since the personal cloud comprises different service offerings, seamless synchronization will be essential for success. At the simplest level, this means synchronization of content stored locally and mirrored to a given service. This content could be office documents and music and video collections, but could also extend to other types.

Cloud for Consumers

Google is finally out with Google Drive, the cloud based service for users.

It joins the competitive market of cloud storage providers like Microsft SkyDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive and Apple iCloud.

 Personally, I have been using Skydrive, and have no issues as such with it. I have seen that Amazon Cloud Drive also works fine. Additionally, Apple users love iCloud for its easy to use facility.

Google does seem to be a late entrant to the game. And then with the failure of Buzz, Orkut and not so well received Google+, the company must be betting on it.

But focusing on things like free 5 MB space won't do good for Google, as Amazon has been giving the same since long.

I have not really looked into the product to see how exactly is it different from the others. Like me, I am sure rest of the users would be looking for the extra something that would prompt them to choose one cloud storage solution over the other.

But I am thrilled! And am sure, we are going the Cloud Way--and that the right way, that is!

Cloud is Clean

Greenepeace's recent act in Seattle "How Clean is Your Cloud" seemed to have missed out on a major advantage of Cloud adoption. Its been proved the Cloud usage enhance efficiency- both in process and as well as power usage. Just imagine the amount of power that Cloud adopting organizations would have used if they had not moved to cloud. Be it SaaS, IaaS, PaaS or Public, Private, Hybrid cloud- it ensures less usage of power. 

So in a sense cloud saves power and enables organizations to cut down on power usage!

WLAN Management moving to Cloud

WLAN Management is slowly moving into the Cloud. Earlier it was deemed as a difficult and risky proposition. But the early adopters have already shown the benefits and those exciting results have prompted others to take up the same strategy of moving WLAN Management to the Cloud.

Well the benefits which are pretty obvious:
a) You can cut cost, and useless expenditure on setting up the infrastructure.
b) It enables you to maximize value.
c) It's scalable, hence if you grow fast and your technology requirement and bandwidth grows--it's no hassle.
d) You have more flexibility as you are not tied to a specific location.
f) Your dependency on having a physical location and all the asscociated costs also goes away.
e) Availability and Capacity Management will no longer be an issue, a Cloud based solution can ensure better reliability and 24x7x365 availability

If you have seen more benefits, please feel free to share with me.

Cloud makes sense for web based sites

Almost all the web based sites, from the large enterprises to SMEs, are today adopting Cloud! And why not? The Cloud makes perfect fit for the web based sites---whether for applications or infrastructure or platform usage.

The most important for these sites are scalability and speed, and what else but cloud provide them with the best scalability and speed model. You can quickly get the resources to keep in pace with the growth of your enterprise via the Cloud model. Moreso it enables prompt and immediate access—almost real-time. And in addition, you pay what you need—hence, do away with useless and expensive investment!

Cloud Ushers a Fundamental Change

A question was recently posed to me - “What fundamental change has Cloud ushered in?”

Well, my answer was simple - “The major change that the Cloud has brought in is that today there is paradigm shift in the way we use the computing resources?”

You may say that every new technological change in the IT industry starting from the mainframes to client-server peiod has brought in a similar wave- a change in the way we use computing resources.

True, but the changes and benefits that has been brought about by Cloud are vast. It enables sharing, cuts down cost, allows cost effective access to expensive applications and infrastructure, improves efficiency, makes everything scalable, increases the time to adopt new technology and applications, and pretty much changes the way we conduct our business.

I support Cloud. Do you?

Don't be a Wanna-Be Cloud Player!

Do you have a genuine cloud application/solution? Or, are you a ‘me too’ cloud vendor offering our previous solutions as a SaaS?

If you are a ‘me too’ joiner and simply offering your current apps/solutions as a SaaS – the market verdict is currently showing you the door. But yeah, you might still be successful if you innovatively offer your applications via the cloud. Because the SMB market which might have been eyeing your applications for a long time but could not afford them earlier might go via the cloud as it is cost effective. That’s it! That would be the limit of your success.

So be a cloud mover! Offer solutions that are genuine cloud specific. That success of salesforce, as opposed to many of their wanna-be competitors, is mainly due to their cloud focus strategy. And it is not hard to find out the real cloud players and ‘me too’ ones. After all, it is not difficult to differentiate the genuine one from the wanna-be.

So become a genuine cloud player to make a profound impact on the Clould Market-place!

Cloud Reseller--Offer Value or Fade Away

Are you a Cloud re-seller or a channel partner to a Cloud provider? Well then, it is time for you to move your focus from simple reselling of cloud products and services—to providing value added services to the customers. Many of the resellers have indeed moved their focus and are providing a value---but they are very few. The clear message that is bound to hit you with a bang in 2012 -- You are of no use to the Cloud customers!

The Cloud customers can directly engage with the cloud providers, and start using the products and services directly. Remember that customers will use the internet to gain access to cloud solutions, and that make you negligible.

But resellers can definitely still add value if they can provide benefits and advantages that is usually not found in-house. So Resellers pull up of your socks, learn extensively about the cloud and move away from the comfort zone of being the go-between the providers and the direct customers. The market of Cloud 2012 will see what benefit you offer, or you will end up folding your business.

So your mantra and big question in the Cloud era should be – What value can you offer?

2012-- Hail the mighty Cloud

2012 will definitely be the year of the Cloud. The 'lets-watch and see' wagons are expected to join the Cloud caravan as they have now see organizations  benefiting from the cloud and security fears also have been taken care of to a large extent. Here's my prediction for Cloud 2012:

1. Hybrid cloud would become more popular among the organizations who want to contol their business critical applications but is open to go to the Cloud for the less critical solutions.
2. Large enetrpises will still focus on private Clouds as they still crave for the control of their aplications and solutions.
3. SMB will go to Public Cloud in large numbers as it offers them cost effective access to the technically advanced products which were earlier out of their reach.
4. Cloud will kill the piracy industry to a large extent.
5. Instead of standalone cloud poviders, those providing cloud based applications & solutions along with the service will rule the roost. 
6. 2012 will see a large scale adoption of Cloud, and will become the most sought after technology.