Cloud predictions for 2013: Collabera

BANGALORE, INDIA: 2012 saw most of the hype around cloud computing as a technology paradigm, and Cloud as a platform die down. In the last 12-18 months, cloud computing has found its way into the technology road maps of most CIOs. We also saw cloud becoming the backbone of personal computing. Consumers are using cloud based services to store their entire digital life - be it photos, music or their social life and connections. More or less, the initial apprehensions around cloud security and privacy have been either addressed, or at least put aside!

2013 will see the continued evolution of cloud into a mainstream computing and infrastructure platform. Most of the learnings from the consumer cloud revolution will be applied in the enterprise IT world. While cloud based offerings proliferate and platforms become more stable and cost effective, the business case for adopting cloud will become more and more obvious and difficult to overlook. As existing hardware investments live through their depreciation, CIOs will look at cloud based virtual environments as opposed to private data centre based environments.

Following in the footsteps of consumer focused cloud services, 2013 will see more and more non-mission critical and non-competitive IT processes being commoditized and offered via a 'Software as a Service' model. While enterprise processes such as payroll have been outsourced in recent years, we will witness more such processes - like order management, purchase order process, common HR processes etc - being offered as services off the cloud.

Another trend that will emerge as a result of increased adoption will be cloud based integration and brokerage. As enterprises rely on multiple cloud based processes and services, seamless integration between them will be essential for a unified user experience. Given that multiple cloud based processes and sub-processes, as well as their equivalents within the enterprise will need to be orchestrated to realize the end-to-end business process, cloud based brokering solutions will start to emerge.

2013 will also see the inevitable confluence of social, cloud and mobility coming into the enterprise world. The convergence of these three phenomena is already defining (or redefining!) the consumer digital experience. CIOs will have to start leveraging these three interconnected technology paradigms within their enterprise, given that our personal and professional digital lives are beginning to merge, with the distinctions between the two increasingly blurring.

While it has been mostly cloudy all these years, 2013 will be the year when the silver lining around the cloud begins to appear!

The author is vice president at Collabera Labs.