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2012 Forecast - Heavy Clouds Bring Winds of Change in Open Source, Security Climate

Contributed Article by Larry Warnock, CEO, Gazzang

2011 was the year of cloud "talk". 2012 is the year of cloud "action". While organizations are ready to take off into the cloud, they have been stalled due to lack of automation and support tools. 2012 is the year all that changes. Automation and support applications have seen heavy development and quality assurance testing this past year and will move into mass-deployment in 2012. Wheels up, the runway is about to clear.

Of course as we see cloud widespread cloud adoption, we'll see new changes in the cloud landscape. These include:

• Compression technologies will see greater demand as the need for storage capacity continues to grow. Recent natural disasters in Asia have created a shortage of disk drive production that is now causing a ripple effect in cloud storage costs.
  

• OpenStack will become a compelling option with high profile use cases.
  

• Open source databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and particularly NoSQL (MongoDB, Cassandra, Hadoop and others) will continue to gain momentum over commercial versions due to their reduced cost, increased flexibility and extreme scalability. And being Linux based, they will continue to pull market share from Unix and Windows Server based products, especially as enterprises move apps to the cloud or SaaS delivery model.

• The cloud will drive more and more encryption, especially for mulit-tenant applications in the cloud, and within SaaS and PaaS. 

• We'll see a proliferation of specialized cloud "types" developed to fulfill specific business needs. Think: higher security clouds for HIPAA and PCI compliance requirements.
  

• Telcos will be the big drivers in moving enterprises to the cloud, even more aggressively than most could anticipate. They understand how to deliver "carrier-grade"services and will make some big steps.
  

• The mobile device security will become much more important. As more and more apps go mobile, hackers will find new ways to leverage devices to "open doors" into enterprises.
  

Finally, while 2011 saw an incredible number of breaches - RSA, Lockheed Martin, Epsilon, the Fox broadcast network, PBS and Citibank to name just a few - it's only going to get worse. In 2012, I think we'll see a major SaaS provider experience a catastrophic data breach due to inadequate security controls. The damage could be monumental.

In the New Year we'll see vendors create new modes of protection, moving their focus from application reliability and availability to greater data security and encryption.

So put up your tray tables and buckle up. It's going to be an exciting (if occasionally) bumpy ride!

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About the Author

Larry Warnock, President and CEO of Gazzang.

Larry Warnock is responsible for Gazzang's leadership, operations and strategic direction. He has more than 27 years of operational expertise working with startups and established technology companies, particularly in the enterprise software and data center tools markets. Larry is the former president and CEO of Phurnace Software, a leading developer of software that accelerates the deployment and configuration of Java-based web applications, acquired by BMC Software in 2009.  Before joining Phurnace, Larry held senior executive positions at Vignette, OnLink Technologies (acquired by Siebel Systems) and Documentum. He was also venture partner at AV Labs (the company incubator for Austin Ventures), where he assisted with the incubation of several early-stage software companies.

Larry earned a bachelor of business administration in marketing from Texas A&M University, and is a frequent lecturer at the Mays School of Business at Texas A&M University, the McCombs School of Business at theUniversity of Texas at Austin, and at the Acton Entrepreneurial MBA program at Hardin-Simmons University. Larry also serves on the executive committee of the board of directors for the Austin Technology Council (ATC), a non-profit focusing on the advancement of the technology community in Central Texas.