Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2013. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by George Watt, VP of Corporate Strategy at CA Technologies
Cloud Predictions for 2013: Cloud Computing's Sophomore Year
While I am sure there will be many exciting cloud computing
developments in the coming year, perhaps the most exciting one will be that
cloud computing will no longer be exciting. As case studies of the benefits of
cloud are beginning to surface in even the most conservative and security
conscious of domains such as healthcare, government, and accounting, its
benefits are certainly becoming much more broadly understood. Thus, cloud itself
will not be that exciting. With that as context, here are a few things I expect
might happen in 2013:
1. The year of
community clouds
Community clouds provide service to members of groups with
shared objectives or constraints. It is in the context of the latter that I
believe the popularity of community clouds will rise in 2013. Organizations
with common challenges such as the security and compliance constraints shared
by healthcare organizations can better address those requirements by leveraging
the high caliber resources and personnel that community clouds can provide. In
addition, it will become more widely understood that community clouds of
sufficient size can provide most, if not all, of the economic benefits of
public clouds. Public cloud providers will also realize this presents good
business opportunities and they will begin to increase their specialized,
community, or vertical cloud offerings.
2. Brace for brokers
Though still nascent, next year I expect to see some (cloud)
service brokers emerge. While it won't become the dominant model in 2013, I do
expect that organizations will - consciously or subconsciously - begin
preparing for that it. They will start to think harder about service level
agreements (SLAs) and service models that support it. Brokers who provide "one
throat to grab" SLAs will become increasingly attractive as organizations become
more comfortable with the various types of services they should acquire from
the cloud, and as the service landscape becomes even more complex. In larger
enterprises, savvy IT leaders and CIOs will begin to adopt the broker role; and
that transition may be imperceptible to most. We will also see the return of an
emphasis on service-oriented architectures (SOA) that provide flexibility and
enable businesses to get the most from cloud services.
3. SLAs take center
stage
The buzz surrounding cloud SLAs has begun to increase of
late. I expect discussion and debate over cloud SLAs to reach a crescendo in
the coming year. As businesses of all sizes begin to further leverage cloud
services they will get serious about SLAs and how to measure them. A serious or
spectacular service related event (good or bad) may serve as the impetus for increased
focus. Larger enterprises - which have lots of experience creating and
negotiating both sides of SLAs - will help drive discipline, completeness, and
sanity to cloud SLAs; as will the large providers they have long trusted, as
those providers increase their cloud service offerings.
As the increased adoption of cloud services by larger
businesses delivers an incentive to provide more reasonable SLAs - and, more
importantly, the resilience, systems, and processes required to ensure SLA
violations are unlikely to be triggered - experienced providers, both large and
small, will offer more robust and reasonable SLAs and others will be forced to
follow. Though I anticipate positive progress, there's one caveat: just because
a provider commits to an SLA does not mean they are capable of delivering to
it.
4. Apps get the
wrecking ball
OK, not so much the wrecking ball. More like a precise
renovation driven both by cloud and mobile computing. Today's mobile applications
have proven the value that atomization (delivering small, limited - or even
single - function applications) delivers to both the app consumer and the app
provider. Certainly cloud services will need to support applications of this
nature, though there is another trend I expect to see emerge in 2013. More
businesses will begin to realize that pulling functionality out of their existing,
large applications and into atomized services will enable them to respond to
requests for changes more quickly. Changes to these smaller services will require
less testing (compared to the mammoth apps), will present much less risk, and
will be much less costly to maintain and test. Extracting services in this way
also creates an opportunity for some of those services to be provided via cloud
computing. In addition more applications will be architected specifically for
cloud computing. These cloud architected applications will exploit the
increased resilience, agility, and performance cloud computing can offer. A few
companies, Netflix for one, have already demonstrated many of those benefits.
5. A high-impact
cyber attack is launched from a cloud
Those who specialize in IT security appear to broadly agree
that a catastrophic, or highly visible or impactful, cyber attack is bound to
happen. And just as cloud computing offers benefits such as performance,
scalability, and resilience to legitimate businesses and citizens; it also
offers those benefits to people with more sinister objectives. And, public
cloud services may offer them the added benefit of anonymity, or at least the
perception thereof. It affords those malevolent people with a platform from
which they could launch a low-cost, high impact attack. While many providers
are diligently looking for inbound attacks, they may not be equipped to sense
something outbound. If they sense it, they may not be able to stop it (or stop
it quickly enough), and they may even be prevented or delayed by the
regulations and laws to which they are subject. Such an event could lead to
even more tension between governments in the context of data location and other
such regulations.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." - Derek Bok
Like any sophomore, we in cloud computing have begun to
learn from our experience, and from our freshman missteps. And, like most
sophomores, we are likely to make a few more mistakes throughout our journey. Though
I believe both cloud computing and business consumers' understanding of its
value, applicability, and benefits have matured immensely in the past year or
two. Conversations have evolved from "if"
to "what", "when", and "where," and
they will continue on this trajectory in 2013.
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About the Author
George
Watt is VP of Corporate Strategy at CA Technologies. For more than 25 years, he
has been helping customers simplify and automate their complex IT
infrastructures. Previously, George founded CA Technologies Engineering
Services team responsible for protecting the company's intellectual property,
managing the consolidated source code repository, and providing automation and
development tools. Formerly a CA customer, George joined the company in 1988 as
a Systems Engineer and later transitioning into many roles over two decades,
including leading R&D field teams in Canada and other technical SWAT Teams.
Follow George on Twitter @GeorgeDWatt and read is blog at http://pragmaticcloud.wordpress.com/.