Game changers for cloud?

[#1]

I was reading a post titled: 3 game-changers in the cloud: Get ready -- or else from InfoWorld. The three items mentioned were:

1. Reduction in IT overhead creates a price advantage
2. Better use of business data
3. Expansion through new IT agility

Which all seemed to make sense for those who have not started down the cloud path, but it was not what I was expected from a post with that title. I thought it was going to be about game changers within the cloud space itself.

Here is what I think will be the cloud game changers (although we may not see them in 2012)?

1)      Standards – As we move into a truly interchangeable environment for the IaaS and PaaS space, cloud standards adoption will be very disruptive for those cloud players who don’t have efficient economies of scale. There are many efforts underway ranging from NIST to SNIA and the IEEE among others.
The fallout will be like the automotive market in the United States in the 20s and 30s, going from hundreds of “car manufacturers” down to a much smaller group.

2)      Low power processors – Solutions like HP’s Moonshot will have a significant impact on cloud market hardware purchases as more providers start to include an energy surcharge. Business and IT leaders and procurement specialists must expect to see energy costs isolated and included as a variable element in future cloud service contracts. This measure will be used to help differentiate pricing as IaaS becomes more commoditized.

3)      Software development tools – Most of the software that has been written to date are incapable of truly taking advantage of the parallel nature of cloud computing. This year will see many new software tools and languages that can shift the view of what’s possible to perform in a cloud environment. The industry buzzes with big data techniques but we have only seen some relatively simple implementations. The possibilities here are vast.

[#2]

Agree with your observation on the InfoWorld post, Charlie.  On your first comment around Cloud Standards, they do take some time to evolve going through a series of phases as I outline in my post on Top 5 phases of IaaS standards evolution.  Also, in addition to the standards bodies you list, The Open Group has published their first Technical Standard for the Cloud -- Service Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure.

[#3]

Here is another interesting article on 10 programming languages that could shake up IT.

[#4]

Interesting post, I would add that cloud is application centric, which means that standards and low-power servers are great but they benefit the vendors.  I think ultimately these aspects will be  be transparent, just a collection of stacks and APIs.  The world always drives IT to a commodity no matter how we fight it.

However I think the tools side is going to be interesting.  I think there will be two sets of tools (especially for big data applications), a quick and dirty set (awk, grep, etc) for quick prototyping and more sophisticated power tools for real work (once you know what you want to build).  This is how mobile apps are built, I think that's the model for cloud in the enterprise.

[#5]

Not sure what you mean by low-power servers benefiting the vendors. Those power consumption costs are passed along to the consumer one way or another. I agree that the lower power devices generally constrain the applications developer to some extent, but there are an ample number of applications where there would be little to no noticeable effect. 

I think you are separating the high performance, production tools (including designer tools) from the prototyping tools in your comment.

There is at least one set of tools that I think you might have left off those are the the functionality aggregators, unless you grouped them into the first set of tools. Many of these have elements of architecture tools as well.

I also assume in addition to awk, grep… quick and dirty data manipulators, you included all the visual prototyping tools in that prototyping kit.  

[#6]

Intelligent anylisys! How do you foresee cloud industry in 2012?
Would everybody be allowed to be a service provider?
Would there be any security breaches in 2012?

Could Cloud Managememt providers observe florishing market share this year ?

[#7]

Eva, I see you work for a cloud management provider -- I actually did a post around the cloud broker (cloud management) service space a while back -- so I included the link for that as well.

I could assume the rest of the questions were rhetorical, but I will attempt to address some of them anyway. Some of them were answered in my technology predictions for 2012 post. I believe the cloud industry (specifically around IaaS) is now assumed to be part of the "new normal" in business for 2012. There will be more breaches and the market for organizations that assist in business working through the opportunity cost issues of cloud will be increasing in 2012.

As far as if everyone will be allowed to be a service provider -- that is a question the market will answer. It is driven by supply and demand, as well as quality of service needs. It is also question of "could" vs. "should".