Gartner: Brace Yourself for Cloud Computing

Nice, comprehensive article from Gartner & CNET's Stephen Shankland on the continued growth of Cloud computing. Is it just me or do some of these findings just highlight how far behind large enterprises are compared to small, nimble companies that have been leveraging the cloud for years?

ORLANDO, Fla.--Cloud computing isn't going to be vapor much longer, Gartner said Tuesday.
The general idea--shared computing services accessible over the Internet that can expand or contract on demand--topped Gartner's list of the 10 top technologies that information technology personnel need to plan for. It's complicated, poses security risks, and computing technology companies are latching onto the buzzword in droves, but the phenomenon should be taken seriously, said analyst Dave Cearley here at the Gartner Symposium.

Specifically, companies should figure out what cloud services might give them value, how to write applications that run on cloud services, and whether they should build their own private clouds that use Internet-style networking technology within a company's firewall.
Cloud computing takes several forms, from the nuts and bolts of Amazon Web Services to the more finished foundation of Google App Engine to the full-on application of Salesforce.com. Companies should figure out what if any of those approaches are most suited to their challenges, Gartner said.

The advice came as part of a talk on top trends coming in 2010 that companies should incorporate into their strategic planning, if not necessarily their own computer systems. The full list of 10: 1. cloud computing; 2. advanced analytics; 3. client computing; 4. IT for green; 5. reshaping the data center; 6. social computing; 7. security--activity monitoring; 8. flash memory; 9. virtualization for availability; and 10. mobile applications.
Second on the list is virtualization--not just in the broad sense of technology that lets a single computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously, where it's become a fixture in data centers, but as a means to keep computing services up and running despite computer failures, said analyst Carl Claunch.
Virtual machines can be moved from one physical machine to another today. Later, by keeping two machines tightly synchronized, a failure in a primary machine can be eased over rapidly by moving the active service to the backup machine, Claunch said.
"We should start seeing this roll out in the next year or two from vendors," he said.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ken Ewell on October 24, 2009 at 4:45pm

I think that timeline is misleading Dan. The asterisk is a hint that it is. I can tell you that I broke with the bigger mini-computer and brought my first IBM PC when they introduced 16 bit technology with the Intel 80286 chip. That was in 1984. It was not until Windows 95 that any sort of personalization was possible. Persistence, session management and personalization were topics at meetings I attended between 1998 and 2002. So I just don't trust those markers or 2 to 5 year estimates. A lot of these internet-era analysts have a strange sense of history. I predict that by his time line we are headed for the trough of disappointment in two to five years as cloud computing applications will be limited to clerical, consumer oriented buying-selling and social and networking applications -- not the serious data collection, storage and mining applications a large insurance banking, service or manufacturing company needs and desires.

Gartner smells that prudent companies that are not IT oriented will succumb to the facts and economic reality. They probably also smell the opportunity for the growth of the technology of mobile computing in the cloud --there is great fodder there for growth and many potential applications. The mobile and smart phone finally coming into its own at being the low cost "terminal" that Sun, Oracle and HP failed to deliver to corporate computing.

Going beyond 3g AND 5g clouds, I think to date, and into the future, cloud computing offers 'big-company' benefits to smaller concerns, especially those that may be geographically dispersed or just starting up. Larger companies, on the other-hand, have concerns about the privacy and security of their data that preclude the use of a public utility-like clouds. They are doing email in the cloud. Tax/Accounting, banking and insurance companies may use the concept of cloud computing, but they won't buy time from Amazon! I can predict that If H&R Block (a large technology consumer) takes to cloud computing it will be only in their own atmosphere.

The one thing I liked about the report is that advanced analytics (that's my field) came in at number 2, so things may be looking up after all.

Permalink Reply by Tavane Griffith on February 3, 2010 at 8:47pm