Cloud computing will continue to grow rapidly this year, research firm Ovum said.
Ovum further said cloud computing services, and the (social, mobile) applications that cloud platforms underpin, generate a lot of data, which in turn requires cloud services and applications to make sense of it.
Ovum said this trend connects with and fuels other industry trends such as the “Internet of things” (machine-to-machine communication and data processing, cloud computing-based smart cities, TVs or cars projects), open government data, consumerization of IT (with a variety of cross-device content centric public clouds.
Ovum released a series of reports on the trends on cloud computing for this year.
“Cloud computing promises to tackles two hitherto irreconcilable IT challenges: the need to reduce costs and the need to boost innovation,” said Laurent Lachal, senior analyst at Ovum. “It takes a lot of effort from vendors and enterprises to actually make it work, and they will succeed in making it work in 2013, both on their own and as part of increasingly complex ecosystems.”
Indeed, cloud computing in all its guises (public, private, and hybrid) is building momentum, evolving fast and becoming increasingly “enterprise-grade,” Ovum said.
“Cloud computing has barely reached the adolescence phase and it will take at least another five years for cloud computing to mature into adulthood,” Lachal said.
According to Ovum, 2013 will also see the emergence of cloud computing ecosystem. Public clouds are increasingly approached not only as technology delivery platforms but also as “ecosystem hubs” for cloud service providers and consumers.