What is the future of Cloud Computing and Backup?

The cloud seems to be the buzz word of today’s businesses. As we are approaching year 2012 everybody wants to go ‘cloud’. And there are obvious advantages for businesses that I have already written about in another article. One of the major advantages of cloud services is the scalability on a per per use basis. If your site’s traffic suddently increases or if your backup needs grow, so does your cloud storage or server power. In the end ‘the cloud’ is just service that you can rent but obviously it is a nice and catchy phrase. But where is cloud computing and backup heading in future? What else can businesses as well as individuals expect to see from those services?

My crystal ball doesn’t always work unfortunately, but there are some strong indicators where this cloud computing and backup is going.

Cloud computing will allow everybody to be a service provider

Cloud computing enables small businesses and young entrepreneurs to get their idea starting without a huge entrance barrier that would greatly reduce chances of that idea being released to the market. Those ideas can be software-as-a-service or other service oriented products that cater either to the public or to other businesses. I am convinced that providers are going to be more willing to experiment with new ideas because the cloud avoids wasting resources which are desperately needed in other areas of the company.

There will be a security breach in 2012

We hear about security breaches every time. Credit card information gets stolen, whole networks break open, hackers find yet another way of manipulating computer systems to their needs and so much more. Though the level of security improves constantly there is always room for human or technical failure. I do not want to mention specific data breaches in the recent past because it would not fit in this article but especially among online backup providers there have been quite a few accidents. Therefore it is important to do your due diligence and assess the provider’s history but also you need to think about what kind of data you want to store online.

Social Analytics

This one correlated with my first topic a little bit. Social analytics is on the rise. Businesses can’t be successful without the use of social media. But how to use social media correctly and, most importantly, how can a business measure success. That’s why I think social monitoring is going to be the trending topic of 2012 as more services are able to emerge thanks to the cloud and thus infrastructure accessability.

Infrastructure irrelevance

In 2012 it finally won’t matter the infrastructure your company is one. Doesn’t matter if you are a sole prorietor working in your garage or a Fortune 500 company, you can scale your business up as demand increases. Especially for website owners who also offer dynamic Ajax interaction on their websites it doesn’t matter how popular your site becomes or if Techcrunch links to your site. Your website will remain stable and your customers will enjoy their stay.

Platform as a service

Paas, or Platform as a service, will enable many businesses and individuals to develop apps and other web based tools on highly scalable platforms in the cloud. But what is actually the difference between SaaS (Software as a service) and everything else. I think we will see a strong definition of the term in the near future thanks to new emerging providers that help indentifying the needs better.

Dominance of AWS

Amazon Web Service is certainly one the most successful cloud computing provider. Whether we talk about Simple Storage (S3) or high availability data bases Amazon is often times the market leader. Many business go for Amazon because they offer the best price and also have been on the market for a very long time – and sustainability is what’s important to businesses.

Categorization of data

Data is not data and individuals as well as businesses will soon realize that as well. There is no need to store data on high speed disks if only accessed once a month. In my interview with SpiderOak’s CEO Ethan Oberman confirms this fact. We’ll see that more businesses will do cloud backup but they’ll dedicate more resources into finding what classes of data they have and how to store it.

End of the cloud hype

Today everybody is talking about the cloud. But in 2012 we’ll hear that term less. Because it will have got so commonplace that we’re no longer capable imagining other types of online storage and data management. We already see that are devices we use get smaller and smaller, the mobile trend is stronger than ever before. And with the availability of high performance internet connection whereever we are we can connect to our ‘cloud’ all the time.

What’s your guess?

Tell me: what is your prediction for cloud computing in 2012 and beyond? I would love to hear your thoughts so, please leave a comment!

Tagged as: cloud computing, future, SaaS