At the recent Cloud Leadership Forum in Santa Clara, CA, CIOs, IT managers, analysts and vendors from across the globe came together to discuss the current challenges facing the world of cloud computing, as well as the advantages it can bring. Chaired by Frank Gens and John Gallant of IDC and IDG, respectively, the forum provided a number of useful insights into the potential future of the cloud.
A survey conducted by both of the companies showed that technology executives believe the cloud will have a significant impact on IT as a whole, and Frank Gens took the position that public clouds will take the lead from private cloud and VPS solutions far more quickly than most in the industry expect. According to Gens, it is the new capabilities that the cloud offers, rather than the ability to do business off-site, that truly set the technology apart.
Eighty percent of those surveyed indicated that they believed by 2015 cloud service providers would be able to offer integration, management, security and other services in the public cloud, and more than 70 percent said that by 2014 a third of all IT organizations would be providing cloud services.
Currently, those most opposed to the public cloud are large enterprises, which feel that their data requires more attention than a public cloud can offer. For smaller businesses, the broad net the cloud casts means cheaper access to services and better performance overall.
But while the outlook is bright for the cloud, those at the Forum agreed that a number of significant challenges must still be faced, mostly notably security, reliability, and fast recovery. A number of industry professionals also take the stand that while the cloud represents possibility, bottlenecking is a serious potential cloud problem.
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