Continual monitoring of cloud computing trends, with regular updates to the enterprise’s cloud strategy, will be essential to avoid costly mistakes or miss market opportunities over the next few years, according to Gartner, Inc. Although the potential for cloud computing is significant, the breadth and depth of the impact, as well as the level of adoption over time, are uncertain and will require frequent review. “Cloud computing is a major technology trend that has permeated the market over the last two years. It sets the stage for a new approach to IT that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they’ll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models,” said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow.
Gartner has identified cloud computing sub-trends that will be accelerating, shifting or reaching a tipping point over the next three years and that users must factor into their planning processes. Hybrid cloud Computing Hybrid computing refers to the coordination and combination of external cloud computing services (public or private) and internal
infrastructure or application services. Over time, hybrid cloud
computing could lead to a unified model in which there is a single
“cloud” made up of multiple cloud platforms (internal or external) that
can be used, as needed, based on changing business requirements.
Cloud Brokerage will facilitate cloud consumption
As cloud computing adoption proliferates, so does the need for
consumption assistance. A cloud services brokerage (CSB) is a service
provider that plays an intermediary role in cloud computing. Interest in
the CSB concept increased last year, and Gartner expects this trend to
accelerate over the next three years as more individuals, whether they
are in IT or a line-of-business unit, consume cloud services without
involving IT.
To address this challenge, Gartner believes that IT departments
should explore how they can position themselves as CSBs to the
enterprise by establishing a purchasing process that accommodates
cloud adoption and encourages business units to come to the IT
organization for advice and support. The enterprise CSB approach can
be implemented by modifying existing processes and tools such as
internal portals and service catalogs.
Cloud centric design becomes a necessity
Many organizations look first for opportunities to migrate existing
enterprise workloads to a cloud system and/or an application
infrastructure. This approach may provide benefits where the
workload has a highly variable resource requirement, or where the
application naturally lends itself to horizontal scalability. However, to
fully exploit the potential of a cloud model, applications need to be
designed with the unique characteristics, limitations and opportunities
of a cloud model in mind. Gartner advises enterprises to look beyond
the migration of enterprise workloads to the creation of cloudoptimized
applications that fully exploit the potential of the cloud to
deliver global-class applications.
Cloud Computing influence future data centre and operational
models
In public cloud computing, an enterprise is acting as a consumer
of services, with the cloud services provider handling the
implementation details, including the data center and related
operational models. However, to the extent that the enterprise
continues to build its own data centers, they will be influenced by the
implementation models used by cloud services providers. Gartner
recommends that enterprises apply the concepts of cloud computing
to future data center and infrastructure investments to increase agility
and efficiency.
