Cloud Predictions for 2013: PaaS, Big Data & Much More

By Daniel Viveiros

As we enter the final quarter of 2012, now is the time to consider what has happened this year, but more importantly, what is to come in 2013.

2012 has been a big one in terms of cloud computing, especially to the team at Ci&T. We joined the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program as a Services Partner this summer and also kicked off our relationship with one of Brazil’s largest independent insurance companies to migrate its electronic sales system to the cloud.

I’m certain our cloud momentum will continue in 2013 and I predict that businesses as a whole will do the same. Based on the cloud’s growth in popularity this year and what we’re hearing about customers’ future plans, I’d like to make some educated guesses about the major cloud computing trends for 2013:

· Platform-as-a-Service in the Enterprise: While Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) has been used in gaming and websites for years, IT innovators have also identified that it is an enterprise-ready technology. In 2013, I strongly believe that growing numbers of large, multinational organizations will be adopting the architecture due to its highly reliable and scalable qualities. With its high availability and developer-friendly features, Platform-as-a-Service will allow organizations to move forward with cloud migrations quickly, economically and with minimal changes to existing IT infrastructure.

· A Match Made in IT Heaven – Big Data and the Cloud: Companies all around the globe are drowning in Big Data right now, but the high volume is only half of the problem. The other half is figuring out how to actually derive meaning from it. While traditional business intelligence (BI) can do this, it is often limited to specific point of views and too-complex-to-process amounts of data. In the next year, the cloud will take enterprise data analysis to the next level. With unlimited computational resources, companies will create and process huge datasets quickly and easily. In addition, since companies will only pay for the computational power they use, the cloud offers a significantly lower investment than a traditional BI approach.
· IaaS and PaaS – Best of Both Worlds: Increasingly organizations have been mixing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and PaaS, to create a synergy that maximizes the benefits of both. I anticipate this will gain even more momentum in 2013 as major cloud vendors have made moves to ensure that their IaaS and PaaS offerings are complementary. Due to this, more and more software architects will be able to design the absolute best architectures for their organizations, using the ideal and most-needed features from each service.
· The Cloud and Application Development – Perfect Together: In case you didn’t realize already, I believe cloud is the most promising new advancement in software development to come along in years. Today, progressive organizations are leveraging the cloud in application development due to its speed, cost-savings and increasing reliability and security. I predict that in 2013 and 2014, the standard Java and .NET hosted, on-premise infrastructures will lose market share, and that new architectures will arrive that use these languages blended with cloud components and platforms. This will be especially popular for new development projects, as enterprises seek to take advantage of cloud infrastructures.

We’ll have to wait and see what 2013 brings us for the cloud and other technologies, but the reality is that cloud popularity is growing as its benefits – and subsequent risks – are better understood than ever before. Enterprises need to keep pace and embrace how the cloud can help their business before they are left behind!