With a Boost from Mobile, Cloud Computing Continues to Mature

The landscape of IT development is constantly shifting and evolving. It's not unlike the geological forces of earth, which are sometimes subtle and sometimes explosive. The most popular technologies in IT circles today revolve around business analytics, mobile, cloud computing and social networking technologies within the business. All four of these technologies exploded on the scene in the last decade.

Where is this technological evolution headed next? It's fun to speculate, but history shows us that technology doesn't always take the expected route; something completely unseen can show up and mark the next great advance.

In the short term, we can look at the 2011 IBM Global Tech Trends Report, which offers a glimpse of where IT professionals believe technology is headed in the next two years. This year, more than 4,000 IT professionals from 93 countries and 25 industries shared their opinions in the report. The report focused on business analytics, mobile, cloud and social business. Not surprisingly, it found that over the next 24 months, these areas will only continue to grow, fueling development, architectural and analytic opportunities.

Let's focus specifically on the survey results related to cloud computing.

Much of the discussion around cloud computing over the last few years focused on potential. While vendors would like IT professionals to think they have the products and roadmap that can easily deliver all of the benefits of cloud computing to their customers, most businesses move more slowly. Many businesses had concerns that needed to be addressed around security and availability.

Now, as cloud computing continues to mature, not only are businesses investing in the cloud, but it's become even more established in the technical landscape. The 2011 IBM Global Tech Trends Report found that companies are moving beyond saving costs with infrastructure, which initially attracted many organizations to the cloud, and are now beginning to develop applications and introduce innovation in the cloud. "At this stage in the technology lifecycle," reads IBM's report, "IT professionals need to focus on learning how to integrate the cloud into application development."

Interestingly, many of the new applications, services and business models that IT professionals are bringing to the cloud are also tied to their mobile applications, showing how two technologies that emerged in the past decade can come together to re-work business models. More than half (51 percent) of respondents cited the adoption of cloud technologies as part of their mobile strategy. Extending applications to mobile devices increases the number of transactions being made. Cloud computing delivers the flexibility and cost-effectiveness to handle these surges in demand.

According to the respondents, building cloud applications will outpace virtualization as the top cloud activity over the next 24 months. This doesn't mean there aren't lingering concerns about building and utilizing infrastructure in the cloud. The IT professionals in the report cite security, compatibility with existing applications, privacy and performance as their top concerns when adopting cloud technologies.

While 40 percent of the respondents indicated that their organization is not currently engaged in cloud computing, 75 percent believe that over the next two years their organizations will begin to build cloud infrastructure.

Overall, the benefits of cloud computing seem to be clearly winning the battle for the hearts, minds and budgets of IT professionals. The biggest motivators for cloud adoption, according to the report, are flexibility and scalability, which were cited by nearly 60 percent of respondents, as well as the reduction of operating expenses.

The IT professionals also predict new application development will be the top cloud adoption activity in the next 24 months, overtaking virtualization and storage. It's clear an increasing number of organizations are moving from building cloud infrastructure to taking advantage of it with new services and business models.

The 2011 IBM Global Tech Trends Report is just one of several reports done throughout the past year that focused on the cloud's present and future applications for businesses. A report done by Unisys in March found that half of the companies it surveyed said that cloud computing was their top priority, while 24 percent said supporting mobile users was the most important. Once again, we see the combination of cloud and mobile attracting plenty of attention from IT professionals who will likely find ways to combine the two technologies.

Report results released by 7th Sense Research found that the growth in the popularity of cloud computing was prompting 54 percent of IT decision makers nationally to do more hiring. In another of the report's findings, 42 percent of enterprise decision makers said they have at least one cloud computing project planned or already in development.

Other findings in the 7th Sense survey will be of interest to IT professionals and businesses that create solutions for small businesses. Only 16 percent of small businesses have at least one cloud computing project planned or already in development, the survey found. Despite the fact that many cloud-based products for small businesses are free, the survey found cloud computing is growing more rapidly in the enterprise. Only 26 percent of small businesses said they needed to shift to cloud-based solutions in the next year, compared to 48 percent in the enterprise. There appears to be room for growth in the small business market.

Another survey done by the non-profit IT Governance Institute (ITGI) found that nearly 35 percent of C-level executives said that "a significant investment" in legacy infrastructure is stalling their adoption of cloud computing technologies.

However, that concern is only the fourth highest concern on executives' minds when it comes to computing in the cloud. In fact, concern about data privacy is the biggest red light for executives — with 49.6 percent — followed by questions about security at 47.2 percent, and reliability with 41.7 percent.

Taken together, all of these 2011 surveys show a cloud computing market that continues to mature and has found a willing partner of sorts in the mobile devices and technologies that are exploding on the scene. With few serious roadblocks on the horizon for either mobile or cloud technologies, it appears that growth will continue. The increased adoption of consumer mobile and social technologies into the business, a phenomenon called "the consumerization of IT" by some, will present further opportunities to involve cloud-based platforms and services.

There remain some concerns about security and privacy, and small businesses are showing some reluctance to join the cloud computing movement, but as the technology continues to improve and new applications are developed, the concerns should fade and markets like small business will open up.

The 2011 IBM Global Tech Trends Report shows the optimism that IT professionals have when it comes to their cloud computing plans. The move toward application development in the cloud involves new roles in the IT department, such as developers, who may not have been closely involve with the infrastructure and virtualization projects that marked the start of the cloud computing era.

In fact, as cloud-based development platforms continue to grow, new software developers will adopt them early in their careers and create a comfort level that doesn't exist among developers who started writing code before cloud and mobile technologies. This generation of developers will come to see developing applications in the cloud as a fundamental part of it, as opposed to a paradigm shift. IT professionals who think "cloud" first will power the next-generation of cloud technologies.

You can read more results from the 2011 IBM Global Tech Trends Report at:
www.ibm.com/developerworks/techtrendsreport