Cloud technology is starting to make the big jump from the early adopter stage to mass market. How to cope with the issues that remain?
It may have been pouring buckets here in the largest city in Silicon Valley, but the only discussion about clouds going on in the San Jose Convention Center was about cloud computing. One of the main lectures here yesterday at IDC’s Directions ’09 conference centered around what vendors need to do to prepare for cloud computing as a new growth market, one that will affect the industry for the next 15 to 20 years, if IDC’s predictions are correct. IDC has given similar advice to IT professionals as well. Cloud computing will account for 25 percent of the net growth of technology from 2011 to 2012, and 30 percent of growth from ’12 to 2013, according to Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst with IDC. Growth for now is slow because it’s still in the early adopter stage, but once it moves beyond that, it will accelerate rapidly.
