The year 2013 has some cloud computing history behind it, and a bright future ahead of it. As technology evolves and as companies scramble to minimize costs while keeping their efficiency levels at an optimum level, cloud computing sits as a pretty offering on an aisle with customers waiting to buy it all out. What are some of the trends that are worth noting this year? What are some of the latest developments? What’s the nature of the path charted out for cloud computing? Let’s explore:
OnApp
It’s been under the radar, low profile, and it’s something that no company should miss at least knowing about. OnApp is a cloud offering that provides you with a tool to consolidate and create a set of servers as an IaaS offering. It’s a distributed SAN, which allows businesses to pool capacity by consolidating traditional hard drives and Solid State Drives (SSD).
OnAPP also fine-tunes VM-aware services, speeds up server performance, and provides OnAPP storage that helps businesses integrate with other services such as NetApp. OnApp also helps businesses to manage VMware machines and deploy virtualization. For businesses that require training and onboarding, OnApp has CloudBoot that does it all.
JasperSoft
There’s no dearth of companies that provide you with rigorous Business Intelligence Services. More recently, however, BI just went Pay-as-you-go. Jaspersoft unveiled its services where companies can now pay by the hour instead of subscribing for long-term or installing dedicated Business Intelligence systems. Jaspersoft’s services are available as software that businesses can run on-premise. But for companies that are looking for a cloud-based variant with their data in AWS’s cloud, among others. Of course Jaspersoft is still the underdog in an otherwise hot market with big players such as Oracle, IBM, and Cognos Software.
Welcome Hybrids Into Your Fold
Post 2013, cloud computing for small businesses and enterprises is not going to be about one vendor or one kind of technology. Hybrid will kick in. Thanks to the complex, heterogeneous nature of enterprises, technology needs for businesses are going to be anything but simple. There could be best practices that the Industry might adhere to but there won’t be standardization in technology as it just evolves. Businesses will have to understand this (most already do). As a result, businesses need to develop management frameworks to fit the changing needs of technology adoption, implementation, and usage.
Transition, Change, and Dollars
Cloud computing seems to be nearing maturity stage with many businesses splurging on cloud technology spend. With the presence of many other tools that track your cloud computing spend, analyze percentage usage of resources, track deployments and usage patterns, businesses now have both access and control on their budgets, the technology they spend on, and the returns harnessed thanks to these investments.
The cloud won’t also be a rosy picture but it’ll have a progress of it’s own. It’ll chart its own path to rise as a default choice for businesses that look to leverage IT for business efficiency.