2011 was the year of cloud computing education; 2012 was the year of testing; and 2013 will be the year for mainstream adoption.
So says Ali Din, senior VP and chief marketing officer at dinCloud, a Los Angeles-based cloud start-up.
Established in January 2011, dinCloud's customer base is growing, says Din. "We have recently added global accounting firms, global software firms and one of the largest automobile companies in the world to our portfolio of customers."
However, according to Din, for some service providers, 2012 was a tough year, with a number of outages affecting millions of users and some even causing permanent data loss to customers.
Nonetheless, he says this did not put a damper on the acquisition spree witnessed during 2012, as cloud computing's value was evident.
Greater than expected
Din believes the evolution of the cloud, however, was much greater than what was expected. "Cloud computing helped IT in many organisations become more dynamic - spending grew to over $109 billion [in 2012], up 20% over [2011]."
Analyst firm Gartner predicts that the total outlay for cloud computing services could nearly double to $207 billion by 2016.
"We also noticed many vendors doing some variations to their service catalogues. And there were also some further developments on the horizon. For example, some hosts, like GoDaddy, decided to rationalise their cloud server offerings.
"Some vendors continued their rapid restructuring to an on-demand cloud compute model, enhancing their portfolios with cloud acquisitions. Some high-level acquisitions in 2012 include the Dell-Wyse acquisition for virtual desktops, followed by Oracle acquiring network virtualisation technology firm Xsigo to boost cloud prowess. VMware paid top dollar for Nicera, a software-defined-networking vendor," says Din.
2012 outages
Along with these developments, Din points out that there were also some setbacks. "In 2012, despite many precautions taken by cloud service providers, we saw outages on a regular basis caused by human error, quality issues, technical glitches and natural disasters."
He explains that the major cloud computing outages in 2012 were those of Google Gmail, Amazon Web Services, Apple iCloud and GoDaddy, ranging from two to four hours and affecting millions of users and companies, including Quora, DropBox, Pinterest, Heroku and NetFlix.
However, he says though outages like this can make a company apprehensive about the cloud, the benefits associated with being in the cloud - such as 50% savings on IT spend and agility - outweigh the risks associated with downtime.
To avoid suffering from these outages, Din encourages organisations to work with multiple cloud providers. "Companies that were only working with Amazon suffered outages a few times last year.
"Companies need to implement a plan that includes multiple cloud providers and also multiple carriers. At times, the issue is not with the cloud provider, but the network." Last, but not least, he says customers have to do due diligence with their cloud vendors.
He also encourages enterprises to ask about their security policies and their internal business continuity plans, saying chances are, if a company does not have a good business continuity or disaster recovery plan in place, it might not be able to help customers.
Growth drivers
Din believes cost savings and business continuity will be the main growth drivers for cloud computing this year.
"Companies are experiencing over 30% cost savings by moving to the cloud. DinCloud has a customer that experienced 50% cost savings by moving their IT infrastructure to the cloud."
He also notes that with recent events on the east coast, companies realised that even if applications are up and running, it's no good to business continuity if employees cannot access their desktops or work environments.
"With the cloud, employees can access their work environment from any device, anywhere, at any time."
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