2010: A Cloud-Space Odyssey
A year is a long time in many industries and significant changes can occur over a 12 month period that will leave those without their finger on the pulse struggling to keep up with what’s hot, and what’s not, in their chosen field of expertise.
Indeed, the IT and technology industries are constantly evolving and no sooner has someone procured the latest new-fangled laptop, mp3 player or Smartphone, a ‘new and improved’ successor is waiting in line, ready to take over as the ‘daddy’ of all gadgets.
If 2009 saw a lot of developments in IT such as improved vendor management and a stronger focus being placed on business-specific applications, 2010 looks set to herald a whole host of changes too. This means it’s imperative for those with a vested interest in all the IT sub-industries, from web design and software development, to hosting and IT recruitment, to have an idea of what to expect in the new decade’s inaugural year.
It’s around a decade now since ‘cloud computing’ as a commercial concept began to be widely recognised across the IT industry. There are many inherent advantages to cloud computing, including reduced up-front costs for businesses, increased storage and general IT management benefits.
Indeed, cloud computing has become increasingly more common over the past decade but two problems that have perhaps inhibited it thus far have been latency and security. Developers, however, have refined techniques to reduce latency – as well as improving security through enhanced encryption.
Then there’s the ‘hybrid cloud’ that some predict will become more widely available from cloud service providers in 2010. This hybrid service is a combination of hosting types – most commonly a company will have a dedicated server which can then extend into cloud when it needs to cope with instances such as an increase in traffic.
Of course, cloud computing and ‘software-as-a-service’ (SaaS) go hand-in-hand, and many more businesses could well be taking advantage of the countless benefits there are to moving away from a traditional desktop-based approach such as enhanced, real-time collaboration on important business documents.
Indeed, if 2009 was the year that businesses ducked for cover to avoid the financial meltdown, 2010 could well be the year that cloud computing comes to the rescue, helping business save substantial sums of money. This extends well beyond useful business applications into the hosting sphere, too. It’s likely that companies will use ‘the cloud’ in conjunction with other technologies, with the cloud used to derive extra processing power and run secondary applications, whilst using traditional dedicated environments for core applications.
There’s likely to be significant developments across the whole IT industry in 2010, from top to bottom, and it should be an exciting year for everyone involved!
Source by Paul Buchanan