What changes in the cloud computing and big data landscape should we be expecting in 2013?

In this article we offer a round-up of industry experts' opinions as they were asked by Cloud Expo / BigDataExpo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan to preview the fast-approaching year ahead.

2013 Will Be The Year of Big Data  | The Internet of Things | Cloud To The Rescue (DR) | SSD

John Engates | @jengates
CTO of Rackspace Hosting

Now its CTO, John joined Rackspace in August 2000, just a year after the company was founded, as VP of Operations, managing the datacenter operations and customer-service teams. Two years later, when Rackspace decided to add new services for larger enterprise customers, he created and helped develop the Intensive Hosting business unit. Most recently, he has played an active role in the evolution and evangelism of Rackspace's cloud computing strategy and cloud products. He has been a highly popular speaker at successive Cloud Expos.

1. Year of Big Data

   This is the year when Big Data makes its way into enterprise conversations. Gartner predicts that Big Data will drive $232 million in IT spending through 2016. Companies will begin looking for ways to leverage Big Data solutions to create business value and a competitive advantage. For example, more companies will implement Big Data solutions to help analyze website traffic and to gain a deeper understanding of their customer base by identifying key trends in online viewing and purchasing behaviors. As the interest in Big Data increases, so too will the realization that these solutions are complicated and difficult to deploy. As a result, there will be a big initial focus on looking for ways to take the time and complexity out of Big Data implementations.

2. Internet of Things

   The PC used to be the center of the universe. But now there are myriad devices and the PC is only one of many. In fact, now it’s becoming more of an Internet of things as opposed to an Internet of people. How many of our devices will have no screen and automatically do things on behalf of humans? The vast majority is my guess. These devices will include electric meters, sensors, surveillance cameras, cars, etc. Everything we have will be connected. The power meter in your home that’s connected to the smart grid will constantly stream and store data in the cloud. The camera with Wi-Fi that streams photos will be connected to the cloud via Wi-Fi or 4G. Everything will have a connection to cloud services, as the cloud is the backend that makes it all possible.

   This Internet of things also means the cloud is more important than ever. The cloud provides the central hub for all of these devices, as well as context about the user that can be tapped into and shared to make the product or service better. The cloud is also where the analytical data from all of these “things” is processed and stored, which again speaks to how important Big Data solutions will be in the year ahead.

3. Disaster Recovery Gets Cloudy

   Whether it’s the catastrophic Tsunami in Japan, the deadly tornado outbreaks throughout the Mid-West or the devastating hurricane that just hit the East Coast, companies are being challenged to figure out how to maintain business operations in the midst of natural disasters. It’s happening more frequently and it’s a trend that will likely continue in the year ahead. The cloud will help these companies respond more quickly. The frictionless nature of moving workloads between clouds in the face of a disaster is huge, as it gives companies the flexibility they need to adapt. The cloud will be a key component of disaster recovery plans moving forward.

4. SSD Comes to the Cloud

   We started to see this trend evolve in late 2012, but in 2013 companies will use SSDs for their cloud storage needs at an increasing rate. SSDs will be embedded into more devices, laptops and data centers. While standard drives for storage will continue to be used, SSDs will offer a higher performance option that is fast, super low energy and contain no moving parts. As more SSDs are used, costs will come down and create a virtuous cycle. This cycle will kick off in 2013, as we will begin to see many more options for SSD in the cloud.

5. Broader IT Skill Sets Required

   As the tech industry continues its shift towards cloud computing and companies continue to implement public, private and hybrid clouds at an increasing rate, the typical IT manager, system administrator and even the CIO will soon be forced to develop a much broader skill set. This trend will help create a new job market that is ripe for those who have a generalized skill set vs. deep experience within one specialized area.

Big Data Must Also Be Fast  | Hybrid Cloud to Continue Its Rise | IoT to Cross the Chasm

Robin Gilthorpe | @robingil4p
CEO of Terracotta

A globally experienced software executive, Robin joined Terracotta in the Fall of 2012 to lead, shape and drive the company's growth as leading enabler of the industry-wide transition to in-memory computing.

1. Big Data has to be fast data. Enterprises will profit from Big Data intelligence in proportion to how quickly they can act on it.
2. Rise of the hybrid cloud. It’s no longer about building your own platform; it’s more efficient to play in ecosystems.
3. CIOs and CMOs get a lot closer. Marketing spend on technology is about to eclipse IT spend on technology.
4. The Internet of Things crosses the chasm. In just a few years, over 25 billion data-producing devices will be connected.
5. Social becomes part of life’s fabric. Remember e-business departments? Social will permeate in the same way.
   
   

Cloud Users To Drive IaaS Adoption | AppDev from the Ground Up To Flourish | Hybrid Clouds Will Proliferate

Mårten Mickos | @MartenMickos
CEO of Eucalyptus Systems

Mårten is a serial entrepreneur who before Eucalyptus served as CEO of MySQL from 2001 to 2008, when it was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

1. The driving force in IaaS adoption will switch from technologists to cloud users.
2. Many more applications will be developed from the ground up for the cloud in 2013 than in previous years.
3. IaaS and PaaS will start to somewhat overlap and integrate.
4. Open source will continue to innovate and lead the way in cloud computing.
5. More hybrid clouds will come out of the woodwork.

PaaS to the Fore in 2013 | Big Moving Data – the Post-Hadoop Era | Mobility | Data Visualization

Jnan Dash | @JnanDash
Advisor at Graymatics & Sonata Software

Industry veteran Jnan spent nearly twenty years at Oracle in software development, followed by a decade at Oracle, where he finished up as a Group VP. He is now an advisor to companies who seek to benefit from his wealth of enterprise IT expertise and experience.

1. Cloud Computing: If 2012 was the year of SaaS, then 2013 will see most activity in PaaS (Platform). The lines between PaaS and IaaS are blurring, just look at the AWS stack. While incumbents are struggling, startups will have advantage.
2. Big Data: Two major movements going forward to 2013. The onset of the post-Hadoop era. Look at Google's new tools such as Percolator, Pregel, Dremmel and Twitter Storm. Hadoop has batch pedigree and needs to move forward on several fronts. Second big trend is addressing "Data in Motion". Hence analytic tools on moving data will be key new area of focus.
3. Mobility: The consumerization of IT will pick up pace. Single most disruptor has been the iPad and touch UI. More tools on social computing for the enterprise will show up. Data visualization will be the norm going forward.

IaaS Shakeout | PaaS Shakeout | Big Data Shakeout

Nati Shalom | @natishalom
CTO & Founder of GigaSpaces

Nati, a frequent presenter at industry conferences who is actively involved in evangelizing Space Based Architecture and Data Grid patterns, is the CTO and Founder of GigaSpaces. He is also the Head of the Israeli Grid consortium.

1. The IaaS Shakeout

   - So for the IaaS world has been dominated by Amazon who is by far the leader in the market where Rackspace its closest competitor comes far behind. In 2013 were expecting to see Google entering the game and Microsoft who is not new to this game now finally start to make the right moves is expected grab more marketshare from its existing customer base. The other big disruption is the OpenSource coalition behind OpenStack which was lacking the maturity needed to make a true viable alternative. Now with Rackspace, HP getting into GA of its OpenStack based cloud offering and IBM is expected to follow soon and with real production references such as Cisco Webex i expect that will see far greater adoption of OpenStack which to me looks as the main viable alternative to Amazon. The war on who rules the cloud is not going to be just a pricing war as some predict. One of the areas where there is huge potential for disruption is the network as well as the software based data-center which is a completely unchartered territory with lots of potential for new innovation on how application utilise the infrastructure.

2. The PaaS shakeout

   - I've seen lots of predictions that talks on 2013 as the year of the PaaS. They miss one major thing. The definition of PaaS is going through a major disruption as well. PaaS was built initially to serve simple application over the web. Now were seeing a completely new category of PaaS coming mostly from the open source initiative such as CloudFoundry which makes it possible to run PaaS on your local data-center or even desktop. I'm also expecting that well see more convergence between PaaS and Configuration management framework such as Chef as in the case of Cloudify. If we follow Amazon we would also notice that the line between IaaS and PaaS becomes blair as Amazon started to move up the stack. In addition to that the open source IaaS framework such as OpenStack and CloudStack enables makes it possible to break the wall between those two layers and share large part of the infrastructure between the IaaS and PaaS stack making the boundaries between the two layers even more blair than it is right now as i pointed out in this post "PaaS as an Infrastructure"

3. Big Data Shakeout

   - The Big Data world was primarily dominate by Hadoop. Since than the hadoop project has gone through major fragmetations with may different and incompatible version of the Hadoop distribution such as the one coming from MapR, Horton Works, EMC, IBM etc. This give the rise for some of the NoSQL vendors such as DataStax the company behind Cassandra and 10Gen the company beyond MongoDB to come with their own alternatives in that space. In addition to that the move to real-time makes the use of Map/Reduce less popular as it used to be. Framework like Twitter Storm and other stream processing frameworks are gaining popularity. With all that the future of Haddoop as we know it remains fairly uncertain IMO and while the BigData market is expected to grow quite substantially over the next coming years it is still unclear which technology would be used to drive this change. One thing that becomes clear is that there not going to be one solution that covers them all which makes the challange of integration and management of the various framework more critical than before.

Big Iron Storage Will Become Obsolete | Software-Defined Storage Will Heat Up | Beyond CapEx/OpEx

Kevin Brown | @kbcoraid
CEO of Coraid

Kevin was President & CEO of desktop virtualization pioneer Kidaro, which he led through its acquisition by Microsoft in 2008. He is now CEO at Coraid, a fast-growing provider of scale-out Ethernet SAN solutions.

1. Big Data makes Big Iron Storage obsolete

   The volume of digital content is growing at an unprecedented rate. According to IDC, digital content will grow to 2.7 ZB in 2012 , increasing 48% over 2011. This relentless data growth will accelerate adoption of private and public clouds for the flexibility, agility and simplicity at scale that they offer. Legacy technologies like Fibre Channel don't really fit into this picture. Cloud builders require scale-out infrastructure with superior price-performance that is easy to automate and manage, flexible for customers’ diverse needs, and can scale to meet massive growth. In other words, enterprises used to run small data on big boxes, and that's breaking down. In 2013, we'll need to run big data on lots of small boxes, and that's a fundamentally different computer science problem.

2. Software Defined Storage heats up

   An exciting development in 2012 was the emergence of Software-defined Storage, to mirror similar trends in the computing and networking layers. Software-defined Storage (SDS) is an architecture that delivers scalability, flexibility and simplified operations to support dynamic application requirements. An SDS system uses scale-out, configurable hardware building blocks, which are pooled, abstracted and controlled entirely through software. SDS is ideally suited for cloud environments that need scalable, flexible, and automated storage operations to support their dynamic application requirements. As cloud-style architectures become more prevalent, we will see a parallel shift from legacy storage to modern, software-defined-storage architectures.

3. Consumerization comes to Enterprise Infrastructure

   The ease of use and instant gratification of services like Amazon and Google will increasingly raise the bar for Enterprise IT. End users are growing increasingly impatient with traditional budget and deployment cycles for network and storage resources, and IT teams will be under the gun to deliver self-service resources. Just as end-user BYOD transformed the shape of mobile computing in the enterprise, Software-Defined infrastructure will help deliver "Provision your own storage."

4. Beyond CAPEX and OPEX

   Economics always matter in IT. CAPEX and OPEX still matter, but there's a new measure of economic value for infrastructure: VELOCITY. As automation and software-defined systems gain traction, IT departments that can deliver their users one-click self service infrastructure will dramatically shorten time-to-productivity. Slower IT departments that spend weeks doing manual provisioning of each project will continue to fall behind, and the pressure on them for cloud outsourcing to achieve business velocity will only increase in 2013.

Cloud Verticals | IaaS Migrations | Mobility To Drive Cloud Adoption | Clouds Forced To Get Real

Tim Crawford | @tcrawford
Strategic Adviser, IT Transformation & Cloud Computing

An internationally renowned thought leader in the areas of IT transformation, innovation and cloud computing, Tim has served as CIO and other senior IT leadership roles with global organizations such as Konica Minolta/ All Covered, Stanford University, Knight-Ridder, Philips Electronics, and National Semiconductor.

1. Rise of the Cloud Verticals

   Today, the cloud marketplace offers a smorgasbord of general-purpose solutions. In a fledgling industry, providers needed to focus on solutions that served a wide range of client requirements. Now with critical mass for some specific verticals, expect to see industry-specific cloud-based solutions. These solutions may include a suite of services or ecosystem geared to specific industries.

2. Widespread Planning of IaaS Migrations

   Now that cloud has moved beyond the lab, organizations will include IaaS solutions in their roadmap planning. SaaS will continue to take a role, however, the rise of hybrid cloud solutions will drive IaaS in IT roadmaps in earnest.

3. CIOs Look to Cloud to Catapult IT Transformation

   The role of the CIO and IT organization is evolving as quickly as the underlying technology methodologies. The evolutionary shift in IT’s role in the business will (in turn) cause a re-evaluation of solutions used. Expect to see IT organizations leverage cloud as one of the most significant opportunities to fuel this early transformation.

4. Mobile Increases Intensity of Cloud Adoption

   As the prominence of mobile use increases, look for the adoption rates of cloud to increase respectively. Traditional IT methodologies provide a cumbersome solution for many mobile requirements. The move to cloud provides an elegant solution to a rather complex problem.

5. Cloud Innovation Shifts from New Solutions to Integration & Consolidation
   Cloud’s shine starts to fade as focus moves to reality. Organizations are less interested in the solving a singular point problem. Look for a move to solutions that solve multiple issues and integrate with other solutions. Expect consolidation of singular cloud solutions for opportunities to provide more robust solutions.

"Cloud" To Fade as a Term| "-aaS" Ditto | Virtualization Will Expand | Data Innovation To Continue

Sam Johnston | @samj
Director of Cloud & IT Services at Equinix

A computer scientist at heart, Sam was previously the technical program manager for Google’s global tape backup program, where he worked in the Site Reliability Engineering team in Switzerland and gained deep knowledge of current, former and future Internet-scale server and storage platforms. Before joining Google, Sam worked at Citrix Systems and served as founder and CTO for a number of successful high-tech start-ups in Australia, France and Ireland. He blogs at http://samj.net

1. Cloud as a term will start to fade away as it becomes implicit (legacy infrastructure will be the exception rather than the rule). The same thing happened with client-server, which was all the rage 30 years ago. Anyone with "cloud" in their company and/or product names will scramble to rebrand... how many companies do you see with generic terms like "internet" or "client-server" in their names today?
2. "-as-a-Service" or "aaS" will also go the way of the dodo – after all, cloud is simply the migration from product to service. Consider "Electricity as a Product" (generator) vs "Electricity as a Service" (grid) – the "as a Service" is implicit because we don't buy electricity as a product any more, except for off-grid and backup applications. Same for IT.
3. Virtualization doesn't just apply to PC hardware – we have virtual memory, virtual networks, virtual storage and we'll be hearing more and more about virtual datacenters going forward.
4. Data handling continues to evolve, but technical developments branded under the "Big Data" and "NoSQL" misnomers are still evolutionary rather than revolutionary – the big change is in the way custodians approach data and use it to their advantage.

The Rise of Industry-Specific Clouds | Cloud To Impact Staffers | PaaS/IaaS Boundaries Will Blur

David Linthicum | @DavidLinthicum
Expert in complex distributed systems, including cloud computing, data integration, SOA and big data

Dave is the CTO & founder of Blue Mountain Labs, a cloud computing consulting and advisory firm (sold to Bick Ventures in Feb 2010). His most recent book is Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise, a Step-by-Step Approach. He is also the cloud computing blogger for InfoWorld and GigaOM Pro, as well as the creator and host of the highly successful Cloud Computing Podcast, now past 200 episodes.

1. The rise of industry-specific clouds. As IaaS and PaaS clouds begin to mature in 2013, we’ll see the rise of IaaS and PaaS clouds that are purpose-built to serve specific vertical markets, such as healthcare, finance, retail, and manufacturing. Cloud computing providers will take this approach to meet the demands of the specialized security, processes, and compliance requirements for each vertical market, as well as to sell more products into those markets.
2. Cloud computing’s impact on IT will be felt by the staff. As IT budgets rise, we’ll find that much of the money flowing back into corporate IT goes to the retooling of new and existing systems toward the use of PaaS and IaaS clouds. Those in IT will see the shift in resources from traditional internal systems to public and private cloud computing. Many will find a new career path around the use of cloud computing; others will find that resistance is futile and they are left out in the cold.
3. PaaS and IaaS continue to blur. All major IaaS providers also provide a PaaS offering, and the other way around. We’ll see the lines between these concepts continue to blur. Indeed, by 2014, it will be impossible to sell a PaaS cloud service without providing IaaS services (such as storage and hosting) in the same cloud. This will lead to mergers among the smaller PaaS and IaaS players, in an attempt to hold onto the market.

Cloud Adoption To Reach Majority in U.S. | Local Cloud Networks | Business Consumerization of IT | Community Clouds Will Advance

Brian Patrick Donaghy | @appcore
CEO of Appcore

As Brian explains it, Appcore "manufactures the business of cloud computing." The company delivers IaaS technology to telcos, data centers, fiber rings, and enterprises to enable public (service provider) and private (enterprise) cloud environments.

1. Cloud Adoption will move into early majority state in the U.S.

   With all of the publicity and hype surrounding the cloud and business applications “in the cloud”, you would think the majority of businesses are already using it. However, we are still in the beginning stages of the migration and 2013 will mark the year when businesses realize the cloud’s significance. Similar to the adoption path of Linux in the 1990’s and SaaS in the 2000’s, cloud computing will move through Moore’s curve in a similar fashion. And according to Moore’s Adoption Curve theories, techie innovators and visionary early adaptors are radically different from the pragmatic early majority. 2013 will mark the year when the majority of businesses adopt, or critically examine the idea to adopt, cloud services.

2. Local cloud networks will emerge

   With issues of trust, proximity and data sovereignty surfacing, we will continue to see Local Cloud Networks—or public and private infrastructure cloud delivered by your nearby internet provider, Telco, MSO and data center—emerge in 2013. Cloud computing is an affective business solution but face-to-face support is critical as we remain in the “learning” phase. With Local Cloud Networks, businesses can lessen the risks of jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon with added instruction and assistance.

3. Business Consumerization of Enterprise IT Provisioning and Usage

   Orchestrated private cloud gives IT departments a generalized infrastructure where they can set policy, security and charge back. Enterprise appstores with internal apps, virtual desktops and servers give the business consumer access and ease of use. In the same way Consumerization of IT has led to company-supported personal technology, or DIY application builders, businesses will expect and push for consumerized cloud computing.

4. Community Clouds will Advance

   Community clouds grew greatly in 2012, partly due to the healthcare regulations surrounding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which regulates standards for health-related data protection and storage. Community clouds are useful to companies who are split up by industry or geography and better suit customers who need a customized cloud service, opposed to generic cloud computing. For example, a Telco Community Cloud provided specifically for Telco DR to meet specific FCC regulations would be much easier for Telco businesses to utilize than a generic cloud that would still need to undergo customization. As we look ahead to a new year, community clouds will be come more prevalent, as vertical industries—namely government, healthcare and financial sectors—seek the benefits and security provided by cloud computing.

   The rapid growth of the cloud computing industry presents new business opportunities and opens doors for SMBs, large corporations and all businesses in between. As a disruptive technology, the cloud computing market will grow six times within a decade, according to Forrester. With rapid growth comes a rapidly changing landscape in which early adopters are the ones to see the greatest benefit. In 2013 and beyond, cloud computing will change the way we do business.

Democratization of Big Data | BYOD & BYOS | The Internet of Things

Robert Rizika | @ProfitBricksUSA
CEO of ProfitBricks USA

Bob serves as CEO of ProfitBricks USA at ProfitBricks GmBH. Before that he serves as President & CEO of Blackwave Inc. and as CEO & President of QuantumClicks.

1. Democratization of Big Data – while the concept of Big Data is not new – analytics tools and data sources are combining to bring the great epiphany to almost every department and every company. The democratization of big data is assisted by new cloud computing environments with fast networks, giant instance sizes and minute based billing. Companies that don’t collect and analyze data will lose market share.
2. Local software installs end. ISVs that don’t offer their product in the cloud in someway will not win new customers and will not renew 50% of existing contracts. The difference in 2013 is that the CFO and CEO now understand cloud computing – excuses will no longer be tolerated. Requests for new servers, RAM and server upgrades will be met with a veto. They also know that all new software today that is getting VC funding is SaaS – currently over 90% of new apps.
3. Every employee gets to bring their own devices and now their own software. The consumerization of IT continues to cross every stodgy IT boundary in 2013 with users demanding faster software refreshes, and better devices which in turn drives modern user interfaces – which drives more SaaS and Cloud Computing deployments. In-house software teams, already taxed with big data projects will be churning out UI updates and mobile access faster than ever.
4. “The Internet of Things” – is contributing to many trends from operational software for instrumenting every stage of value creation in the manufacturing process to the thousands of measurements that consumers are creating, many of which they are unaware of. This trend continues to accelerate as new applications and the analytics the big data trend is driving. Life gets more connected and more connected than ever before, only the privacy movement can slow this movement down.
5. First generation cloud computing providers will lose customers as they feel the heat. From early cloud adopters which are sick of complex, non standard deployments to the early mass market users arriving on the cloud in 2013, both groups simply demand more flexible server sizes, flexible networks, faster performance than the first generation of cloud services offer. Cloud Computing finally lives up to its promise – complete automation, complete flexibility and fine-grained minute based billing. All of this flexibility will drive an even larger wave of existing IT environments to the cloud – as IaaS and the public cloud becomes the default choice of the early majority.

Mobile Backend-as-a-Service & HTML5 | UX Creativity Meets Cloud | Sensor Clouds | Big Data Matures

Miko Matsumura | @mikojava
Sr. VP of Platform Marketing & Developer Relations at Kii Inc.

Miko habitually zags when other people are still zigging. An inveterate innovator in both his thinking and his doing. he wears his learning lightly and has built or led technology platform and product organizations from startup to billion-dollar levels.

1. New Cloud Development Paradigms: Mobile Backend-as-a-Service

   With rampant adoption of smart devices and the emergence of the Mary Meeker inspired "Post-PC" era, highly specialized clouds are forming that enable mobile developers to drop in cloud services in minutes rather than months. These highly specialized vendors will leverage exponential adoption to disrupt existing "client/server" style models of developing mobile applications. Native SDKs for popular platforms will allow mobile developers to focus on the clients of choice and avoid having to context-switch to server programming. HTML5 adoption will grow slowly, but the lack of a commercial app store and unified payment system for HTML5 apps will slow down adoption.

2. CIO and CMOs make peace over Mobile

   Right now, the Enterprise is split between CIO and CMO operations for mobile, web and multichannel projects. This means that Enterprises are hiring Creative Agencies who can handle the User Experiences, but also IT Services companies who can handle the Cloud end. Very few companies have the competencies to be like Apple and go end-to-end from Cloud to Consumer. This raises an opportunity for a new class of vendor who can handle both the UX Creative side as well as the IT Cloud side and provide end-to-end services. 2013 will bring in a new set of vendors to address the cloud-to-mobile and multichannel opportunity, vendors who can please the human factors requirement of marketing but also the hardcore cloud requirements of IT.

3. Sensor Clouds

   The average city has over one billion sensors, and the average smart device has half a dozen, and will soon have over a dozen. Aggregation of these sensor arrays will allow for a staggering set of applications. Marshall McLuhan suggested that media allows users to transcend space and time – which seems to suggest the ability to project the human body remotely and across time boundaries. But Sensor Clouds will add a whole new dimension to what it means to extend human senses. Humans will be able to observe phenomena far outside the visual spectra, simultaneously absorbing information across wide areas, observing minute changes in breath, body, movement, sleep that transcend human limits of conscious attention and sensory acuity. The ubiquity of smart mobile devices and cloud aggregation will hasten a state where humans will be endowed with extraordinary perceptual and analytic enhancement.

4. Big Data Matures

   By now, the Hadoop ecosystem wave has hit and some of the initial hype has worn out. Divide and conquer of MapReduce can also give way to algorithms such as evolutionary algorithms to improve signal detection within large data sets. Evolutionary algorithms also achieve scale through radically distributed processing and provide a different lens on large data analytics over simple MapReduce. This will not happen within 2013 but the dawning awareness that processing can and should coexist in some form with data will spark a lot of thinking and some leading edge projects. For now, kicking ETL out of the data warehouse by creating a new data layer for MapReduce should provide large gains.

New Data Classification Models Will Emerge  | Storage, Access and Security Rules To Align | Powering the Cloud: Centralized Infrastructure vs The Environment

Margaret Dawson | @seattledawson
Vice President, Product Management & Marketing at Symform

Margaret is a technology executive and strategic marketer with proven, global success at building brands, shifting perceptions, spearheading entry into new markets, and increasing revenue for emerging companies and Fortune 500 organizations.

1. The amount of digital data we are creating and the number of applications, devices and networks using this data will continue to expand at record rates in 2013. As a result, we will see new solutions and strategies around data management overall and data classification specifically.
2. Companies will work to better categorize data, such as mission-critical, business-critical, sensitive or archival data, and thereby align storage, access and security rules based on those classifications to gain better intelligence from the data.
3. IT will also take more proactive control of data existing in “rogue” cloud usage, such as collaboration solutions, and limit access of those applications to only non-business critical data. At the same time, continued economic and ecological pressures against massive centralized infrastructure to power cloud services will further heat up.
4. While large vendors such as Google and Amazon will undoubtedly continue rampant data center build outs, many businesses will look beyond traditional computing approaches to alternative solutions and architectures. Specifically, both vendors and companies will accept distributed and decentralized approaches to data management not only for the green benefits, but for the improved utilization of existing infrastructure, increased performance and global resiliency.

Service-Centric Approaches | Mergers & Acquisition Activity | Leveraging  of Multi-Cloud Management | Skills Gap

Brian Gracely | @bgracely
Virtualization & Cloud Computing Subject Matter Expert

Somewhere near the intersection between new technologies and new business models, you'll find Brian Gracely. His specialty is taking complex new technologies, figuring out the future business opportunities, connecting the dots across the industry, simplifying it and explaining it to people in suits or t-shirts. That's what he does best. He blogs at http://www.thecloudcast.net.

1. 2013 is going to be a lot like 2008, when business demanded "within 12 month ROI payback" on new technology investments. This will force IT organizations to find creative ways to leverage service-centric approaches to solving business problems.
2. The big vendors (and cloud providers) will open their checkbooks to make big strategic decisions. They have too much cash on the books to watch AMZN and GOOG drive the cloud computing discussion and pricing model.
3. Now that multi-cloud management capabilities are becoming mainstream, we'll begin to see IT organizations begin to build strategies (like their finance and manufacturing colleagues) that look at all available resources as viable project options, both private and public.
4. The skills gap to keep up with all the new technologies continues to grow, so there are either massive opportunities to create new ways to educate/train people, or else more IT functionality moves out to external services that can leverage the scale of their knowledge.
5. Between LTE-Mobile and Gigabit-Fiber projects, we're going to see the beginning of some new technologies and business models that weren't possible 5yrs ago, just because the bandwidth begins to make everything seem local.

Application Management Platforms | Single Function Webservices | Big Data Apps for Finance | DMZ

Brian McCallion | @BrianMcCallion
Independent Consultant 

Brian is a hands-on technologist and entrepreneur focused on Fortune 500 Cloud strategy. He designed DeployAgility long before Puppet/Chef/DevOps. He blogs at http://blog.bronzedrum.com

1. Application Management Platforms for running applications both internally and in the will become a focus area.
2. Single function webservices and applications composed of such services will become the building blocks of Cloud applications.
3. Financial markets Big Data applications will engender an application ecosystem in AWS
4. Enterprise will extend its perimeter to include a new "DMZ" in datacenters like CoreSite and Equinix and these types of datacenters will emerge as a new "Cloud of Clouds"
5. Identity management across multiple Clouds and applications will become a key requirement for enterprise.

Big Data "Lottery Winners" | HP Cloud To Pick Up Momentum | Data Center Construction Boom |

Mark Thiele | @mthiele10
Executive VP of Data Center Technology at Switch

Mark is the founder & president of Data Center Pulse - a growing, non-profit, datacenter industry organization founded on the principles of sharing best practices amongst its exclusive membership. "The Data Center is a particular area of focus for me now," says Mark, "due to the incredible need for improved business agility, greater efficiency, optimization of performance, and environmental management strategies."

1. Big Data: Several (2-3) small start-ups will hit the lottery with easily consumed big data as a service solutions. Key holdup in this area is connectivity. Participation in a strong ecosystem with co-located customers will be a key for successful adoption.
   
   
2. HP Cloud: Will do well. Yes, I said it. HP cloud will pick up some great press and many good customers over the course of 2013.
   
   
3. Data Center Construction Boom: Data Center construction will continue to boom. With recent weather events in combination with CEOs wanting to get out of the DC business pushing for a faster move to an outsourced model which will include faster cloud adoption and more co-location/managed services spend.
   
   
4. The year of Heterogeneous management: 2013 will be the year we stop arguing about/against the idea of hybrid infrastructure & hypervisor environments. Management platforms from Microsoft, ServiceMesh, & Enstratus will lead the way to successful adoption and ease of ownership. In other words, we will be creating the Fluid IT technology adoption environment that will support Agile/Cloud Operating model organizations.
   
   

Mobile Growth Era Still Just Beginning | "SoMoClo" | The Return of Microsoft| IoT Expansion Will Accelerate

Bob Gourley | @CTOvision
CTO at Crucial Point LLC

Bob founded Crucial Point as a technology research and advisory firm providing fact-based technology reviews in support of governments, VC and private equity, and emerging technology firms. He also runs the award-winning technology blog CTOvision.com.

1. We are early in the mobile growth era. Over the next 12 months the pace of smart phone adoption will only increase. Expect that by mid 2013 over 50% of North American adults will own either a smartphone or modern tablet.
2. This continued push to mobile will influence enterprise IT more than any other factor, driving most new developments in Cloud Computing and data analytics. Bandwidth demands by mobile users will fuel continued investment in innovation in communications. Mobile will be a lead driver of the massive increase in data we are all dealing with, making mobile the driver of "Big Data" solutions.
3. Most mobile devices will remain media consumption devices, with creation of content primarily via the old fashioned GUI/Keyboard/Mouse. But innovation in natural user interface and touch/voice/gesture/visualization technologies will continue and increasingly help speed the connection between people and the interconnected resources of the net. Those that create no content may go keyboard-less by the end of 2013.
4. Microsoft will come back with powerful new capabilities that awe and inspire. New versions of their Surface and phone platforms will be on the market by late 2013 that will have so many enterprise features (including mobility with significantly reduced risk) that enterprises will take note. The ability to use Microsoft office on all devices, editing the same document with no issues of version control and total control over enterprise data while mobile will be the discriminating feature of this new approach and will also drive an uptake of Microsoft cloud offerings. As a hedge: If Microsoft does not come through with this vision the world will be much less forgiving of their missed opportunity and the year will be seen as a true breaking point for the firm.
5. The "Internet of Things" will accelerate into an increasing number of North American homes, with Internet/smart phone connected door locks on homes, as well as Internet connected lights, electricity meters, thermostats, televisions, security alarms, garage door openers, lawn sprinklers, security cameras, refrigerators and even toasters. There is no one single architect of this consumer-focused internet enabling, with most products reviewed by CTOvision to date having serious security weaknesses that can be exploited by adversaries. The powerful features and benefits of being able to lock and unlock your home from away turn into a physical security risk when they are exploitable by others. There will undoubtedly be demonstrations of the security failures of these systems, which we hope will lead to new security measures that facilitate better risk management and device management capabilities available to consumers.
   

Authentication and Identity Management | Living in the Public Eye | Shockwave Rider Redux

Terry Woloszyn | @wolyn
Founder of Leeward Security Ltd.

Founder, and still on the Board of Directors, of PerspecSys, Terry brought his extensive experience in business and technology to make PerspecSys the success it is today. His latest venture is Leeward Security, which can be found at http://leewardsecurity.com/

1. Authentication and Identity Management

   As the attackers continue to step up their game, and monetization of attacks becomes increasingly lucrative, the main target of these attacks continues to be ignored. In all cases, whether it is simple phishing, keystroke logging, or sophisticated multi-phase attacks such as Zitmo, the target is the same - the user's identity. Prior to cloud and social networking, management of authentication was typically limited to a small set of internally managed resources such as the workstation and a handful of applications. Today, every individual, from grade schoolers to senior citizens, manages an average of 20 sets of credentials covering their email, their social presence on Facebook and twitter, their blogs, and the plethora of devices they carry and use. Thanks to cloud, social, and mobile, these credentials authenticate against external services, making them easier to attack.

   Due to some high profile attacks this year, password management has been granted "top of mind awareness" status - even making the cover of Wired magazine. It's time for a paradigm shift. It's time to finally put to rest the "username and password as a string of characters" that dates back to the days of green screen 3270 mainframe user interfaces, and start identifying users and providing access management that is current, and more conducive, to the mobile, social, and cloud technologies they need to serve. We will see an explosion of new ideas in this area in 2013, from the application and platform vendors themselves, and some startups (pay attention to Leeward Security!). Some will be adopted, lots will flame out. A select few will go on to become de facto standards for authentication, and identity and access management of the future. The clock starts now.

2. Big Data Meets Date and Codd

   Everything old is new again. As the dust settles and we start to see what Big Data really is, we will quickly discover that some of the lessons learned back in the 1980's about managing data in a relational manner will come back to haunt us. It's the standard 20-30 year cycle of technology. We will "rediscover" in a Big Data context what we did in a Relational context when it comes to standardizing Big Data - from a standard structured query language (despite managing unstructured data elements), through ACID guarantees, and on to real-time processing via improved performance with compilers and optimizers. Who will be the next Mike Stonebraker (INGRES) and Larry Ellison (Oracle) to lead the way into commercializing industrial strength Big Data solutions based on today's tentative first steps with Hadoop, ETL, and analytics?

3. Living in the Public Eye

   Everyone has a presence on the web. Whether it's a simple email address, a Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, twitter feeds, Wordpress blogs, or some other information feed, everyone can see what everyone else has been doing recently. With the convergence of cloud, social, and mobile, along with the recent addition of analytics and supporting Big Data, these interactions are quickly becoming a two-way conversation.

   The mobile platforms are now providing vast amounts of metadata - your geolocation that shows you are driving on the highway, the calendar information showing your next appointments, your email providing additional updates and information, and more. These, in turn, are being used in ever-increasingly pervasive ways in con unction with your cloud-based social information. Electronic assistants can now display and reroute the traffic on that highway, while sending messages on your behalf, automatically updating your host on your new ETA. Even the billboard advertising can be customized to the highest percentage of local traffic around the display, directly targeting an individual or group.

   As analytics creeps in to the equation, connecting the social dots and using some behavioural predictive analysis may have your mobile device as the first to inform you of an upcoming life event. All of this thanks to the fact that every detail of your life is now being logged and cross-referenced for future (and even real-time) analysis to provide you with goods, services, advice, and assistance. Couple that with wearable cameras, and our entire lives will start being documented in ways we are only beginning to understand, and will lead to a better understanding of the human condition as we see the social and behavioural patterns emerge based on data that we never had access to before today.

4. Shockwave Rider Redux

   As our lives, both personal and professional, continue to be captured by mobile, social, cloud, and big data, a renewed interest in privacy will emerge. Governments have enjoyed a boon in intelligence gathering and tracking of individuals and organizations online. The Orwellian dystopia that we see emerging with information access laws and jurisdictional controls will give rise to a backlash, as some individuals and groups choose to live their lives "offline". We need to rediscover the works of John Brunner, as his vision and predictions from 1975 foresaw not only the "web", "worms", information "overload", and other concepts that are now commonplace, but the social reaction to it. As Cloud and Big Data create a pipeline of information from our personal lives to everyone else who cares to look at it, we need to ask ourselves if those same taps can ever be shut off again, and at what cost?

2013 Is Reality Check Time | Effective Data Analysis Is Necessary | Tools & Techniques Are Also Necessary

Kyle Gabhart | @KyleGabhart
Director of Architecture at Web Age Solutions

As leader of the architecture division for Web Age Solutions, Kyle helps Fortune 500s as well as state and federal agencies to develop mature and robust architecture teams and communities of practice.

1. 2013 holds the potential for Big Data and Analytics to either generate real returns for the next wave of adopters or potentially 'jump the shark' and be chalked up as yet another hype-fueled collection of promises and ethereal ROI.
2. The risks for firms adopting Big Data and implementing Analytical capabilities lies in the fundamental lack of clean and congruent data as a starting point, combined with a general ambiguity surrounding what a given enterprise should be looking for in their proverbial haystack of information.
3. Our modern world is so awash in data that organizations will find themselves at a critical juncture in 2013 as they aspire to capture the potential of these emerging disciplines while combating the realities surrounding data management, data stewardship, and effective data analysis. Those firms that are able to overcome these obstacles stand to win in 2013 in a very big way.
4. Other significant challenges that organizations will face in 2013 are in the areas of staffing and identification of best practices surrounding the new arsenals of information that are in the hands of the enterprise. There is a considerable shortage of qualified personnel and a relatively large gap in terms of knowledge transfer and skills development capabilities surrounding Information Architecture, Big Data, and Analytics within many organizations.
5. Additionally, there is a considerable lack of dialogue surrounding what constitutes best practice in these domains. Selecting an appropriate analytics technique and/or supporting technology toolset for a given problem is a critical decision point that few organizations are currently equipped to make. In short, organizations will need to invest in equipping their team's toolbox with Information Architecture tools and techniques in order to ensure success with any Big Data or Analytics initiative in 2013.

Big Data & Cloud To Coalesce | Hybrid Clouds Will Prevail | PaaS/IaaS Divide Will Shrink Further

Ellen Rubin | @ellen_rubin
Top 100 Cloud Blogger and Founder of CloudSwitch, which was acquired by Verizon in 2012.

Ellen, an experienced entrepreneur with a proven track record in founding innovative technology companies, was before CloudSwitch a member of the early management team at Netezza (NYSE: NZ), the pioneer and market leader in data warehouse appliances, where she helped grow the company to over $125M in revenues and a successful IPO in 2007.

1. The big data and cloud worlds integrate further, with meaningful large data warehousing and BI gaining speed. Expect innovation in toolsets for better and faster ETL and deep analytics/data mining (horizontal but also several industry specific), plus an acquisition or two of smaller companies in these spaces to help the established vendors catch up.
2. Rogue developers in medium and large enterprises continue to scale out their cloud app dev and production environments, forcing IT groups to address facts on the ground and incorporate these into ongoing security and support plans. Private clouds remain the focus of internal IT with little significant innovation, allowing cloud-reluctant organizations to maintain control. Hybrid cloud remains the enterprise architecture of choice. Enterprises grow more concerned about single-sourcing in the cloud, and invest some resources in selecting or building a smaller "second cloud."
3. The PaaS/IaaS divide shrinks further, with only a few large players dominating the combined set of services, locked in commodity pricing wars for the basic infra/platform capabilities. Specialized players will survive by offering higher-level management services and more predictable performance and SLAs, but will lose relative market share.
4. The battle heats up for ownership of a more coherent cloud management framework - encompassing internal and external clouds, and automating many of the dev-ops processes and tools end to end, with innovation in real-time controls using the huge log datasets. With no clear winner in sight, enterprise cloud teams continue to work with SIs and vendors to create custom dashboards.
   

• Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley Call for Papers Deadline August 31
• Staying Secure in 2013
• HP Forms New Cloud Unit
• An Investment in Next-Generation Cloud: ProfitBricks Secures $19.5 Million
• Big Data: "Like Moneyball for Geeks"