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Tech Predictions for 2011
2010-11-29 15:44:51
As we approach the end of 2010, analysts, bloggers and the media are publishing their predictions for 2011.
In this article, we will discuss some of these and even offer up a couple of predictions of our own.
On the subject of Cloud Standards, it seems that the prevalent view is that we won't see any real movement on this in 2011. Despite a lot of work by several organisations, there are no major agreements on standards on the horizon. Analysts Forrester and Cloud Computing expert, David Linthicum, speaking on infoworld.com both share this view, as do SymetriQ. As a Public Cloud provider, SymetriQ are very keen to see standards in the industry, but we are just not there yet. On a positive note though, the absence of industry standards does not lead to the level of 'vendor lock-in' that some sceptics would have you believe. It is possible to move between Cloud providers and many organisations have already done so. SymetriQ have helped several organisations to do this in the last few months alone. Yes, this required some manual intervention (including V-to-V conversion and large scale data transfer), but it can still be done relatively easily in a lot of situations.
Analysts Forrester feel that 2011 will see costs from Cloud vendors drop. David Linthicum reckons we will see prices drop by around 30% over the year. While we agree that the market will drive down costs (30% doesn't seem an unrealistic figure), we also feel that many customers are willing to pay a premium for certain services - particularly around security. For example, guarantee of data location and government level security will still appeal to certain organisations despite the additional costs that this may bring.
In his Infoworld.com article, Linthicum states that he believes 2011 will be the year that Government finally gets it's 'cloud act together'. For example the GSA Blanket Purchase Agreement, which will include Cloud Provider Enomaly, is one of several government initiatives expected to be rolled out over the next 12 months. Although he is referring to the U.S., the trend will be broadly the same in the U.K. With the recent announcement of massive Public Sector budget cuts in the UK, organisations will need to look to alternative business models for the delivery of IT projects. Even leaving aside 'G-Cloud', Public Sector organisations are already looking seriously at Cloud projects. SymetriQ are working with several Public Sector bodies in the UK at present and although these are mainly at the early stages, we expect to see many of these ramp up as we move into 2011.
Mergers and Acquisitions are expected to continue in the tech world in 2011, with Cloud Computing at the heart of many of these (Oracle and Salesforce are one of the latest rumours). Ernst & Young report that tech M&A's are up 49% on the 3rd quarter of last year and they expect the trend to continue.
One trend that SymetriQ can see beginning to make an impact in 2011 (despite the aforementioned lack of industry wide standards) is the concept of cloud brokerage. More specifically, this relates to an intermediary selling excess capacity in the Cloud, a high profile example of this was recently announced by Enomaly.
And finally we expect to see a continuation of the trend of SMB IT resellers moving from their traditional business model and reselling cloud services. SymetriQ had a lot of interest in our partner program in 2010 and we are seeing this increasing even further as we move towards 2011. By moving away from 'pushing tin' at ever decreasing margins and moving to a monthly revenue model these resellers can ensure a more profitable (up to 25% margin with SymetriQ for example) and sustainable revenue stream as well as bringing the benefits of the cloud to their end users.
Johnny Paterson
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