The Cloud: A Three-Year Forecast

While we typically see a barrage of predictions – tech related and otherwise – at the beginning of each new year, experts in every field enjoy sharing their ideas around the future of their field of expertise just about any time of year.  One of our favorite cloud computing experts, David Linthicum, recently published an article on his cloud computing blog, “What the Cloud Will Look Like in 3 Years.” In this article, Linthicum offers three thoughtful predictions for what cloud computing will look like three years from now.  While these changes will happen subtly, the difference between where the cloud is now and where it may be three years from now will certainly be noticeable.

Governance and management will be major focuses

The use of the cloud creates the need to manage hundreds, perhaps thousands of services and APIs. Enterprises will have reached the tipping point long before in terms of trying to manually manage these services. In three years, they will have cloud service/resource systems to manage the complexity.

Security will be better and more baked in

Security will continue to be a concern three years from now, even though there will be significant strides made to improve cloud security. Large cloud providers will provide security features right in their cloud, although in many cases third-party providers will offer the best solution, including those dealing with distributed and federated identity management. "Centralized trust" will be the new buzz phrase, and hopefully the standards will be in place to allow for interoperability.

Tiered data will be a major focus

In the tiered-data approach, some data will be on premise, such as those where performance or legal concerns require it be local. As time goes on, the data will move from the local tiers to the remote tiers due to cost issues. Most data will be in the cloud, though we'll see the emergence of private and community clouds that will house data that is semi-private and needs some control. As part of that cloud-centered storage reality, back-end public cloud-based databases will handle massive data stores with an eye to analytics use -- in the petabyte scale.

Here at The Vested Group, we see positive things on the horizon for cloud computing as well.  If you are considering moving your business operations to a cloud platform, we feel like NetSuite is the best way to go.  NetSuite offers one cloud solution for your entire business.  NetSuite is used by more than 16,000 organizations worldwide, and delivers accounting/Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Ecommerce—in a single, integrated business management software solution.

Some key benefits of NetSuite include:

▪       Real-time business intelligence that's personalized for every employee

▪       Accelerates business processes, from order management to procurement

▪       Integrated suite eliminates manual processes and reduces errors

▪       360° view of customers across sales, marketing, service and finance

▪       Reduces IT costs by 50%+, while delivering automated upgrades

▪       Easy to access from anywhere with just a web browser or mobile device.

If you would like to learn more about NetSuite or how The Vested Group can make your transition to a cloud platform a successful upgrade to your business operations, please contact The Vested Group today.  We have offices in Dallas, TX and Tampa, FL ready to serve all of your cloud computing needs!