Future of IT expected to take place in the cloud

Monday, December 05, 2011

Research firm Gartner recently announced several predictions for IT organizations beginning next year and occurring in the near future.

According to its research, cloud computing is expected to play a significant role in the future of IT. Specifically, more than 50 percent of Global 1000 companies are projected to have customer information stored in the public cloud.

Also, 80 percent of cloud computing services vendors are expected to offer their solutions with some type of energy surcharge to help manage costs.

"Some cloud data center operators already include an energy surcharge in their pricing package, and Gartner analysts believe this trend will rapidly escalate to include the majority of operators - driven by competitive pressures and a 'me too' approach," said Gartner.

The study also suggested that low cost cloud services will "cannibalize" as much as 15 percent of outsourcing revenue by 2015.

As more companies adopt cloud computing in the future, the amount of traffic associated with the technology is expected to increase significantly. A recent study conducted by a cloud vendor suggests that the cloud is projected to account for 51 percent of all data center workloads by 2014.