1. Multicloud becomes the norm

As companies quickly adopt a variety of cloud resources, they’ll increasingly have to work with several different cloud solutions, from different providers. Cloud customers will already be using more than 10 different cloud apps on average, by the end of 2012. Cloud orchestration will become a big focus and also an opportunity for service providers.

2. The Wild West of cloud procurement is over

Most companies will have established their formal cloud strategy by the end 2012, including the business models between IT and lines of business for their own, private cloud resources. This is in comparison to 2011 where we witnessed different stakeholders within a company brokering (sometimes unsanctioned by IT) a lot of cloud deals.

 3. Cloud commoditization is moving up the stack

Cloud infrastructure services are becoming highly commoditized with increasing margin pressure year after year. All cloud vendors are trying to move up the value chain to deliver higher-value cloud services. In 2012, you will see more and more infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) vendors offer technology platform services, platform vendors offering software services, and applications vendors packaging business process services into their offerings.

4. Collaboration will emerge as a key business benefit for cloud computing

The main idea behind cloud computing is still resource sharing, which delivers cost and standardization benefits. However, traditional cloud solutions do not leverage shared resources for collaborative processes between different cloud users. In 2012, more collaborative cloud solutions will emerge where business partners collaborate on information, business objects, or even end-to-end business processes in the cloud. Cloud collaboration will become a key business driver to move to cloud solutions.

5. The new wave of SaaS solutions will be in PLM, BI, and SCM

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) today is mainly driven by customer relationship management (CRM), procurement, collaboration software, and human capital management (HCM). All other software segments still have significantly lower SaaS adoption rates. However, in 2012, interest will shift to SaaS solutions like product life-cycle management (PLM), business intelligence (BI), and supply chain management (SCM), all of which will break through a strong 25% of companies using these solutions in 2012.

6. The cloud market will grow beyond $60 billion

The total cloud market (including private, virtual private, and public cloud markets) will reach about $61 billion by the end of 2012, as all cloud markets continue to grow. At the moment, the largest individual cloud market continues to be the public SaaS market, which will hit $33 billion by the end of 2012.

7. Private clouds will go beyond virtualization

A virtualized data center is not (yet) a private cloud. With an increasing understanding of cloud computing, companies will shift their focus from technical virtualization projects to focus on the change management aspects required for flexible business models between IT and the line of business.

8. The first cloud brokers will emerge

The cloud broker is a new business model managing the flexible sourcing of internal and external cloud resources on behalf of a company. While the CIO will initially take the role, we will see the first real broker companies emerge in the market much faster than many people might expect.

9. Large enterprises will take the lead in cloud markets

Initially slower than small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), large enterprises have understood that the main benefits of cloud services — such as scalability, speed, flexibility, and remote user support — are as appealing to them as they are to SMBs. So, large enterprises spent 2011 mostly catching up, and by 2012, they will be leading in cloud adoption rates in every cloud segment compared with SMBs.

10. The lines between cloud and on-premises licensing models are blurring

While on-premises applications are typically licensed in perpetual license agreements and SaaS in subscription deals, these lines are blurring as customers demand more flexibility in their deals. In 2012, we will see all of it: capital expenditure (capex) and operational expenditure (opex) licensing models, upfront payments, financing, subscriptions, flat-rate- and dynamic-usage-based pricing, and outcome-based pricing for all the different deployment options — on-site and in the cloud.

by Dan Worth of http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2130119/european-commission-hit-firms-huge-breach-fines

The European Commission is pushing for the power to fine businesses up to five per cent of annual turnover for breaches of privacy rules, according to a draft of the Data Protection Directive to be unveiled in the new year.

Documents seen by the Financial Times suggest that the EC’s proposals will also impose mandatory notifications for all companies within 24 hours of any data breach, as the institution looks to strength citizens’ privacy.

Further reading

European Commission claims 95 per cent of citizens have broadband access
European Commission opens consultations on single network access laws
HP predicts 50 zettabytes of data will be created annually by 2020

The document contains provisions for any organisation with more than 250 employees to appoint full-time staff dedicated to data protection, a system not currently enforced in all EU member states.

Elaine Fletcher, a senior associate at law firm Eversheds, told V3 that some of the proposals outlined by the EC could be hard to implement and a burden for many businesses.

“A 24-hour notification system could be very onerous on firms and difficult to conform to as it’s not easy to establish when a breach actually occurred,” she said.

“Furthermore, a five per cent turnover fining regime is an interesting mechanism to chose as the UK authorities decided against such as system when issuing powers to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as have other member states.”

She also noted that a regime requiring firms over a certain number of employees to have dedicated data protection officers failed to take into account the fact some large firms may not process any sensitive data while smaller firms that did would avoid the obligation.

Europe heading for unified data protection regime that could harm UK

by Dan Worth of http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2130844/europe-heading-unified-protection-regime-harm-uk

The first draft of the revised Data Protection Directive due to be released by the European Commission in January is expected to propose a pan-European Regulation that would legally oblige all member states to enforce it in the same way.

The current system allows individual nations to interpret the law as they see fit as long as they achieve the broad aims of the Directive.

Further reading

EC wants all non-European business to adhere to Data Protection Directive
European data protection chief in net neutrality privacy warning
European Commission to hit firms with huge data breach fines

However, making it a Regulation would take this right away, effectively forcing watchdogs like the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office to apply European laws rather than those of the UK government.

Carl-Christian Buhr, a member of the cabinet of Digital Agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes, hinted strongly at an event hosted by law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse on Tuesday that the EC is planning to make this change.

“The Data Protection Directive is under review and January’s proposals for a new legal framework may not be a Directive but a Regulation that’s applicable in law,” he said.

Furthermore, a member of the Article 29 Working Party, which advises the EC on data protection issues, told V3 that there is a “possibility” that it will look to create a Regulation.

Regulators will make such a move to achieve a single data protection law for citizens across the EU, but legal experts warned that it could seriously harm the UK economy.

Stewart Room, a partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse, explained that many companies outside Europe see the UK as the best place to access and process data as it has one of Europe’s more liberal data protection regimes, but this advantage will be lost under the proposed changes.

“The creation of a Data Protection Regulation will end the Data Protection Act and put off many US companies from entering the UK,” he said.

“There’s no doubting the sincerity of the law makers, and that they are trying to protect citizens, but they’re going too far with what they’re set to propose and it will have a detrimental effect on innovation at a time when the economy needs all the help it can get.”

Computer server EMC says firms need to put more focus on backup and recovery systems
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Almost three-quarters of firms and public sector organisations across nine European countries may not fully recover their computer systems or data after an IT failure, a survey suggests.

The report by IT group EMC said 74% were “not very confident” they could fully restore their networks.

It also found that 54% admitted they had lost data or suffered systems downtime in the past 12 months.

A total 1,750 IT bosses in countries including the UK were questioned.

The other countries covered in the survey were Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Russia.

EMC said firms needed to put more focus on backup and recovery systems.

Its report found that the most common cause of data loss and downtime was hardware failure, followed by power outage and software malfunction.

Growth in the UK market has been pretty substantial in recent years as more and more people are realising the huge advantages. In 2011, UK users will spend £33 billion pounds in cloud computing which is expected to rise to £46 billion pounds in 2016. While the pre-existing offerings of Broadband and Internet Services will continue to predominate, there will be a proportionate rise in SaaS, PaaS and IaaS spending.