I guess that I’m a bit late in the game here to throw my predictions into the clouds but late is better than never, right? It has been an exciting year for us here at GoGrid. We had many stellar and innovative announcements which you can read about here. Before I quickly go into some of my thoughts for 2010, it makes sense to see how well I did for 2009. My original predictions were here and were as follows (coupled with a quick analysis).

1. Cloud Reduce the Effect of the Recession – Businesses definitely did not spend as much last year, however, the interest in the cloud as a financially viable way to “survive” gained traction throughout the year. All major cloud providers (including GoGrid) showed growth during the year despite the recession.
2. Broader Depth of Clouds – the cloud continued to grow throughout the year. More smaller and larger players jumped into the mix. The relative “unknown” of the cloud began to become much clearer.
3. VC’s, Money & Long Term Viability – hard to gauge this one without knowing what VC’s were investing in. But given the strength of leaders like AWS, Rackspace and GoGrid and the continued development therein, the long term viability seemed solid.
4. Partnerships Galore & Weeding Out of Providers – As is evident with GoGrid’s growing partner list, this is really where the marketplace was expanding. Partners bring subject-matter expertise to the cloud, allowing for medium to large providers to focus on their core competencies. There were not big failures of providers during 2009 but the shakeout may start in 2010.
5. Hybrid Solutions – we continued to lead the way with robust hybrid solutions in the form of cloud front-ends coupled with physical back-end server. Not too many other providers announced things similar, but I believe these will materialize this year.
6. Web 3.0 – the “social web” definitely took off this year, as did the whole (vague) concept of data being “in the cloud”. Web 3.0 wasn’t officially announced but there were definitely lots of companies mashing up their services/data in unique, new offerings.
7. Standards and Interoperability – many separate groups continued to work towards open standards and interoperability with definite progress being made. Unfortunately, these groups are still splintered with individuals and companies working towards their own agenda.
8. Staggered Growth within the Cloud – the big players continued to get bigger, leaving some of the smaller or non-visionary thinkers a bit behind. More users started looking away from shared hosting and more towards the cloud for solutions. Smaller startups continued to advance using the cloud to power their infrastructure with the enterprise still testing the waters or using the cloud sporadically.
9. Technology Advances at the Cloud Molecular Level – chip manufacturers and computer/server vendors did announce chipsets and systems optimized for the cloud.
10. Larger Adoption – still not as fast as I expected, but the fact that the Federal (and State) governments were (and are) putting some serious thought and development work around cloud computing shows that adoption is growing across the board.

Just quickly scanning through my “results” shows that I wasn’t too off track. Some items faired a bit better than others but for the most part my “predictions” were fairly close. So what about 2010? Here’s what I’m thinking:

1. Cloud Outages – There will be several Cloud Outages that get high visibility this year. As complexity and associated infrastructure grows and more users turn toward the cloud, any hiccups therein will receive quick and broad media coverage, with naysayers quickly stating “I told you so”. Unfortunately, any type of outage may be perceived as a “cloud failure”, resulting in the masses becoming increasingly doubtful in the reliability of the cloud. This “F.U.D. Factor” will be a steep hurdle that cloud providers and partners will have to overcome. Those companies with sound IT strategies and best practices in place will be able to weather any outages well, assuming they employ Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions and have them implemented.
2. The Rise of Hybrid Hosting Solutions – While relatively new in 2009, more providers will consider implementing the ability to have the “best of all worlds” hosting solutions. Whether this be the combination of physical and cloud environments or, cloud bursting, or private and public clouds working congruently, there will definitely be a blurring of lines between what hosting is.
3. Security Concerns, Vulnerabilities and Malware – this is an only logical prediction. As the number of cloud or virtualized environments increase due to their ease of use and lower cost, the possibility of environments being created and left unattended also increases. Also because of the ease of use, with “average” users deploying environments that are not hardened or at least audited from a security standpoint, there are more possibilities for hackers or users to unintentionally open their systems up to malware, botnets or other malicious code.
4. A “Cloud” for Everyone – Towards the end of last year, we started to see a blurring of the definition of “cloud” and “cloud computing”. The mainstream media is to blame for much of this confusion. To that end, people seem to be ubiquitously interchanging the word “cloud” and “cloud computing” where they are actually quite different. Most people are simply using the word “cloud” to describe anything where the data is stored somewhere else, whether it be truly using a “cloud computing” environment or simply a cluster of servers somewhere. I predict that this confusion will get worse long before it gets better. People will continue to interchangeably use “cloud” and “cloud computing” thus forcing those of us in the industry to (re)define what “cloud computing” truly is. However, as the word “cloud” becomes incredibly mainstream, it will grow to mean anything that is delivered via the web, regardless of if it is applications, services, infrastructure, data or what have you. (In fact, I used “cloud” interchangeably throughout this post…for me, I’m talking about “cloud computing.”)
5. Analysts will Shorten their “Coming of Age” Stories – Many of the big name players predicted that cloud computing wouldn’t really be adopted by the mainstream for another few years. I believe that they will retract or refine their statements to show how much closer to mainstream cloud computing really is. While Fortune100 companies may still be slow to adopt, the “rest of us” will get on the cloud a lot faster than analysts originally predicted.

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Hi, my name is Randy Bias, the new VP Technology Strategy at GoGrid.  As the new year approaches, I’m happy to make my first post on this blog.

I haven’t ever provided a New Year prediction list before, so I hope you will indulge.  As the newest member of and the technology visionary on the GoGrid executive team I’m pretty excited to toss a few predictions into the ring for 2009.  Hope this inspires more cloud conversation.  Find more on my thoughts around infrastructure and cloud computing on my personal blog.

1. Cloud-Oriented Architectures (COA) becomes much better understood
   De facto standards drive the adoption of cross-cloud, loosely-coupled, distributed web applications that are connected by REST interfaces.  The community at large comes to understand that this new category of applications are Cloud-Oriented Architectures (COA) and differ from SOA in being deployed on clouds, aware of clouds, and built using grassroots-derived standards instead of top-down standards like SOAP & WS-*.
2. No Cloud Standards Emerge
   Despite hype and hope, no new top-down derived cloud ’standard’ emerges.  Some forward thinking providers do move the ball forward by opening their platforms and hints of potential standards start to develop by widely embraced, but grass roots developed standards and APIs.
3. Big Iron still has no clue
   The Big Iron folks (Dell, IBM, Sun, and HP) continue to flail at offering ‘cloud’ offerings because they can’t take their focus away from hardware.  Nothing real develops from those folks except failed attempts at ’standardization’ and cloud offerings.
4. Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) look to clouds & DR
   Economic reality forces the hand of SMEs looking to shave IT costs.  More and more dip their toes into the water, moving their non-production and elastic compute needs to ‘the cloud’.  Disaster Recovery becomes the ‘killer app’ for forward thinking SMEs who want to minimize their exposure while maximizing dollars saved.
5. Broad testing of internal clouds by F500
   Fortune 500 widely tests internal cloud systems using VMware vCloud, EUCALYPTUS, OpenNebula, and related offerings.  Small scale tests, but enough to get a flavor.
6. Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) wake up and realize their business model is at stake
   CDNs finally figure out that as clouds go global the primary barrier to entry for the CDN business, foreign real estate deals, disappears allowing customers to roll their own and a flood of *more* small upstarts enters the already crowded market.  Smart CDNs turn into global cloud providers, further accelerating adoption, or remain clueless and are squeezed from both sides.
7. Hybrid clouds come of age: scale-out on virtual servers and up on iron
   Clue finally sets in that virtualization != clouds and multiple major cloud vendors provide combined virtual+physical server solutions, on-demand just like any other cloud computing offering.  The new hybrid model sets Web 2.0 folks on fire escalating up take for folks reticent to re-engineer for massively distributed databases.  Instead, using big iron for scaling up the DB becomes the de facto solution for anyone who cares more about getting to market and less about faux ’scaling issues.’[1]
8. Clouds enter Asia
   AWS goes to Asia or a credible competitor arises there capturing mind share and further expanding the global reach of cloud computing providers.  Conversely, clouds entering Asia realize that it’s a fragmented market with expensive intra-country bandwidth, making cost effective traction difficult on a cross-Pacific Rim basis.

A few weeks ago, I posted my 2009 Cloud Computing predictions. I already had one of my predictions validated (regarding VC funding – #3) with GoGrid partner, RightScale, receiving $13M in funding this week. (Congrats to them!). So I figured that I would ask GoGrid’s CEO, John Keagy, for his Cloud Computing predictions for 2009. What I received from him is verbatim (I know that I can always count on John to provide solid insight coupled with some humor).

John’s predictions are as follows:

1. Asking “is the Enterprise ready for the Cloud” will be analogized to “the Internet is a fad”
2. There will be some Cloud security breaches that will become super high profile
3. Questioning the security of the Cloud will become less vogue
4. The demand on companies to develop Cloud strategies will be likened to Y2K certification
5. Cloud strategies will be proven to be more important than Y2K certification
6. SAN storage will not emerge as being relevant to Cloud Computing
7. NoHardware.com will illuminate the spirit of the Cloud movement
8. RackSpace stock will claw back to $10.00
9. Al Gore will announce he invented Cloud Computing
10. “Cloud Computing will ______fill in the blank______”

I love the fact that John shoots from the hip with many of these predictions. But there are several points here that warrant a bit more commentary from me (are you surprised?).

1. The “Cloud” is not a fad, nor is “the Internet.” In fact, the Internet, in many aspects, it the largest Cloud Infrastructure out there. Read Reuven Cohen’s post on this subject. So using basic logic I learned in high school: IF “internet is a fad” is a false statement, AND, “the Internet is a huge Cloud Infrastructure” is a true statement, THEN we can infer that “Cloud Computing is a fad” is a false statement. (Not sure how bullet proof my inferences and assumptions are but you should get my point here.)
2. Everyone is holding Cloud Computing under a microscope. Every little “glitch” or “downtime” will be amplified 10-fold. However, I agree that there will be a breach that gets public attention that will cause everyone to step on the brakes a bit, but then move forward as before with “lessons learned.”
3. People love picking apart things that are new. It’s an obvious statement that security is a big deal, within the Cloud or not. So, as the hype dies down, “security” will be just another check box right after “save money.”
4. It is inevitable that as companies restructure from an organizational and financial perspective and undergo drastic re-engineering that Cloud Computing will be one of those technologies that will be forefront in many strategies. John likens it to Y2K compliance – the Cloud must be part of your 2009 strategy for success.
5. Y2K certification was required to ensure that the software/hardware within businesses didn’t collapse when 2000 came around. Cloud Computing goes beyond this because it affects your bottom line and profitability in so many areas. Sure, in Y2K your systems could have collapsed but you didn’t have a choice: you had to comply. With 2009, you not only need survive but also try to squeak out a profit in the process. Y2K was a requirement, Cloud Computing is an optional component to a successful company business and infrastructure strategy. If complying also means survival and profit, then it IS required.
6. Cloud Storage offerings will continue to grow, eliminating the need for dedicated physical storage devices (SANs) within the Cloud. SAN technology itself is old, costly and doesn’t work well with the times. Using a combination of iSCSI/NAS might be a better, more cost effective solution.
7. “Hardware? We don’t need no stinkin’ hardware!” Companies will start recycling (hopefully) their old bare-metal servers (in various creative ways) and will move to the Cloud. Get some ideas on how to “dispose” of your old hardware at NoHardware.com .
8. RackSpace did a few amazing things last year. They had one of the only technology IPO’s in 2008. That is a huge accomplishment (kudos to them). As of this writing, RackSpace (RAX) is trading at $5.73/share. Not too far to go to get back to their IPO price of $12.50. Also, their recent acquisition of companies for more Cloud services is compelling.
9. Wait, didn’t he also invent the Internet? Seriously though, Cloud Computing goes a long way with the Green aspect of computing. There is less power consumed and less computer parts needing to be recycled (as they are virtualized). Save the planet!
10. …be the silver bullet to slow or stop the recession? …enable companies to maintain profitability? …bring government into the 21st century? What do YOU think Cloud Computing will do in 2009?

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After about a year of Cloud Computing under my belt, analyzing trends in the market, talking with various professionals as well as customers in the space and watching our own Cloud Computing product, GoGrid, take off as a Cloud Computing leader and innovator, I feel that it is time to make some 2009 predictions for Cloud Computing. Who would have guessed that 2008 would have been “The Year of the Cloud“? I think that 2009 will be “The Year of the CLOUDS” (emphasis on multiple).

A Quick Look Back

If you look back to January 2008, the players in Cloud Computing were few are far between. Obviously, Amazon was breaking ground in establishing themselves as the front-runner at that time. But the term was too new and largely undefined. One of my first blog posts discussed some trends of grid computing, virtualization & virtualized hosting, cloud computing and “green hosting.” For the most part, many of those concepts have not changed. Rather, they have evolved, grown and become more established as leading technologies for the future. As of the writing of that article, GoGrid was still in Private Beta, but with well over 2 years of development getting it ready for prime time.

Virtualization was definitely the buzzword of the beginning of 2008, mainly because it was something that people could fairly easily understand. There were several desktop virtualization products available for users to host different OS’s within their own OS. As Jeff Kaplan predicted, On-Demand services started to really take off for several reasons that are applicable even today (if not more so). His number 1 reason: “Services are Recession Proof” (more about that later in my predictions). While Jeff’s ideas were largely focused on SaaS, there is a lot to be said when you apply them to Cloud Computing in general.

Close to when GoGrid was launched at the end of March 2008, coincidentally(?) the search term “Cloud Computing” (according to Google Insight) really started a strong upward trend within World Wide Searches:

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This week, Gartner, Inc released their list of the top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009. This information stems from research performed within the Technology sector and factors in their client and research feedback. This list, released at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo, is considered to be potentially “disruptive to your environment or market in some way,” says Gartner analyst David Cearley.

While I sometimes find some of Gartner’s commentary on trends in technology a bit conservative and missing other critical data, this 2009 list does represent current trends that I have seen and mirrors many of my own expectations. Just last week, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington declared that Web 2.0 was dead. I think that many of us have already moved well beyond Web 2.0. My view, for some time, has been that Web 3.0 (for lack of a better term) will be a combination of Integration and Standards and the coupling of the two, with other enabling technologies such as Cloud Computing providing the necessary lubrication. We saw the term “mashup” become prevalent during the past year or so, where companies sought to integrate similar services (or even disparate ones) in a new service delivered via the Web. A could of quick examples of this is evident with the numerous Twitter services that use Twitter data and either present this data in different ways or full integration into other services, or the advent of Yahoo!’s Pipes.

Key to Integration is making the connections easier through the use of public APIs. As more companies expose their API’s to developers, the wheels for integration become even more greased. This is all fine and good provided that these API are carefully documented, but more critical is that APIs must adhere to some sort of standard. Unfortunately, the “standards” requirement is a lot harder to require and maintain. At a recent Cloud Computing Interoperability meeting that I participated in, most attendees agreed that Standards are a huge priority, however, defining these standards would be a daunting task to undertake. But this interop was a clear step forward by the leaders in the industry towards defining these standards. If you step back a few years, you could view Web Services as a precursor to the API movement we see now (API’s are a subset of Web Services), and XML standards helped to propel the acceptance of Web Services and Integrations in general.

I feel that those companies who are currently working to aggregate (or integrate) various API’s into their business model are well positioned to be the ones who can help drive these standards. Case in point, GoGrid has a public API and recently signed up various Cloud Aggregators (such as RightScale, Appistry and GigaSpaces). These companies use a variety of other Cloud Infrastructure providers within their management services. The more that I thought about it, the more I realized how important these Cloud Aggregators’ roles are in driving some Cloud standards. They have views into all of their partner API’s and can easily find similarities and differences between these API’s. Any API’s that these aggregators come up with themselves are one step closer to a standards-based API that could potentially be generic enough for use by many if not all providers.

What is also interesting, is that this concept of Integration and Standards actually does apply to our current World Financial Crisis as well. We have a bank and financial institution pandemonium with mergers seemingly occurring daily. These institutions will need to integrate diverse systems in order to succeed and the government will be forced to derive some standards to govern their vested interest in these institutions. Sure, this is a fairly broad application of these terms in this comparison between Web 3.0 and Finance, but the ideas are similar.

But back to the Gartner predictions for 2009. First, we need to take off our rose colored glasses here. Any time you make a prediction, the odds are that you could be wrong in the long run. I realize that this is a bit pessimistic, but just look at our Economy right now. There were plenty of naysayers who told us that we were going down the wrong path, but we still proceeded ahead, ignoring these predictions. Technology trends are no different than Economic ones; you can make an attempt to predict based on the past however, the difference here is that technology seem to be a lit less volatile compared to the economy.

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