Cloud Computing in 2013

Analysts predict that there will be a trend for the IT community to move from internal deployments to external deployments next year, as well as new cloud applications and cloud services to point to an increase in trends.

Matthew Oostveen, head of IDC Research, said cloud computing technology has matured this year and more and more companies are moving their IT infrastructure deployments from within to outside.

Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Geddas's predictions are similar to Oostveens's. He believes cloud computing services will mature next year and continue to be used as an alternative to internal infrastructure and service delivery.

He said that as new cloud applications were marketed in 2013, there would be more innovation in application testing and development.

We can expect to see new types of applications hosted into the cloud, more choices in data hosting (or infrastructure managed types), and more services on enterprise-class application hosting.

"We can also expect to see very strong enterprise-class services in the future market," said Robert Hillard, head of Deloitte Consulting technology.

Gartner's vice president Rolf Jester predicts that total cloud spending in Australia will grow by 22% in the coming year, more than $3 billion trillion.

The business process, BPaaS, is a big part of that, and software as a service (SaaS) will also grow by 28%, more than 470 million dollars, he said. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will reach 385 million dollars and grow by 55%.

He also predicts that by 2014, 40% of companies will prove independent security tests as prerequisites for using any type of cloud service. Today the figure is less than 1%.