Cloud computing and large data development trend forecasts

Recently, IDC and Gartner both launched their latest cloud computing and large data development trend forecasts and statistics in the morning of Thursday, some of which are bold, while others may drown in reader's saliva. Let's talk about what these organizations say and what they actually see.

Large data field

"Large data processing will become an ' essential ' capability" (from IDC) in 2012. Since the technology has not yet gained such an important status as "essential", it is meaningless to argue. But IDC did make a few logical mistakes in the derivation of its comments. According to them, 2.43-gigabyte (i.e., tens of millions of trillion bytes) of unstructured data will appear by 2012, but the problem with this large data is largely reflected in the storage mechanism. Pictures, videos, and music files are the main elements of this piece of data, and I think we haven't been able to make meaningful progress on this type of large-scale data analysis.

"2012 could be a year of mergers and acquisitions triggered by Big data" (from IDC). In this view, I think the IDC conclusion is quite pertinent. That said, I still don't know where the mergers and acquisitions activities that have swept up will come. NoSQL database providers (such as red-hot 10gen) seem to be the forerunners of this trend, as the company has been doctrine various technologies for different companies, and only Oracle has made clear that it is going to vigorously develop its own technology. In Hadoop, Cloudera claims to be adamant that it will not sell the project, and most of the emerging analytics companies we value – perhaps Datameer – are too immature.

In the field of general analysis, the potential targets that can instantly appear in our minds are Paraccel, Infobright, Kognitio, Quantivo, and Attivio.

"By 2015, more than 85% of Fortune 500 companies will lose their edge in Big Data competition" (from Gartner). Oh, wow! I think it depends on how Gartner defines the concept of "advantage," and I have to stress that most Fortune 500 companies have started – at least experimentally – using Hadoop to play a role in emotional analysis and data control, isn't that a solid competitive advantage? But Gartner's conclusions are more accurate when it comes to data stream processing rates and the timeliness of processing. If companies were to focus too much on big data early on and not prepare for more forward-looking plans for the future, they would not be able to fully translate the advantages of big data technology into efficient catalysts for real-time decision-making.

Cloud computing

"(by 2012) 80% of commercial enterprise applications will be deployed in the Cloud Platform" (from IDC). 80% Such figures are quite high, but before we read the full report, we cannot determine exactly whether the result is accurate. If IDC defines the so-called "business" type as a customer-facing and enterprise-wide application, including Web startup, that 80% might make sense. For emerging companies that use cloud platforms almost exclusively, their application cloud deployments will certainly be higher. Businesses that have just started to do non-critical applications or cloud deployments with no sensitive information applications, such as Web sites and mobile applications, are bound to be more interested in other cloud-based solutions.

"In 2012, Amazon Web services brought in more than 1 billion dollars in cloud services business over the next 18 months, followed by Google Business Services" (from IDC). I think Amazon Web Services will be able to achieve that goal this year. Google's similar kit will be so successful in about 2013 years. On the Google side, I have yet to find out that they have the "other benefits" product line similar to Amazon's analysis, but the former has delivered 383 million of dollars of outstanding revenue in the third quarter, including Google Apps and app engine's earnings.

IDC expects a wave of mergers and acquisitions (m&a) to emerge on a massive scale. "Yes, this may be true, as SaaS (ie, software) companies will show a better appeal over the next year than the PAAs (i.e., platform-service) vendors." Given Microsoft's hard experience with Windows Azure, I don't think there are many big suppliers that have a strong intention of moving into the area. A forecast from IDC is interesting: Microsoft will buy Netflix to enrich its app market.

"By 2016, 40% of companies will take independent security testing as a prerequisite to adopting any type of cloud service." This statement is more reliable. According to Gartner, only third-party-provided certification mechanisms are not enough, but I think this is also closely related to the cloud-computing insurance system. The more secure the cloud, the lower the premiums that companies using cloud technology will need to pay. Rather than exploiting the security implications of cloud technology from this point of view, I would prefer to see this as a good opportunity for cloud service providers to demonstrate their importance to security.

"By the end of 2016, more than half of the world's 1000 companies will store sensitive customer-related data in a public cloud" (from Gartner). The reason Gartner puts this argument is that it takes into account the need for reasonable cost savings, but I think it's more closely related to the security testing mechanism that we talked about earlier. With the increasing security of cloud computing itself, generally speaking, enterprises will be willing to keep a large amount of sensitive data in the cloud with the support of independent certification and insurance policy. In addition, while most cloud service providers may not be able to fully fulfill their commitments, the cloud insurance mechanism will still provide compensation in the event of data loss or security vulnerabilities in the enterprise.

"By 2015, 80% of cloud services will have to pay an additional global energy surcharge" (from Gartner). At least for the time being, there is no evidence that this could really happen. Of course, unless we discuss only those enterprise cloud service providers that have signed contracts or jointly created private clouds.

The cloud business model pioneered by Amazon Web Services-now almost the first choice for every developer specializing in cloud services-relies on too simple a billing rule to cover a small amount of money for a customer. That said, if the data center's energy consumption-which is actually showing a gradual downward trend-has become a huge overhead for suppliers like AWS, there is no reason for the use price of cloud services to continue to fall sharply, as in the past.