See how cloud computing can change everything with 12 martial arts skills

Despite concerns about reliability and security, businesses are slowly and stably migrating their applications to the cloud. This migration will bring profound changes to these enterprises. Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at the market research firm, in 2011, 80% of new enterprise applications will be developed for the cloud. Over the past year, cloud applications have weathered most of the early stages. At the same time as one of the four analyst teams that discussed cloud potential and limitations at the Cloud Leadership Forum in Santa Clara, California, in Monday, Gens told us that each analyst provided his own ideas as to how companies could prepare for this disruptive technology. In general, these analysts offer 12 points:

1. The cloud is the third platform. Mainframe computers are the first platform. Mainframe computers provided about 2000 applications to businesses at the most prosperous time. Then came the client/server, which led to the PC Revolution, and the number of applications increased to tens of thousands of. Today, the cloud has realized the idea of working anywhere. It will create tens of millions of applications and generate many new services, including mobile applications, social technologies and analytics/large data (which will lead to applications such as smart grids and e-government).

2. Infrastructure vendors will create a fourth product line in addition to servers, storage, and networking. This product line is called shared buffering. The impact of server virtualization is only just beginning, says Rick Villers, IDC analyst and vice president for storage systems. It wants to get out of the silo and migrate to "converged it." Virtualization is the first step in the infrastructure architecture of this process. However, this day will soon be realized: it will specify 100 virtual machines for each physical server, instead of just 8 to 20 virtual machines per physical server. When it comes to recovering data, performance, high availability, and scalability, our current IT architecture doesn't fit. The data center needs its own shared cache space faster than the shared disk/storage speed, where the virtual machines are stored.

3. Bring your own license. Software enterprise agreements are an obstacle to cloud applications, it officials say. The software companies that survived the transition to cloud computing will adapt to their licenses, said Robert Mahowald, IDC's research vice president for SaaS and Cloud services. This allows access to the software in multiple places at a one-time cost to the user. For example, a user can access a SQL Server from the enterprise, Amazon Service, and Windows Azure platform, and all access is one-time overhead. When the IT department migrates from the data center to a mixed environment and then migrates to the cloud, the open source software license for the new software is also the factor that it chooses which application to consider. Not all enterprise software vendors agree with the idea. But companies such as Microsoft are moving in this direction. By July 1, Microsoft's software ensured that users would be able to use their current license protocol to migrate server applications from their internal data centers to cloud computing services. Microsoft calls this practice "license mobility".

IT pros such as Steve Turner, the IT manager of Amherst Nomura Group, Texas Austin, agree with this concept. He says the new license model in the cloud is a good idea. Microsoft and other companies are making this transition. Not all manufacturers are making this transition.

4. The enterprise will consider the role of it as the "internal application store". The role of it will transition from making client applications and client-made large applications to providing self-service to users. Users will be able to access these services from any device through a private cloud or a public cloud. "It needs to be familiar with the concept of IT services," said Dave McNally, an IT executive advisor at IDC. This shift began with the concept of SOA (service-oriented architecture) a few years ago. Since SOA has never been completely successful with many enterprise application vendors, the cloud will once again promote this it concept as a collection of services.

5. Public clouds will be more important than private clouds. Gens said that many of the IT officials I interviewed were thinking, "How can I deploy the cloud in my convenient place (that is, my data center)?" This view is wrong. It officials need to view this third platform as the new quality it offers, rather than simply recreating what the enterprise has done on a cheaper platform.

6. The cloud is a large resource for large data. Villars says a handful of cloud services, such as Google, Amazon and itunes, consume a large amount of storage capacity sold, equivalent to 9.8-byte (exabyte) of hard disk storage. They have come to realize that the data stored there is valuable information about the consumer. Analytics companies are doing a variety of things from analyzing Twitter data to providing customer analytics for professional retailers. All of these analyses utilize the data that the individual transmits to the cloud. This is a regulatory compliance for the enterprise, but it also provides an opportunity for IT staff to study the company's customers and markets.

The 7.IT agency will become a cloud service agent. As part of a new self-image, it will be treated as an enterprise application store and it will be responsible for all cloud service agreements. Instead of a business unit bypassing the IT department to hire SaaS services, Mahowald says IT departments find and bundle cloud services for business units. It will also conduct asset management services to manage all IT resources within the business unit, the Enterprise, the mix, and the use of the cloud. In addition to annual registration, adjustment or contract negotiations, this requires more communication and vendor supervision. It organizations will also provide the infrastructure needed to provide services to the business unit.

8. Cloud services are disrupted and may be prohibitive for traditional IT staff. If we think change is coming, McNally says, a company needs to be ready for its employees. What impact does the cloud have on people? IT staff are concerned that the cloud will make it work commercialized and that the cloud is working with outsourcing. This could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. College students entering the IT workplace have to pursue a career that makes them different. They are not worried about the prospect of corporate IT work. This creates a skill gap that encourages outsourcing.

9. One-third of your key vendors will become "trivial". Vendors on the right track will now support the cloud, find ways to deploy their cloud services and modify their license agreements to direct their customers into the cloud. The firm that insists on old practices will become the next Wang or Dec. They do not see, understand, and adapt to the PC revolution brought about by the rise of client/server. Turner added, I agree with the view that we are on a large signpost similar to a client/server. We need to pay attention to which manufacturers adapt to the cloud, which manufacturer does not adapt to the cloud.

10. When it comes to the public cloud, professional manufacturers in the vertical industry will prevail. In the previous wave, the company digitized its own process, Villers said. Now, some of these vendors see the value of these processes as new cloud services offered to their industry. Villers provides examples of Technicolor companies. The company initially provided video post-production services to repair colors and sounds before the film was edited and copied and provided to the cinema. Because Technicolor digitized its own approach, it was able to provide cloud voice and video services.

11. You can't avoid personal clouds. Mahowald says individual users are already making their own personal cloud. A personal cloud is typically accessed through mobile devices such as smartphones. These clouds are important to users. They want to use this mode to receive an enterprise application store application. Desktop virtualization, mobile applications, and saas,it can be adapted to the user experience. Finally, end users will build their own personal cloud and mix with their own business applications and personal applications. The IT department cannot stop the train and should not do so, even for compliance reasons. Like the PC revolution, the people who have the greatest success in the next generation of cloud-based it are those who know how to balance the needs of the business with the way users work.

12. Cloud services Foster technological innovation. The rapid application of the cloud is another opportunity for CIOs, network officials and the entire IT team to lead business units to adopt faster and more economical it tools. From the perspective of the 2011 cloud, blocking cloud applications seems to be ineffective.