What Does The Future Hold For Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing has been called the future of not only hosting, but also the way we compute. It has transformed the way many businesses operate since it makes applications and technology more accessible. Most importantly, cloud computing helped many businesses with all the great tools and technology that were only available to enterprises that had a ton of money. Even if you don't know what cloud computing is, chances are that you could be using it without your knowledge on a day-to-day basis. Do you use Gmail, or Dropbox, or Google Drive, or iCloud, or any of the millions of websites that run on a cloud server? You are just enjoying all the benefits of cloud computing without your conscience. There had been a lot of advances in cloud computing in the past several years that, one needs to think about the capabilities of this technology. Here we speculate how cloud computing is going to evolve and how it is going to affect the future.

• Hosting

Businesses and individuals are moving their websites and online applications and services to the cloud for a number of reasons. Cloud hosting is extremely cost effective, reduces capital cost for startups, is easily scalable, improves accessibility, quickly deployed, etc. Traditional shared hosting is still the reigning champion of websites for individuals and small businesses. However, things are changing really fast. 81% of the 60% of the enterprises that are already utilizing cloud have reportedly saved money by migrating to the cloud. It is estimated that end-users will spend more than 180 billion U.S. dollars on cloud services before the end of 2015. Cloud hosting is not only attracting large businesses, casual bloggers and small business owners are turning to cloud. 

• Public Cloud

Private cloud is preferred for enterprise applications and to run apps like, CRMs, and ERPs. HCRM, etc., but public cloud is going to grow really fast compared to private cloud. Private cloud although has a lot of advantages and perks of cloud technology, they are still more like using traditional services. With public cloud, people and companies don't have to sign contracts, use shared hardware to reduce cost (utility model), yet don't have to trade-off reliability. Large corporates and enterprises will use private cloud for compliance requirements and security, but as more and more individuals and small businesses migrate to the cloud, we speculate public cloud to grow leaps and bounds compared to private.

• Hard Drive

If you are using some of the top e-mail providers, or social networking services, you could already have a lot of your data on the cloud. You probably have more data on the cloud compared to the hard drive on your computer. This raises an interesting question. Can the cloud actually replace the hard drive? The answer is yes and no. To start with, you can't run a computer with a storage device – one needs an hard disk to store the operating system and other supporting files to run a computer. However, since most of the tasks one performs on the computer is accomplished using a web browser, most of the data could be easily moved to cloud and accessed with the Internet since our mobile devices and computers are tethered to the world wide web 24x7.