Data to fuel cloud computing in 2013

In its current state, cloud computing has barely managed to reach the adolescence phase and might take at least another five years for it to mature into adulthood. However, as the adoption of cloud continues in 2013, it promises to businesses reduce costs and boost innovation.

“Some vendors played the cloud data card early , but the cloud data production, brokerage, and consumption ecosystem is still in the making and will continue to evolve over the next five years,” said Laurent Lachal, Senior Analyst, Ovum Software.

According to an Ovum study, this year will also see the emergence of cloud computing ecosystem, which will be driven by data generated by cloud services, and applications such as mobile and social media that cloud platforms supports.

This will be an interesting trend as it can now drive other industry trends such as M2M communications, cloud based smart cities, TVs and most important, big data. Until now, the focus on big data has mostly been on technology issues, in spite of beneficial insights it promises to deliver. However, this is expected to change, as 2013 onward from a cloud perspective there will be growing interest in the cultural shift required by vendors and enterprises to turn data into a resource to manage and monetize, starting with data abstraction, sharing, and valuation.