The use of the word ‘iCloud’ by Apple probably guaranteed the word would become mainstream, but cloud computing is still not properly understood.

Many users have a negative perception of cloud computing, however, they are happy to use Facebook or Gmail which are two examples of large cloud computing-based services.

Cloud computing in its purest form is known as ‘public cloud’. These are the massive data centre facilities housing thousands of servers where peoples’ information is hosted in a muti-tenant facility operated by the likes of Google and Amazon. Private cloud is a large, purpose-built data centre typically used by large companies and governments. Many saw this as virtualisation re-inventing itself, however it now has a loyal following.

The ‘hybrid cloud’ is the combination of public and private clouds which are adopted on an as-needed basis by organisations, enabling businesses to opt for the best-price performance environment. This means moving to the public cloud in the  irst instance and adopting the private cloud for specific business, technical, legal or legislative reasons.

So how will these uses of cloud play out in 2013 and beyond? I believe that best-of-breed cloud applications will lead the next wave of innovation.

The momentum in the enterprise segment and the continued hyper-growth of cloud computing will force legacy suite vendors to attempt to buy their way more deeply into the cloud markets.

Cloud computing means the death of the suite: Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and others have pushed software suites over the last 10-20 years but now the pendulum has swung the other way to open source and best of breed applications.

In some cases this even extends to best features-based applications. It will be easier to use single purpose plugins and many single purpose applications that work well together.

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FIVE CLOUD MYTHS UNPLUGGED

Myth 1: The cloud is not secure

Truth: Public clouds are fundamentally multitenant to justify the scale and economics of the cloud. As such, security is a common concern. Whereas the traditional security perimeter is a network firewall, the cloud security perimeter now becomes the hypervisor and/or underlying cloud application. So far, security in the cloud has been good, but this is very dependant on each cloud implementation and requires a solid design and operational rigor that prioritises security.

Myth 2: The cloud is not reliable

Truth: No system has 100 percent uptime, and neither does the cloud. Given the scale, however, cloud computing services are typically designed to provide high redundancy and availability. While the same levels are achievable in-house or with dedicated hosting, it’s generally cost prohibitive except for the most critical systems. The cloud enables a higher level of reliability at a fraction of the cost. It is also common for well-designed clouds to “just slow down” rather than stop altogether.

Myth 3: Customers lose control in the cloud and get locked-in

Truth: There are different types of clouds that offer different levels of customisation and flexibility. Clouds that implement standard technology stacks have good APIs and provide their customers with reasonable data and application migration options are generally best.

Myth 4: The cloud is too complex

Truth: Again, there are different types of clouds and levels of complexity. Many clouds simplify management and involve little to no change in your application to move it to the cloud. Other clouds offer more power and control, but involve a change in application architecture.

Myth 5: Pay as you go cloud pricing will cost me more

Truth: Cloud computing has huge economies of scale that get passed on to the consumer. In addition, cloud computing transfers what is typically capital expenditure into operating expenditure and enables pricing to be commensurate with usage. There are also many cloud pricing models that can save you more money if you can predict your usage better.

ABOUT CRAIG DEVESON//

Craig Deveson partners with cloud leaders such as Amazon and Google to build products and solutions for the local and international market. His first company Devnet was sold to Cloud Sherpas. He is active in the AWS users group and many startup groups. His current startup is cloudsafe365 making the AWS Cloud secure and easy.