Look for tougher SLAs, simpler and less-expensive pricing and better tech.
Cloud computing is clearly worming its way into the enterprise, especially as a testing and development environment and as a platform for less than critical apps and services. But cloud vendors are, in short, still trying to grow up and become a platform for business-critical applications. They're already working on standards and security issues, improving service level agreements and encouraging vendors to embrace the meter of pricing based on software use -- not per-seat cost.
With that as backdrop, 2010 will be all about moving enterprises to the cloud. Here are the trends driving it.
Commodity cloud price slashing continues
Amazon EC2 cut prices up to 15% in November. A small standard Linux-based instance went from 10 cents to 8.5 cents an hour. That same month, Google cut its Picasa photo storage pricing from $20 to $5 for a year. Cloud-based apps are on a similar trajectory. Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite, which includes the SaaS versions of Exchange, went from $15 a month per user to $10. Anchoring pricing is Google's Apps Premier Edition at $50 per year. Cloud pricing is getting so low it's "ludicrous," quipped Jeff Maling, CEO of Roundarch Inc., a Web services consultancy in Chicago.
"They are pricing very aggressively to get volume on the platform," he said.
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Source: Computerworld
By: Patrick Thibodeau
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