Where is cloud computing heading in 2013?

Analysts have predicted a trend towards moving IT from on-premise to off-premise, new cloud applications and an increase in spending on cloud services next year.

IDC head of research Matthew Oostveen said with cloud computing maturing this year, more organisations will start to move their IT infrastructure from on-premise to off-premise.

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2012 was the year that we all got tired of cloud theres cloud fatigue. But with Australia being the country that rapidly takes up technology, I think we have reached a period of maturity with the way that we view cloud, he said.

What is certain is we are watching a migration taking place where on-premise computing is moving to off-premise computing. It may start incrementally where we see an up take of co-location services, and obviously the co-locations services are being supported by the influx of new data centres in the market place [provided by] NextDC and Macquarie Telecom, which has built new facilities as well.

Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Geddas predictions are similar to Oostveens. Cloud computing [services] will mature next year and continue to be procured as a replacement to on-premise infrastructure and as an option for service delivery, Gedda said.

He said there will be more innovation in application testing and development in 2013, with new cloud applications coming out to market.

We can expect to see new types of applications delivered out of the cloud, more options for where data is hosted (and the type of infrastructure its hosted on) and more services offering enterprise-grade application hosting.

We can also expect to see very strong enterprise grade services coming out to market, according to Deloitte Consulting technology leader Robert Hillard. File sharing, document sharing, collaboration will very quickly gain enterprise strength and much greater support within the enterprise traditional governance, he said.

Gartner vice president Rolf Jester forecasts total cloud spending in Australia for the coming year is to grow to 22 per cent to just over $3 billion.

A large part of that is in business process as a service (BPaaS), a lot of it in advertising services. Spending on software as a service (SaaS) will also grow by 28 per cent to over $470 million. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will reach $385 million, growing by 55 per cent, he said.

He also predicts that in 2014 40 per cent of enterprises will make the proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud services. This is an increase from fewer than 1 per cent today.