Although small- and medium-sized businesses represented the typical early adopters of cloud computing, according to Forrester Research, large enterprises have now observed the immense benefits of the technology and are poised to take the lead on 2012 innovations.
Speed, flexibility, scalability and remote user support are just some of the factors expected to drive a wave of enterprise cloud investments in 2012, as early skepticism gives way to business necessities. According to cloud integration specialist Hubspan, companies will migrate enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to the cloud to take advantage of transformative efficiency benefits.
However, with vast opportunity comes significant risk. In their rush to embrace new cloud services and construct cloud infrastructure, companies are encouraged to proceed with caution…
According to IT hardware expert and CloudTweaks contributor Muzaffar Ismail, the hype surrounding the public cloud in particular must be taken with a grain of salt. Despite the "green" benefits associated with the technology, the demand for services will ultimately force cloud providers to expand their data centers and incur additional energy expenses that will likely be deflected to the customer.
Several industry experts have also forecasted a cloud security breach of previously unimaginable proportions as cybercriminals exploit lingering vulnerabilities.
