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Traditionally when an IT department evaluates storage needs for a public facing web site or application, whether an e-commerce heavy site or not, will typically turn to adding more resources to their in house storage infrastructure. Will this continue to be the canonical method to increase storage capacity or have the innovations in cloud computing and storage changed the landscape enough to where businesses will consider offloading portions of their storage and computing needs to utility centric solutions?
Innovation Success Requires Standardization
The topic of cloud computing and storage becoming utility-like appeals to many, especially the evangelistic of the technology community, whom favor applications like Amazon S3 and Google’s cloud-based suite of apps. Many startups, such as Twitter, can scale rapidly and benefit by utilizing Amazon S3 cloud storage service.
What is it going to take to get medium to large business to seriously consider and begin using a cloud storage service such as Amazon S3? Will they trust their data to a third party? In a fast paced and always changing world, with increasing complexity in legal and technology challenges, it is clear that the risk of storing information and data that could be considered sensitive on a 3rd party service does not come without risk.
Better APIs and security measures, along with cloud service providers’ desire to reach industry standard and certification will improve the chance of truly catching the eye of businesses looking to cut costs, but at the same time allow for scalability and rapid expansion.
Short Term Futures
The great debate of how, and by what channels, cloud computing and storage providers are currently profiting pushes on. The consumer market will continue to be a powerhouse driver with cloud service providers as social networking and multimedia sharing increase. The next two to three years will be dominated with consumer demand. In three to five years the trend and demand from the business market will bring larger profits and subsequently place further demand for necessary improvements to cloud service providers.
As more web applications and other services requiring scalable storage and computing are created and improved daily, cloud computing and storage will play an increasingly important role in the success of many startups, small businesses, and when ready, medium to large business.