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posted on 30 June 2008 09:53

Gartner reckons clouds are going to roll across virtually the entire IT landscape with an impact as big as that of e-business; sunny periods for cloud service and app providers though. 

It defines cloud computing as a style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided as a service using internet technologies to multiple external customers.

Daryl Plummer, managing VP and Gartner Fellow, said: “During the past 15 years, a continuing trend toward IT industrialisation has grown in popularity as IT services delivered via hardware, software and people are becoming repeatable and usable by a wide range of customers and service providers. This is due, in part to the commoditisation and standardisation of technologies, in part to virtualisation and the rise of service-oriented software architectures, and most importantly, to the dramatic growth in popularity of the internet.”

According to Gartner, these three major trends will create a new opportunity to shape the relationship between those who use IT services and those who sell them. It is predicting the impact on the business landscape of cloud computing to be as big as that of e-business. Its analysts say cloud computing vendor announcements are increasing in intensity. It represents a paradigm shift that will redefine the relationship between buyers and sellers of IT-related products and services.

Applications likely to be affected include printing, E-mail, enterprise web portals, and HR. Governmental organisations may use cloud computing for delivering services to citizens.

Many cloud-computing services will be based on transactional systems. Extreme transaction processing technologies provide a foundational platform for cloud transaction processing, but XTP products must mature before they can be adopted by mainstream users and service providers.

Plummer said: “When organisations cross the threshold between the internet as a communications channel and the deliberate delivery of service over the internet, then we truly start to head for an economy based on consumption of everything from storage to computation to video to finance deduction management.”

Finance deduction management? Is that the finance you pay to Gartner for the report?

There is no truth in the rumour that Gartner gets its IT weather forecast data from hot air balloons.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}