By Michael Brown 1

Cloud computing has come so far already, but as we’ve noted before, there is a still a long way to go. So what will the cloud look like in 5 years, 10 years and beyond?

Ragna Bodla, the Director of Vertical Marketing at NetSuite, shared a few interesting thoughts on this matter at Manufacturing Business Technology. Let’s take a closer look at a few of his statements in particular:

“As the Internet becomes more ubiquitous – and it has a long way to go to be truly ubiquitous – the cloud will become the standard for all applications.”

Even as of now, companies are creating their applications with a “cloud-first” mentality; IT departments are moving away from the use of servers and are no longer implementing “back-up” as part of their core services.

Whether or not an entire department is in the cloud, companies are beginning to place more and more of their information in a private, public or hybrid cloud – gradually shifting over their information to this other “space.” As the cloud progresses, it’s extremely likely that companies will fully depend upon the cloud for backing up and storing their information.

“We are seeing a convergence of B2C and B2B technologies”

One of the ground-breaking attributes of the cloud is that it will enable B2C and B2B technologies to merge with one another. As an MSP, you know for instance that the difference between B2B and B2C file sharing software is a significant one. Someday, if this prediction pans out, they will be one and the same.

The example he cites is the ecommerce platform – notably, how it is being merged and transformed due to the emergence of the cloud. This ecommerce platform takes the items that are in the shopper’s online cart and matches them to the inventory that is currently in the warehouse – alerting the warehouse in real time about the products that are currently being ordered.  The cloud enables companies to bring a better competitive “edge” to businesses and consumers because they alert the warehouse immediately of the order, closing the gap of time between the online order and notifying warehouse employees.

“…freeing our devices to be lighter, but data to be everywhere, in standardized formats…”

In the world of the cloud, all data that companies have will be able to be accessed from everywhere, enabling employees to easily access shared documents within a department or company.

This differs from current models largely because the devices most employees use still need to host data and large systems and applications such as word processing and spreadsheet documents. As these applications and data move to the cloud, our mobile devices will not require as much storage hardware.

“The cloud is also transforming manufacturing, allowing for faster cycle times and increased communications across all the different elements required to produce a product.”

Here’s an interesting new space for MSPs: the manufacturing sector. Bodla argues that the cloud will enable the manufacturers to know in real-time when an order is being placed. Because of this increase in communications across all platforms, the production process of the product is a lot faster – which will keep both low costs and allow more orders to be bought, processed and shipped at a faster rate.

What do you think about these predictions? Be sure to let us know in the comments section.