As we close in on the end of the year, analysts and prognosticators are making their predictions as to how cloud computing will evolve in 2013. While cloud has moved into mainstream awareness, many vendors are frustrated with the pace of cloud adoption.

That said, the cloud computing trends of 2012 will come to life even more so in 2013, according to Bernard Golden, vice president of enterprise solutions at cloud management software company enStratus Networks.

Golden recently compiled a list of his top predictions for 2013, which are as follows:

1. The put-up-or-shut-up year of enterprise cloud | “This will be a put-up-or-shut-up year for the attractive powers of enterprise cloud computing,” Golden said. “December 2013 will find many incumbent vendors standing in the doorway, listening anxiously for the footsteps of wayward customers. By the end of the year, people will recognize that just repeating the phrase ‘enterprise cloud’ is insufficient as a vendor strategy.”
2. Recognition that developers have embraced public cloud computing | “Enterprise IT groups will then comprehend that internal offerings have to meet the much higher expectations of developers – expectations raised by what they now recognize is possible. Internal IT groups will confront the reality that warmed-over virtualization isn't nearly enough – and getting to public levels of agility will require process streamlining and end-to-end automation,” Golden said. “In a word, it will mean re-engineering, which is much more difficult than buying a new product with the expectation that it will magically make one’s private cloud as attractive as the public alternatives.”
3. A CSP pricing “bloodbath” | Golden also predicts that as Google and Amazon continue their pricing battles, 2013 “will see ferocious price competition as CSPs attempt to blunt Amazon's growth. Even those that have heretofore eschewed price competition will have no choice but to jump into the fray,” he said.
4. Hybrid and heterogeneous cloud come to the fore | “The reality for every enterprise of any size is that it will use multiple cloud technologies spread among multiple deployment environments, with those technologies all providing different orchestration software frameworks, heterogeneous APIs and single-purpose management infrastructures,” Golden said.
5. Cloud spend management will become a “big deal” | Golden predicts that cloud spend management solutions will come into greater focus. “To be clear, these are systems designed to manage the amount of money you're spending on running your cloud-based applications, not cloud-based spend management applications such as Ariba,” he said. “These systems track what you spend, identify under-utilized servers and make recommendations on different deployment arrangements that can save you money. They don’t help you operate your applications to be elastic in the face of variable demand – that’s the job of cloud management software – but they can help you make sure you aren’t wasting money on overprovisioning servers or not choosing spending plans wisely.”

As the IT industry shifts to the so-called third platform – made up of mobile, cloud, social networking and big data – these technologies will dominate IT growth in 2013, according to the latest predictions from International Data Corporation (IDC).

IDC predicts the transition to the third platform will kick into high gear, as the IT industry as a whole is moving faster toward the mobile/social/cloud/big data, according to Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.

For 2013, IDC predicts worldwide IT spending will exceed $2.1 trillion – up 5.7 percent from 2012. The biggest category driving this growth will be led by smart mobile devices, which IDC predicts will grow by almost 20 percent in 2013 and generate nearly 57 percent of the industry’s overall growth.