At the recently ended Gartner Symposium, the very smart folks at Gartner issued a press release on the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2013. One of those trends is “Personal Cloud,” the other “Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing.”
According to Gartner:
“Personal Cloud
The personal cloud will gradually replace the PC as the location where individuals keep their personal content, access their services and personal preferences and center their digital lives. It will be the glue that connects the web of devices they choose to use during different aspects of their daily lives. The personal cloud will entail the unique collection of services, Web destinations and connectivity that will become the home of their computing and communication activities. Users will see it as a portable, always-available place where they go for all their digital needs. In this world no one platform, form factor, technology or vendor will dominate and managed diversity and mobile device management will be an imperative. The personal cloud shifts the focus from the client device to cloud-based services delivered across devices.
Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing
As staffs have been asked to do more with less, IT departments must play multiple roles in coordinating IT-related activities, and cloud computing is now pushing that change to another level. A recently conducted Gartner IT services survey revealed that the internal cloud services brokerage (CSB) role is emerging as IT organizations realize that they have a responsibility to help improve the provisioning and consumption of inherently distributed, heterogeneous and often complex cloud services for their internal users and external business partners. The internal CSB role represents a means for the IT organization to retain and build influence inside its organization and to become a value center in the face of challenging new requirements relative to increasing adoption of cloud as an approach to IT consumption.”
When talking with IT buyers about ownCloud it seems it is exactly the intersection between those two predictions which make up the attractiveness of what we do:
We enable IT to provide a secure and controlled way to enable personal cloud services for their employees.
Personal Cloud, as Gartner defines it “cloud-based services delivered across devices” is exactly what ownCloud does! File sync and share, video streaming for your learning experience, tablets and smartphones become relevant everywhere.
As for Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing, clearly the IT department is moving into the driver seat, positioning itself as the cloud services broker. ownCloud encourages IT departments — as well as local service providers — to make “deliver your own cloud service” part of the mix. This is exactly the Hybrid role – from my point of view.
Talk to us and our partners about your participation in the 2013 movement: