As 2013 heats up, we’ve honed in on five trends that we believe will be at the forefront of the cloud services and virtualization space this year.

We identified these trends as we looked back on a year where many enterprises fundamentally shifted their approach to IT. Companies are no longer simply testing the waters of virtualization, and we’re seeing a staggering rate of adoption of cloud services. The industry continues to provide mature, scalable core virtualization technologies with increasingly powerful and efficient management capabilities. Many software vendors are adopting “cloud friendly” licensing terms, and many workloads previously thought to be inherently incompatible with virtualization are demonstrating they run as well or even better in a cloud environment.

As cloud services continue to evolve, here’s what we think will capture mindshare this year:

1. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud will be more widely accepted as the natural evolution of “traditional” IT outsourcing. Managed service providers will increasingly turn to cloud internally to meet their own infrastructure needs, thereby improving delivery cycles, enhancing service levels, and increasing efficiency.
    
2. IaaS cloud will continue to evolve at an accelerated pace with 2013 marking the year of the “Software Defined Data Center”. By combining the proven record of virtualized compute, the promises of software defined networking, and the maturity of management tools and API’s, the IT transformation which began with virtualization will be nearly complete. This API-enabled, elastic, resilient platform will provide developers the foundation for a new generation of applications which will ultimately change the way companies do business.
    
3. Solid State storage will reach an inflection point in terms of availability, reliability and cost. While solid state will not supplant spinning media storage quickly, it will play a starring role in 2013 as the industry sees both a continued migration of mission critical, and performance sensitive workloads to the cloud, as well as the proliferation of “big data” analytics.
    
4. Adjacent “as-a-Service” offerings such as Desktop-as-a-Service, Database-as-a-Service, and Backup-as-a-Service will become widely available as service providers seek to differentiate in an increasingly competitive landscape. These additional “as-a-Service” offerings will also accelerate cloud adoption more generally due to the enhanced value proposition of combining complementary solutions.
    
5. IT human resources will be compelled to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Gone are the days where singular focus and deep vertical expertise were the keys to success; tomorrow’s IT resources must embrace a multi-disciplinary approach. While this may be seen as a threat by many, the reality is that IT as an industry is being presented with an opportunity to add value to the business they support, rather than simply “keeping the lights on.” As exciting as the past few years have been, all of us in the IT industry should fasten our seat belts, as this ride is far from over.

When it comes to adopting a cloud strategy, no two companies will ever be exactly alike. To help you see where your business fits in, take the Navisite Cloud Profile. Simply complete the 10 multiple choice questions to generate your Cloud Profile. Your answers will be compared with widely reported industry data and you will receive a custom report that explains your Cloud Profile and some ideas for making your next move in the cloud.