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Hybrid and Mobile Cloud to Drive IT Spending in 2013

Hybrid and mobile cloud are two of the top trends that will drive IT spending in 2013, according to Folia Grace, vice president of product marketing at SAP (News - Alert) Cloud.

Grace recently conducted research with analysts and enterprise customers about upcoming trends the cloud and then compiled some top trends for 2013.

Grace recently spoke with VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall about her research. Citing research from Saugatuck, Grace said that about half of all new enterprise IT spending will be on hybrid cloud by 2016, up from 40 percent this year.

“Another 39 percent will be on pure-play cloud, up from 11 percent. This trend toward hybrid isn’t new. But what’s really new is the movement by third-party integrators to do these hybrid cloud integrations for customers. Not everything that people want exists in the cloud,” according to Grace. There are concerns around security, and outages. More companies are looking at private clouds as part of their mix.”

In addition to hybrid cloud, Grace said that new mobile capabilities including gesturing, maps and location will be leveraged by the cloud.

“We’re going to build ubiquitously native beautiful apps for the iPad, for the mobile work force. Usage stats on the growth of mobile devices in the enterprise are eye-opening. Everyone has an iPad,” Grace said. “And people are working from different locations. When they are at the coffee shop or at home putting kids to bed, they want something easy to use, so they can manage their life easier.”

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 can be found here.

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