2012: The Year of the Cloud Storefront?

In his most recent article for Cloud Computing Journal, Standing Cloud CEO Dave Jilk made some cloud predictions for the coming year. After giving himself a C+ on his 2011 predictions, he’s changed his strategy a bit.

You can read the full article on Cloud Computing Journal’s website, but for now, here’s his first prediction:

"1. 2012 will be the Year of the Storefront in the cloud.

Admittedly, this is a somewhat self-serving prediction, since Standing Cloud is (among other things) a storefront. But based on the variety of offerings, rumors, customer behaviors, and other sources I have, it seems that the confluence of forces that helped drive the popularity of App Stores in the mobile world are now propelling the storefront concept ahead in the cloud world.

Viewed through a relatively simple lens, a Storefront has three basic components:

1. A catalog of offerings (applications, utilities, services) with information about each, such as features and benefits, user reviews and ratings, licensing and pricing.

2. The ability to purchase or obtain access to the offering.

3. The ability to easily install or deploy the offering.

These issues are all more complicated in the cloud (whether private or public). Unlike a mobile app, deployment of the offering is not necessarily on a single device; they must be customized or integrated with other offerings, and pricing may have many components.

Nevertheless, the same need for informed and easy procurement exists in the cloud and will drive development and adoption of storefronts."

He goes on to talk about the relationship between Amazon Web Services and scaling startups, the growth of Cloud IDEs (Interactive Development Environments) for developers, and the future of Cloud Foundry as a standard for Resource PaaS operation.

You can check out the full article here.