Plans for a new European cloud partnership will be announced at the World Economic Forum today, while IDC backs big data to make a big impression on the European software industry.
 
Today, in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Neelie Kroes, the vice president of the European Commission responsible for the digital agenda, will announce plans to launch a European Cloud Partnership. This alliance will bring together authoritative bodies, industry experts, cloud users and cloud suppliers to create common requirements for cloud procurement, deliver proof of concepts solutions and build reference implementations.
 
According to a release by the European Commission, Kroes will state that he is “determined” to help organisations overcome the barriers to cloud computing such as “standards, certification, data protection, interoperability, lock-in, legal and certainty”. The overall target, he will say, is to ensure that the Commission creates a strategy that means “Europe becomes not just cloud-friendly, but cloud-active.”
 
On Tuesday, meanwhile, the IDC released a report offering its predictions for the European software industry in 2012. IDC, a provider of market intelligence and advisory services the IT market, has indicated that social, big data and the consumerisation of IT will have a ‘major impact’ on the European software industry.
 
Bo Lykkegaard, European enterprise applications program manager, said: “New versions of Salesforce automation and customer service applications will feature new social capabilities” as companies attempt to harness greater value from the data they collect about their customers and users. Along with the prioritisation of big data analytics, companies are also expected to invest in mobile device management and mobile application management tools.
 
The industry as a whole, IDC predicts, will grow by three per cent over the course of the year too.
 
Other predictions for the year ahead include:
 
•         Transformation of the software: services ratio
•         Third-party buy-in will be crucial to the success of app stores
•         The earliest European adopters will implement context-aware systems
•         Microsoft finally gains traction with Azure (but mostly in midmarket)
•         Many organisations will adopt multiple hypervisors within their virtualized infrastructure
•         Enterprise architecture projects repositioned on CIOs' agendas in 2012
•         The IT security industry outgrows its niche status as deployment of third-platform technologies and increasing cyber threats escalate risks.
 
Cloud is already a well-establish technology. The transition that is now appearing increasingly common is the adoption of cloud services by public authorities. Whereas standards and security had proved obstacles to this adoption, initiative like the European Cloud Partnership will aim to eradicate, or at least lessen, the risk of moving to the cloud.
 
Big data, on the other hand, is changing the way data analytics is performed. No longer a luxury reserved for blue chip companies thanks to the advances in open source software and frameworks, all companies can perform analysis on a huge variety and volume of data to improve their business processes and practices.