Cloud technologies matured nearly across the board as did transparency, security and best practice use and adoption. But there’s much more growth ahead as the cloud is no longer a toddler but has entered the awkward teenage years…The next few years will be a painful period of rebellion, defiance, exploration, experimentation and undoubtedly explosive creativity.

Here is what Forrester expects over the next year and what you as the I&O parent should do about it.

1.       Shadow IT enters the light – deal with it

2.       The uncool attempting to be cool – not cool

3.       A risky idea lands a big fish in jail

4.       Conservative leaders ban the cloud as unhealthy

5.       The channel will face the music

6.       Cloud cred will matter

7.       Cloud battles will showcase talent and advance best practices

8.       Monkeys will go legit

9.       Your company will survive a major cloud outage

10.   You will finally have to budget for public cloud spend

Source : ” Top 10 Cloud Predictions for 2012“, Forrester blogs