This session will outline IDC's vision of what role cloud services will fulfill in the enterprise of 2015. The scenario we describe will include these views:

• IT and business services delivered by way of current cloud models will become a standard component of enterprise sourcing strategies, and for SMB a cloud service SKU will be indistinguishable from any other product SKU.

• Underlying cloud technologies such as virtualization, automation, self service portals and granular charge-back mechanisms become 'business as usual' for any IT infrastructure.

• Security will change from being an impediment to cloud service adoption to being a major accelerator by 2015. Rapidly maturing cloud services aided by ecosystem partnerships which combine the best elements of infrastructure, hardware, software, and process to form secure repeatable applications.

• Public cloud providers will begin to offer in 2012 high-availability systems and services which can address a range of customer requirements at different price points. By 2015, the reliability of cloud delivered infrastructure will be at least comparable to and, in the case of 80% of user environments in the region, provide higher levels of service availability than on-premises systems.

• During the next two years IDC forecasts that 80% of new enterprise apps will be developed for cloud in and by 2015 20% of spending on enterprise applications will be via the cloud model. The impact of this trend on cloud service buyers will be that they face a vast number of services and vendors, adding a management difficulty to easy adoption of new services. To address this issue and its attendant opportunities, 2012 and 2013 will see the emergence of cloud service brokers which will identify the best service for a customer based on a list of requirements specified by that customer.

In this future cloud scenario, effective management of service delivery chains which span multiple product and service provider ecosystems will determine the efficiency of an IT organization. To be successful, the CIO of 2015 will need to put their team through an organizational metamorphosis, rebalance their skills portfolio from technology management to service management, learn to provide a business service and live with funding models in which capital expenditure is far outweighed by operating expenditure. Management of externally cloud IT and business services is the CIO challenge for 2015.

Our agenda content and marketing campaigns are designed to attract CxO’s, MDs, Directors, VPs and Senior Managers, MIS Managers, Research & Development, Finance, and IT & Operations. Other practicing professionals include IT Engineers, IT Administrators, Systems Architects/ Designers and Project Managers.