Every year has threatened to be “the year of the Cloud” but my main prediction for 2013 IT industry developments will be that yes, this is the year that it cements its role as the most major of technology disruptions.

It’s hard for Cloud to be defined in such a delineated manner, as it has been underway as a technology trend for many years, there is a wide spectrum of categories of what’s involved which are all continually evolving and also customer adoption has also been underway for many to various extents.

So it’s already been the Cloud for quite some time and so a bit late to make it the Year Of.

Probably the best context is Crossing the Chasm terms, where we can be thought of as still being in the Early Adopter phase of the cycle, while it is a large-scale, slow moving process.

Hence it could be considered The Year of the Cloud when we cross this chasm, when the mass market moves to also migrate the bulk of their IT systems. This scale of shift is what drives the analysts to start the describing the $$ many billions growth markets, and despite the various technical challenges we see now ultimately the trend is inevitable and so it’s an investors paradise, really.

As Telus described in this news release last year here the primary concern users have about the Cloud is data security and compliance, and so we can see addressing this is the principle requirement for this large scale adoption.

So in short with this being a key area of the Cloud industry that will mature in 2013, combined with an already general ongoing acceptance and steady adoption, there will be an explosive accelerating effect that will propel progress across the chasm.

With an irrefutable capability to assure Cloud environments to meet regulatory compliance needs will provide the foundation that makes 2013 The Year of the Trusted Cloud.

For a more detailed discussion of this topic, check out our latest TRANSFORM e-magazine, which explores these Cloud Security best practices in detail, and how they might be applied to high-growth sectors like E-Health.