Lately many parallel streams of development in Cloud Computing are making significant progress to bring about a new way of information processing impacting a large number of users, including enterprises and communities around the world. Gartner predicts that "Cloud Application Infrastructure Technology Needs Seven Years to Mature." Gartner said that technologically aggressive application development organizations should look to cloud computing for tactical quick wins through 2011, during which time the market will begin to mature and be dominated by a select group of vendors. By 2015, cloud computing will have been commoditized and will be the preferred solution for many application development projects.

Like any other new dimensions in evolving technology, Cloud Computing is going through a usual Curve of Diffusion & Adoption. Here are a few trends in the cloud computing paradigm that are shaping the application and commercialization of the clouds.

•  Mobility or Portability of the Cloud Framework that makes information processing available anywhere & anytime. Though this was mainly conceived for the mobile enterprise work groups, this augurs well for the communities in the developing regions since development of advanced mobile applications does not remain dependent on the sophistication of the device. Few key challenges like interoperability and network availability still remain to be addressed.
• Localization of virtualization. Many new offerings are being developed to create a secure, private virtualization for specific enterprise applications. There are some instances of open clouds but it is still far from full maturity. There is also a forecast of 'Hybrid Cloud' that would make a win-win combination of the private & public clouds that can be customized based on specific requirements. Here there is a clear emphasis on 'productization' & 'localization' of clouds that probably precedes the complete understanding of the technology paradigm.
• Packaged Cloud Offering. Amazon's AWS, Microsoft's Azure and Google's App Engine are proprietary framework for hosted services. While these offerings are yet to take off commercially, they have certainly created a definite 'lead by example' advantage. Some issues that face this approach are difficulty in migrating existing applications to the 'Cloud' without rewriting some of their code bases. 'Write once run anywhere' generation of applications face an obvious stumbling block.
• Optimization through Distributed Virtualization. This is possibly one of the most critical components of Cloud Computing and holds the maximum potential to impact the Global Productivity as a whole. This has the capacity to bridge the digital divide by turning one machine into many. The California-based startup NComputing has installed more than two million computer "seats" worldwide in the past two years. There is this huge group of consumers, living in the digital divide that could really benefit from broad access to PCs. Partridge, CEO Vital Wave Consulting, sees virtual desktops working in schools, Internet cafes, government centers and other venues where people are comfortable using computers in communal spaces. NComputing feeds into local economies by buying hardware locally and training people in communities to provide support for virtual machines. "NComputing recently announced an alliance with Chinese PC maker Haier, which is expected to provide access to low-priced hardware.

Considering that one of the basic premises for Cloud Computing was better optimization of total globally available processing power to meet the distributed computing needs in the wider regions in the world, there are many issues that need careful consideration from the global research community towards creating a sustainable, robust framework for Mass Market Computing through a global network of clouds.

• The Cloud Computing research agenda must address the scalability and availability of the infrastructure rather than focusing on the intelligent clients. i.e. MID or Smartphones; or virtualization platforms alone. There is a significant role that must be played by the network technologies & protocols to facilitate such a large and diverse scale. Various trends in Network Technology development such as effective decentralization, supporting the complex hierarchy of the Highly Federated Networks (HFN), sustaining time-based or demand driven Value Based Networks, self-organizing networks etc. will play an integral part in the overall realization of Cloud Computing grand visions.
• The information consumption patterns will dictate a lot as to how the capacity can be engineered and implemented. The information processing needs can vary widely depending on the context of application, e.g. individual or community needs may be tactical, sparse and shared in nature, whereas in the markets, exchanges or public systems the amount of information to be processed is enormous
• On the application side, supporting the small & medium enterprises, or the 'Other Private Sector' defined in the Millennium Development Goal, through a network of clouds presents yet another set of challenges & opportunities. The 'Small' to 'Very Small' enterprise inherently depends on the local ecosystem of services and value exchanges. And this is where a Open Cloud Networks can bring in a revolutionary change. Cloud based tools & frameworks ranging from supply chain integrators, provision of critical services through self-managed access, Dashboard or aggregation of various relevant information feeds including price or demand etc. can provide tremendous value to these local business ecosystems

Here is an interesting presentation on Open Cloud Network from Sun