Here are a few predictions about the Cloud for 2011 from an article I read that I thought I’d share with you. Some of them are quite startling. Here goes:

Don’t Expect Cloud Standards in 2011 – Yeah, there will be drafts of standards, and possibly some ratifications by groups such as DMTF, NIST and the Cloud Security Alliance. But actual adoption of any kind of standard won’t happen…and is still a few years off.  That shouldn’t prevent you from using the Cloud however, especially when you can rely on technologies such as 24/7 cloud platform monitoring to make sure your database and apps are available and up and running.

More enterprises will build private clouds, and they’ll continue to fail. While nobody likes to see something fail, the article suggests that this is a good thing because then companies will learn that building a cloud is a very complex task. You shouldn’t start too grand or with something too highly visible. Start small; learn and then expand.

Hosted private clouds will outgrow internal clouds — by a factor of three to one. In 2011, private cloud service providers will be perfectly able to provide the consistent speed that a company’s employees need when turning to the cloud for performance. Why? Because they use standardized procedures that are executed by software — not your resident in-house VMware administrators.

Information is not just power; it’s also a profit center. Of course Cloud computing helps companies gain greater insight into their data. But next year it will increasingly help firms earn money, too.  Just look at services such as Windows Azure DataMarket — designed to help enterprises leverage data sources more easily.

On that last point, the data that Monitis’ Web LoadTester provides your company is instrumental in maintaining profitability. We use cloud-computing power for instant web applications and network testing. Our on-demand Web Load Tester service helps ensure that your site’s Web pages will continue to work as designed when many visitors come — for example, the day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday!

Why is this so important? Heavy user traffic is always good, unless your web system is under too much stress.  Web LoadTester helps you determine how your system responds to that traffic.  You can use the service at any time, day or night, to ensure that your websites and applications are ready for any number of visitors whenever they arrive.