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Nonetheless it is worth sifting through the blatant 'PR puff' because our industry also employs some of the smartest and most insightful people around. We've pulled together some predictions from across the cloud sector and the wider IT world, to give you some idea of the kind of issues you're likely to be dealing with over the next year or two.

THE TROUBLE WITH MICROSOFT
Several of those we spoke to singled out the impending end of support for Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 as a significant event for the industry, as users look for an alternative to a server infrastructure that has been around for 11 years.

Alex Hilton, CEO of the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), describes it as a new imperative for businesses to look to Cloud-based alternatives: "In the period leading up to July 2015 the market faces the most significant IT refresh of the 21st century to date with the end of support of both Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Small Business Server 2003. These products have not only underpinned the IT server market for the last decade they have been the basis upon which many local IT providers have built their businesses. In the UK alone, an average of 1000 servers per day are likely to need to be transitioned in the final year of support. Some customers will take the opportunity to move the server workloads to Cloud services, some will undertake a rudimentary incremental upgrade and others will take the opportunity to refine their IT strategy. The next 12 months represent a great opportunity for customers to make a Cloud migration and adopt the latest enterprise ready technology at a fraction of the price. Our research suggests that 61 per cent of UK organisations are still running Microsoft Windows Server 2003. This product has been supported for 11 years but technology has moved on. Doing nothing is not a viable option, the majority of users will move to Cloud or Managed Services."

Perhaps surprisingly, Glenn Woolaghan, UK SMB Director at Microsoft, seems to agree: "Migration to the Cloud presents businesses of all sizes with an opportunity to discover the right balance of simplicity, flexibility and cost and enable SMBs to take advantage of enterprise-grade features at start-up prices. By this we mean that businesses will be able to host applications in the way that bests suits their business and cost structure, whether on-site or in the cloud. They'll also be able to grow efficiently and use only what they need, when they need it. Finally, employees of SMBs will be able to get their work done anywhere and work together easily with the latest cloud-based mobility and productivity solutions."

CIF is predicting that Cloud adoption will reach another peak throughout 2015, increasing in breadth with more organisations overall using Cloud services, and in depth, as existing users expand their use of Cloud services. They say that over 90 per cent of organisations will be using Cloud services by the end of the year, up from 78 per cent in 2014, and 60 per cent of these will use two or more 'material Cloud services'.

Peter Groucutt of Databarracks also points to the end of Server 2003 as a catalyst for cloud migration: "Like XP in 2014, Server 2003 has been one of the data centre workhorses and one of the operating systems businesses really rely on. It is at points like these when businesses have to review whether they want to continue to run those applications in-house, or whether they want to move them out to the cloud."

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