Earlier this week I attended a panel discussion called, “Piercing the Clouds: Emerging Opportunities in Cloud Computing” sponsored by the MIT Enterprise Forum. The panel featured cloud computing experts from Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Real Networks to discuss the opportunities, pitfalls and trends surrounding cloud computing.

Cloud computing is defined by Wiktionary as, “Computing in which services and storage are provided over the Internet (or “cloud”) and can include popular Web-based services such as Gmail, Pandora, Facebook and YouTube, virtual server storage solutions such as Amazon Web Services and product development tools such as Google Apps.”

The panel experts agreed that cloud computing is one of the most significant disruptive technologies in recent memory and it is here to stay. In fact, analyst firm Gartner predicts the cloud computing market is, “poised for strong growth through 2014, when worldwide cloud services revenue is projected to reach $148.8 billion.” One of the panel observations I found to be interesting is that the proliferation of mobile computing devices including mobile phones, iPads and e-readers has been one of the key drivers of consumer-driven cloud computing apps. However, the panelists believe that cloud computing will penetrate the enterprise further as the barriers surrounding trust and reliability of accessing content are broken and companies begin to view of cloud computing as a business model rather than a trend.

One thing is clear, cloud computing is not just a trend but represents a significant shift in how we access information and content. We work with several clients in various industries that touch the cloud and it will be interesting to see how this technology will evolve both consumption of content, and business models for organizations.