The weekend review: PaaS, metered IT, and the future of mobile networks

The cloud was this week’s big topic — not surprising, as cloud computing, infrastructure, and big data will all be center-stage next week at our Structure:Europe conference in Amsterdam. GigaOM Pro’s Sector RoadMap research is now officially a series, with the publication of our third report, David Linthicum’s analysis of the PaaS market. And stay tuned to GigaOM Pro next week as we release our third-quarter wrap-ups, beginning on Monday.

David Linthicum’s “Sector RoadMap: Platform as a Service in 2012″ looks at the cloud-based application platforms known as Platform as a Service (PaaS) and identifies the market’s most important platforms, technologies, and companies. Employing GigaOM Pro’s data-visualization methods, the report analyzes and examines the key disruptive trends that shape the emerging PaaS market and where companies need to position themselves to gain share and increase revenue.

Next, in “Metered IT: the path to utility computing,” Paul Miller (who will be moderating and speaking at Structure:Europe) examines at the key metrics to measure and evaluate when choosing a cloud solution and weighs the benefits of utility computing. Miller highlights the need for a common set of metrics across the market. Unified standards will open opportunities for accurately measuring computing resources and their use, simplifying the comparison of competing cloud offerings and opening the door to charging models based more closely on actual consumption.

Last, in “The evolving mobile network: from slide-deck presentations to deployment,” Monica Paolini details the rapidly evolving mobile-networking space as the market shifts from a voice-centric to a data-centric usage model. With the adoption of high-speed LTE and HSPA now a given across mobile network providers, in order to “successfully address the increase in data traffic, operators need to act on multiple fronts because no single solution will be sufficient in isolation.” Paolini looks at the industry’s consensus for implementing these changes as well as areas of potential growth and continued innovation.