This is the time of year that when technology publications get contacted by any number of PR firms, hoping they will listen to their pitches, and perhaps publish their cloud technology client’s cloud computing predictions for 2014.  If they’re lucky, whatever they are selling continues to grow in the New Year.

I don’t really get into predictions as much as I look at emerging patterns or trends, which will be relevant to those who are currently evaluating and selecting cloud computing technology.  In other words, you need to understand what to look out for in the near future, as well as how to dial that into your enterprise cloud computing strategy.

Three emerging cloud computing trends that will be more relevant by the end of the year are actually rather easy to spot:

• PaaS and application migration

• Cloud data integration, yes again

• Cloud management and governance

Of these emerging trends, PaaS and application migration will receive the most prominent focus in 2014, considering the number of applications that enterprises are preparing to move to cloud-based platforms.  The issues that enterprises have right now are lack of best practices, immaturity of PaaS platforms, and, in some cases, no ROI to validate the migrations.

The lack of best practices relates to the fact that massive application migrations to cloud-based platforms are few and far between.  Moreover, those who attempt application migration to public clouds find mixed results, and the cost benefit is not as well defined as they thought.

The PaaS offerings, specifically those in the public cloud space, are getting better.  However, as larger application development and deployment projects test the existing and emerging PaaS clouds, the results are clear that some additional work needs to be done to make these as enterprise-ready as most of us hoped.  While the PaaS provider features vary like snowflakes, missing middleware, security,  DevOps, and management services, are just a few things that remain on the Christmas lists of enterprise IT folks who are currently eyeballing PaaS.

Cloud data integration continues to be an issue, due to the number of systems that are being placed on private clouds.  Those who build these systems understand that data needs to sync with existing enterprise systems, and then suddenly the focus is on cloud-aware data integration solutions.

The problems to solve are familiar.  First, we need the ability to exchange information between source and target systems that exist within traditional platforms, and newer public cloud platforms.  We need features that include semantics mediation from source data to target, and the ability to adapt to the special needs of cloud computing, such as latency and bandwidth issues.  The cloud-oriented solutions have been around for awhile, including Jitterbit, Dell/Boomi, Actian, Informatica, and others, however, new attention will be paid to these technologies in 2014.

Cloud management and governance covers cloud management platforms (CMPs), as well a service-based governance.  The interest in CMP is driven by the need to leverage many different types of clouds, including public and private clouds, to provide the ultimate cloud platform for the enterprise.

The recent acquisition of ServiceMesh by CSC proves that CMP is on the radar screen of those looking to grow their cloud technology stack.  That said, count on a lot of churn in this space in 2014, including more CMP entries and more acquisitions.

The reality is that we could see a next generation push in cloud management and governance.  We could see features such as management capabilities-based cognitive systems, or perhaps systems that are more linked into the native capabilities of the public and private cloud providers.  In any event, there should be a great deal of work applied to this emerging space.  Considering the amount of funding that will be focused here, there will be some nice surprises in terms of features and functions that could make the use of cloud-based resources more viable and cost effective.

These are only three trends.  You can count on other trends to emerge in 2014, but they will not be as significant as the ones listed here.  The world of cloud computing will undergo some change and maturity over the next several years, and the ability for the enterprise to take advantage of these innovations will be critical to the success of cloud computing.  Place your bets now.