Antonio Piraino, chief technology officer at ScienceLogic, offers his predictions regarding the future of cloud computing in a Forbes guest post. The cloud has become a major buzzword in the last year and its strategies have provided companies with many benefits related to budgets, products and applications. “However, despite the fact that companies have begun to embrace the cloud and move toward serious implementations, we are in the midst of a rapidly changing market,” suggests Piraino.

In his Forbes post, Piraino offers four predictions for 2013:
1) “The cloud wars are (still) rumbling, and they’re getting louder.” Expect to see head-to-head scrimmaging between emerging cloud giants including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Red Hat, Google and Facebook.

2) “A Titanic cloud outage will create a domino effect.” As more IT resources are moved to the cloud, expect the possibility of a major outage that could yield devastating results.

3) “A changing role for the CIO.” Expect global opportunities and increase in power for CIOs as job descriptions will soon include acting as international power brokers, ambassadors and diplomats.

4) “Death of the desktop as we know it.” Mobile devices will impact the PC and open new opportunities for the cloud.

“So is it all doom and gloom for global cloud providers and industrious enterprise users looking to exploit the benefits of cloud?” asks Piraino. “No, but there are many intricacies of cloud computing that CIOs and IT will need to consider in order to ensure its full benefits can be realized in 2013.”