Cloud computing is a huge industry, with some of the world’s largest and most innovative technology companies fighting for a piece of this growing service. Recently, Amazon and Microsoft became the most prominent names in the business after they released their quarterly reports, which revealed their cloud services to be worth several billion dollars. However, their fellow cloud competitor Google seems determined to prove that the cloud is still anyone’s game: the company’s Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure, Urs Hölzle, recently made some predictions about the future of this influential technology that have drawn some attention back to Google and caused many to wonder how the cloud will adapt.

Comparing the progress of cloud computing to other fast-moving innovations, such as smartphones, Hölzle predicts that users and cloud consultants will barely recognize the technology the industry will create in the next five years. Other experts seem to agree with his hypothesis: after all, the cloud market has already evolved considerably in recent years, causing service prices to drop. However, as one of the founders of the Google Cloud Platform, Hölzle says he expects many of the new changes to come in the form of improved security.

Companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft already have very secure cloud systems. However, the safety of an application is largely dependent on how the cloud is implemented by its users. For this reason, many organizations turn to cloud broker companies to help them select services and set up their operations, especially when it comes to government cloud security. Hölzle attributes this security problem to highly customized IT environments, which require safety measures adapted to the specific environment. He believes that the industry will soon create and standardize a number of new features to promote security, including secure DNS, certificate pinging, SSL everywhere, constantly-encrypted data, audit logs and other components that may not even have been developed yet. Moreover, he expects that everything will be done within the application itself, saving the user several steps while still keeping the platform safe. The benefits of this are clear: the system could be standardized, cloud broker companies would be better able to identify and illustrate the benefits of different systems and anyone would be able to use the platform. As a result, Hölzle believes that users will eventually be seen as taking a risk by not using the cloud. Will this industry expert’s predictions come true? Only time will tell.