The Cloud: Why 2012 Will Be a Breakout Year
By Julie Jacobson
Managing security, phone systems, thermostats and more with the cloud.

Cloud computing is one of CE Pro's Top 5 Home Technology Opportunities for 2012. We will be profiling each trend over the next week as part of our State of the Industry Report.

By now, CE pros are fairly well versed in streaming media and cloud-based content, even if such services can be difficult to manage and challenging to monetize.



But there are additional opportunities in cloud-based services. We believe 2012 will be a breakout year for hosted home control, including security, energy management, telecommunications and whole-house automation.

We hear this often from integrators: “I don’t trust the cloud for my clients. It isn’t reliable.” And the LAPD recently dumped Google's Gmail email service, saying it could not meet the required security needs.

Yet many CE pros entrust their entire business to the cloud (also known as SaaS or software as a service), sharing Google documents, for example, and using Salesforce.com or some other cloud-based sales and CRM software.

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