The personal cloud is driving the industry wild with developments that have led many to believe that this platform is already spawning an entire ecosystem, and a self-sustaining one at that. In the United States alone, personal cloud services is expected to be a $12 billion-market by 2016. It also reigns supreme within organizations like Apple, Google and Microsoft, while also driving IPO fever. The white-hot personal cloud trend burns brighter with the announcement of the upcoming iCloud—Apple’s next bet for global superstardom.

There is an overflow of publicity surrounding the upcoming iCloud, from supporters, experts and competitors alike. A group in the affirmative side is Hitachi, which recently unveiled the G-Connect wireless storage drive designed for mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. Looxcie’s personal camcorder is also looking to incorporate iCloud in their system, leveraging it for personal storage and distribution purposes.

But antagonists are also on the rise. Apple was recently sued over the usage of iCloud by iCloud Communications. It is also set to go head-to-head with Google Music, Spotify and Amazon cloud. Some experts also believe that the launch of iCloud is just a prelude to the future Apple TV.

The cloud in general has been grabbing so much attention, paving the way for cloud experts, which include Kurt Roemer – CLOUD2 Commissioner and Chief Security Strategist at Citrix Systems. He generously shared some essential facts about the cloud and the industry. Two basic, but valuable notable points are the reasons why the cloud is such a buzz magnet, and the many benefits around this platform:

“The buzz is due to the Cloud enabling innovation and entire new business models that were previously infeasible. Examples include businesses that run without a datacenter and IT staff, using the cloud for global email sourcing, CRM, and applications that can be consumed (but don’t have to be installed) on every endpoint.

“IT organizations can use the cloud for cloudbursting (moving workloads to the cloud to go beyond peak on-site capacity), as well as disaster-recovery and for massive-scale processing needs.”

For many people, knowing the benefits of the cloud is like understanding the product itself.  Roemer shed some light on the advantages an organization or individual may draw out from the cloud.

“Benefits of the cloud are often touted as greater agility and lower costs. Security is also touted as a benefit – especially for small to medium sized organizations that never could afford a full professionally-managed environment and all the necessary equipment. Sharing resources in the cloud allows these security costs to be spread among the many tenants, bringing security capabilities to those that would otherwise go without.”

With market leadership on the line, other companies would not easily give up the fight to topple Apple’s latest product. iCloud is just a peek at how the personal cloud wil affect the tech community. While it’s going to give birth to a seemingly perfect landscape, it is also looking to devastate some others, including iDisk, iWeb, gallery and even desktop computers.