Is it near the summit of the Peak of Inflated Expectations, like Big Data, or has it moved straight to the Plateau of Productivity as a product itself of 'Predictive Analytics'. That would be fitting.

These questions can't be answered with the data we currently have, and maybe they can't be answered objectively at all, but I'll keep track of these Gartner Hype Curve status updates as they emerge and in a few years' time we'll see how accurate we, subjectively, think they were.

Below is Gartner's latest Hype Cycle update and it makes interesting viewing.

Probably like anyone looking at the curve I have a few 'issues'. Surely some hype cycles are more pronounced than others? I can see, and saw at the time, that mobile health monitoring got far more attention than it deserved. Garner has crashed it into the trough of disillusionment now while two to three years ago it was vigorously scaling the Peak. That seems about right.

But has Cloud Computing really climbed up and now descended into the Trough of Disillusionment? It seems to me that, unlike mobile health monitoring, 'Cloud' generally rose to prominence pretty-much as scheduled, despite regularly being called hype on the journey. Cloud is now huge and I don't hear about it underperforming as a technology area - quite the opposite.

What do you think? Answers below.

Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2013