Some of the biggest buzzwords in cloud computing today are technologies that are at the peak of inflated expectations, Gartner found.

Big data: Big data in the cloud, Gartner says, is an emerging technology near the peak of its inflated expectations. The research firm is high on the potential for big data though, describing it as transformational. The ever increasing number of digital devices is creating an exponential increase in the amount of data volumes. The benefits that could be derived from big data will rapidly accelerate the technology's lifecycle through the trough of disillusionment and into mainstream adoption within two to five years. Some of these big data technologies represent a great leap forward in processing management, Gartner says. Through technologies such as MapReduce and Apache Hadoop, access to big data analytics tools are increasing in the market. Businesses that can leverage that data to their benefit will outperform their competitors, Gartner says.

PaaS: Cloud computing is broken down into three service models, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology: (IaaS), (SaaS) and (PaaS). Gartner says PaaS, by far, is the most hyped of these terms right now. Think of PaaS as middleware in the cloud, where customized can be built and hosted outside of an organization's own data center. Some of the biggest names in on-premise middleware offerings are pushing toward the cloud, including IBM, Oracle, Red Hat and . Gartner says that push will only continue. "As leading software vendors adjust their long-term strategies to reflect the emerging importance of cloud computing to their customer and prospect bases, they are investing to establish a leadership position in the middle layer of PaaS," Gartner's report notes.

But, it is still early days, and many of these companies still only have offerings in beta form, including Red Hat and Oracle. Microsoft Azure and VMware Cloud Foundry are two of the leading PaaS plays now, Gartner says. The term is hyped, though, because of the breadth of vendors looking to tap into the space, and the potential for the services that could be included in the PaaS layer, ranging from applications development to integration, business process management, database management and messaging. But in the early stages of the industry few vendors offer those spectrum of services.