It’s that time again. As 2013 comes to a close, the landscape for 2014 grows ever nearer on the horizon. With a little help from some friends, CloudTech sums up the most compelling stories of 2013 alongside the biggest areas for growth over the coming year.

1) All about hybrid cloud

2013 was the year when hybrid cloud truly came of age, from theories to tangible business use cases.

Big companies practically fell over themselves to push this message through in research reports: Rackspace claimed back in August that hybrid was the future for three in five enterprises, whilst Gartner forecast that almost half of enterprises will be utilising hybrid cloud solutions by 2017.

And in an exclusive interview back in July, SAP VP cloud Sven Denecken told CloudTech that hybrid is “picking up speed” and added that for enterprises “it is the right mix of cloud solutions.”

With …