Abstract-Grid-enabled instrumentation has brought together different scientific labs for complicated cooperative experiments. Instrument resources sharing and managing remotely over the Internet are also realized by such systems. Nowadays the rise of cloud computing, which is developed from grid computing and other distributed parallel computing technologies, has attracted attention of science communities and many institutes already begins to establish cloud for scientific applications. As the science cloud has the same requirements of integrating data sources, which are instruments and sensors, as the grid it is believed that future trend of integrating instrumentation into the cloud is coming soon. This paper argues for the feasibilities and advantages of cloud-enabled instrumentation in the near future. Firstly the requirements for future instrumentation are analyzed and then related achievements made in grid-enabled instrumentation are introduced. By briefly comparing the grid and the cloud further verifications and advantages for developing cloudenabled instrumentation are given. Based on the work that has already been done in the research of grid-enabled instrumentation considerations for developing cloud-enabled instrumentation systems is elaborated. Finally challenges and problems that may be encountered in designing cloud-enabled instrumentation systems are also illustrated. This paper can inspire and guide researchers especially in the instrument and measurement fields to develop new efficient instrumentation systems for their experiments and applications.