Looking forward to the new decade, it would be tempting to speculate where the cloud industry could be heading. With tech developments in the cloud shop, by 2022, sectors like AI-Web, IoT, Blockchain, Space Cloud Computing, etc. are assumed to reach new heights.
Most industries would say that the cloud and IT businesses are first in line with taking a beat during volatility and slowdowns. With the chances of another recession waiting to pile up on the global economy, companies are slowly expecting a loom in the IT budgets.
Contrary to these disheartening aspects, Gartner's 2020 forecast shows that companies are transitioning to better strategies. Their spending on IT is about to see a rise of approximately 9%. All the more, organizations are planning to keep their feet firmly on the track with more modest developments closer to home.
So, let us take a look at what is in the stars for the cloud.
1. Apps Modernization First
As the cloud advances to mass acceptance, firms are now expecting a transition to an application upgrade — the first approach. This simply relays the fact that companies that want to take advantage of the cloud, no longer need to look at the ‘lift and shift' legacy applications. This is because it does not offer the immediate benefits of the cloud.
Instead, the application modernization of the first strategy allows to refactor, rewrite, and reconstruct applications to provide accelerated benefits. It is also expected to see organizations increasingly search for ‘Platform as a Service Provider’ (PaaS) on this path.
2. Managed DevOps at Scale
The next prediction for the coming decade revolves around DevOps, which is ready for operations. DevOps remains a significant phenomenon and its maturity continues to expand. Most organizations prefer working with DevOps or are planning to switch to a model that can handle the creation of at least a part of their application landscape.
Bearing in mind that not all can be implemented by DevOps, IT departments should run two streams in a hybrid model:
- Old-fashioned managed application services
- DevOps
DevOps cannot be an independent operation to be ready for business in this two-speed IT environment.
The current business sphere is also in anticipation of the introduction of a hybrid mode of operation. This could ensure the continuity and quality of services at the landscape level of applications.
Landscape Level of Applications
Scaling out Procedure
3. Multi-cloud on the Rise
Organizations are gradually seeing the advantages of a multi-cloud computing model.
Adaptation of Multi-cloud
It has the potential to reduce the risk of locking the cloud provider. It is created with the focus of meeting the unique functional requirements that a business unit may have while offering continuity resources and transformation opportunities for sourcing.
Those are, of course, at the top of the core cloud benefits offered by each cloud provider, and are like:
- Agility
- Scalability
- Elasticity
Competition is not only important in terms of freedom to choose the best services for their company, but also in terms of leverage. Although companies tend to rely on private clouds, they also see that innovation can only be made possible by the public cloud for agility and cost reasons.
In a recent survey, the median number of public clouds per entity was two. Still, some respondents were successful to attain more than five. It is expected that this median of two can go up the chart by the end of 2020.
This hike can be due to the public cloud solutions, competing and eventually moving the industry forward with creativity, thereby distinguishing vendor offerings.
4. End of Public Cloud Riskable Fears
"For the technology market, the cloud will continue to be a growth driver."
"For the technology market, the cloud will continue being a potential growth driver."
There is no doubt that the public cloud is a secure platform. The headlines could scare you into keeping the data inside your firewall.
But the public cloud is now one of the safest places for your company. It could be the only option in the future and security issues are expected to subside in the coming years.
Security Percentile for Cloud Environment Protection
A recent Forrester study forecasts that the business and government purchases of public cloud infrastructure, software and application services will hit $411 billion by 2022. It further suggests that growth rates will decline by 2022.
One factor driving this growth is the heavy expenditure in protection and enforcement by major public cloud vendors. In short, they usually have much greater cloud-related budgets than any of the private cloud providers.
5. Enabling Innovation
As a previous prediction, the developments for cloud-centric applications were on a surge. In the near future, you can expect cloud-native technologies and a renewed emphasis on security to reshape cloud management and drive innovation on a scale.
When trust in public cloud solutions increases, so does the number of native cloud apps on the market. It is expected that AI and Machine Learning will drive innovation in the direction of cloud-based native development.
Future of AI
Financial Prediction of Machine Learning
On the other hand, worries about the 5G network/ landing zone maturity will be on the cards. The Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing in conjunction with 5G are likely to mean that cloud-based progress in these areas will not grow at the same pace.
6. Serverless and Container are the Latest Norms
Containers and serverless are changing the way apps are built. It allows a quicker, more flexible way to bring innovations to the market. With this kind of effect on the industry, the pace at which they are embraced should come as no surprise.
- Serverless technology and containers are replacing Virtual Machines (VMs). The estimated time frame frame of its possible acceleration is around 2020-22
- More than 60% of respondents in a recent survey said they were on their way to containers/ cloud natives
- Over 43% of their infrastructure can run containerized applications within 18 months.
Both serverless computing and containers allow developers to create applications that are much less overhead. Added to that, they are more scalable than conventional server or virtual machine applications.
Conclusion with Speculation.
There is this popular saying that often comes around. It goes something like this:
‘Never make predictions, especially about the future.’
But isn’t it what everyone prefers doing, to think about the future, to ponder about what is going to drive humans next?
Now, as everyone is set to roll into the new decade, myriads of new technology are destined to come up, to make rounds. Nevertheless, one thing that is going to keep the industry connected, up and running round the clock is cloud technology.
Without any doubt, the predictions listed above are very much in the goldilocks zone. These are fairly safe bets. But at the same time, one can be sure that the speed and scale of change could be faster than what has been predicted.