The cloud is a buzzword that’s infiltrated business leadership. But let’s be clear; as a standalone service, the cloud doesn’t exist. The cloud simply defines how organizations use the Internet to send data to a remote server farm housed somewhere external to the corporate location. We’re more than a decade into the idea of cloud computing, and it’s become a widely accepted business strategy for start-up, mid-market, and enterprise organizations.
Gartner says global cloud adoption will reach $623.3 billion by 2023. Most enterprise organizations, which had been traditionally reluctant to trust these services, now have at least one workload in the cloud; Gartner says most average five or more cloud platforms. In addition to private, public, and hybrid cloud models, organizations are now “cloud-native,” according to Information Week, a situation where the majority of new enterprise workflows have and possibly always will be in the cloud.
We’ve come a long way in our acceptance of the cloud as a standardized service. Tech Republic looked at five of the hottest cloud computing trends this year and predicted these changes to our consumption of cloud as a service.
Prediction 1: Hybrid is Hot
For most enterprise organizations, only the hybrid cloud will do. The hybrid cloud requires a mix of on-premise and online services and data storage. This is attractive to large disparate organizations because there isn’t a single point of failure. However, these models are increasingly complex.
While Information Week agrees with this prediction, they also suggest that hybrid cloud management companies will become the norm as enterprise organizations struggle to manage the complexities of these infrastructures.
Prediction 2: Cloud Data Breach
When you consider this next prediction, the fact that organizations are moving their data into multiple and sometimes-redundant architectures in hybrid models is a good thing. Tech Republic says there is going to be a big cloud data breach this year.
The prevalence of hacker activity would generally suggest that a breach will come, but this prediction says the infiltration is going to be a doozy. Think billions of user data going into the dark web, and this blow out will likely shift the approach toward security for the major cloud providers. Watch for improvements in two-factor or multi-factor authentication that will change our access to SaaS or other products.
Prediction 3: Google Will Commercialize AI
Google has been innovating with artificial intelligence (AI) recently, particularly on its Android platform. Tech Republic thinks they will commercialize some of these products, making them standard across the Google Play Store. They also predict new AI tools will work their way into Google Docs or some of their other free online office tools.
The cloud has not stabilized as a business strategy.
Prediction 4: Kubernetes will Simplify
Containerization doesn’t appear to be slowing down as a best practice, and Tech Republic says to watch for an open-source tool that will make Kubernetes easier to use. This would free up Kubernetes clusters, so managing and deploying containers is easier.
Right now, it takes a programmer to write YAML files to deploy containers. Point and click is coming, according to this prediction allowing the layperson to take advantage of these architectures.
Prediction 5: Cloud will go Open Source
It doesn’t take much of a crystal ball to predict that open-source programs will continue to dominate the cloud. But Tech Republic goes one step further to predict the cloud will be fully run by these products. They say, “In order for any software solution to make headway within the cloud, it must be open.”
No matter what happens next year, this is sure to be a decade where the cloud will increase its dominance as a market force and business strategy.