Gone are the days when all applications had to be developed, tested and stored on-premise. This is the age of agility, innovation and scalability. It doesn’t take a prophecy to predict that cloud computing is seeing an upsurge this year. Things get even more lucrative to see the barriers becoming drivers to cloud computing, to see how the cloud landscape is changing along with the changing customer expectations and the way businesses function.
Here are the 10 predictions about the way global cloud computing is shaping up in 2016 and beyond:
Data storage can help organizations predict their target audience and the upcoming trends in their industry which in turn gives them an edge to gain more revenue in a cost effective way. As a result, many companies are migrating to cloud.
According to IDC, cloud will be the preferred foundation for business applications, scale is the new critical ingredient for business success, and managing hybrid, multi-vendor environments is expected to take center stage. Gartner predicts that by 2018, over 50 percent of enterprises will create and/or partner with industry cloud platforms to distribute their own innovations and at least half of IT spending will be cloud-based, reaching 60 percent of all IT infrastructure and 60 to 70 percent of all software, services, and technology spending by 2020.
This year will witness more companies migrating their data to the cloud. According to Mark Hud, CEO of Oracle, 80 percent of the production application is expected to be migrated to cloud. With an upsurge of cloud adoption, the cloud global market is expected to reach USD 65.41 Billion by 2020. This is a clear indication of the increased adoption of cloud.
There are success stories of companies who have rightly utilized cloud and analyzed their data. Uber is one such example. This data driven company first used its data in order to understand their customer’s availability and preferences, which benefited them in becoming a successful transportation company.
There will be a shift in focus from support to innovation, as cloud computing helps companies in automating the infrastructure, applications, platforms, backing the data, data encryption and recovery. This will free up the resources time for them to focus on innovation rather than support. Cloud automation has made it easier for companies by saving their time and resources, thus letting them focus more on making their business, customer centric.
Development and testing in an on premise environment needs more time and is not a cost effective method for organizations, as it requires buying license and configuring the data.
As a result, development and testing will be executed in the cloud. IT teams are looking for the companies which give them the choice to select cloud development platforms which can either run on-premise or enlarge to a public cloud.
Cloud computing is overwhelming because of its advantages that it has to offer. Realizing the benefits that it entails, many small and midsize companies are migrating to cloud in order to globalize their services in a cost effective way. As a result, there is an increase in cloud vendors in the market and new entrants are continuously entering the marketplace. This competition has evaded the entry restrictions by generalizing the strict compliance requirements or regulations, ensuring prominence for small and midsize vendors to serve the industry.
The increased competition amongst large, mid-sized and small cloud vendors has resulted in a stabilized pricing. Entry of many ardent providers in cloud computing, has led to a healthy competition in the industry. Major players such as Amazon Web Services are able to maintain the break even, with this, it is expected that Information as a Service (IaaS) pricing will begin to stabilize, and there will be a proliferated interest to its alternatives such as Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). With this, all cloud providers are expected to expand their offerings.
In this era of cloud adoption and migration, clouds and on-premises systems will coexist for a decade or more. Thus, seamless sharing of data amongst the on-premise and data lying on the cloud in a silo, will shoot the top priority list for businesses. Companies will make use of increasingly powerful and simple cloud-based integration tools for this.
Cloud-based integration promises to remove complexities of custom-coding integrations. These can easily be managed by data experts who need not be high-end technologists. This will free up the technologists time to focus on any critical integration that may arise, eventually letting them to be architects who can manage the integration process.
The rapid adoption of cloud has led to voluminous data being stored in the cloud which has raised concern on data security, governance and compliance, resulting which cloud vendors are also started to offer services.
The prime focus will be on operating the cloud environment effectively, and thus cloud management security and governance will hold prominence. There is good scope for cloud vendors and services providers given that they make cloud management security and governance mandatory.
The increased adoption of cloud has raised concerns over data security as most of the company’s confidential and sensitive data is stored over the cloud. 15.8 percent of files in the cloud comprises sensitive data. Enterprises will boost their cloud security budgets, to ensure high data security for sensitive data.
Companies now are trying to re-balance their security spending by moving out of their traditional blocking solutions to detection and response mechanism, which is catering as the best line of defense.
There is a dire need for strong authentication process in this data driven world. As enterprises were not using strong credentials it became easy for attackers to penetrate the security protocols. This is forcing companies to have heed on the encryption and the most fundamental security principle such as strong passwords for sensitive data. Hence, organizations are now increasing the number of authentication touch points with protected technology that can detect malware.
Companies now know the importance of securing their data over the cloud and vendors have started leveraging this opportunity and market segment. Companies such as Rackspace, mapping the cloud space are started to offer Security as a Service (SaaS), to leveraging this opportunity. This will put enterprises to ease, as the vendors will provide their expertise in dealing with malware and cloud attacks and guarantee protection against cloud attacks and malwares.
Technological and economical switch transmuted the employee’s outlook, lack of contemporary between the technology and skill set, decline in working population has led to shortage in IT talent.
We live in the era, where talent distinguishes the people, the talent shortage has become the primary challenge for the companies who are continuously adapting to the new technologies. They are trying to bridge the skill gap by partnering with colleges and universities in training their employees and accelerating the on boarding of new developers to the community, focusing on building the talent and to reduce the slump of talent.
Microsoft’s one drive will become the most popular cloud sharing app. Companies already upload approximately 1.37 terabytes of data per month which includes 17.4 percent of files of sensitive data. This depicts the confidence in the Microsoft’s cloud platform as they continue to use it as a system of record for sensitive information.
Facts and statements in this article are taken from Gartner, IDC, and Oracle research and are publicly available information. Some of the statements are “forward-looking statements” and are subject to material risks and uncertainties. Such statements are based on the current trends and assumptions, some of which are beyond CTE’s control. CTE undertakes no duty to update any statement in light of new information or future events.
