In the words of acclaimed American author and consultant Geoffrey Moore, “the increasing presence of cloud computing and mobile smartphones is driving the digitization of everything across both consumer and enterprise domains. It is hard to imagine any area of human activity which is not being re-engineered under this influence, either at present or in the very near future.” As a result, cloud computing has presented itself as the solution for businesses to survive, expedite their ROIs, and add a new line of their existing product and service solutions portfolio.
Therefore, customers and organizations’ adoption of cloud storage and computing solutions is rising with an estimated growth of 23% in 2021, totalling $332 billion and is expected to reach over $400 billion by 2022. This rise in adoption supports the changing work scenarios as organizations seek business continuity, cost efficiency, and increased future scalability. Thus, it becomes imperative for businesses to acclimate to the existing cloud technologies and bolster their hold on the trends that would define the future.
As businesses have started to migrate to the cloud, they are given the two traditional options. One is storing their data on a pay-as-you-go public cloud solution where the data is saved on a third-party server, making it easily accessible and heavily reducing the infrastructure costs for the parent organization. The second is storing their data on a highly customizable private cloud solution where the data is saved on-premises, maintaining fast data transmission speeds, and reducing possible downtime. The hybrid cloud universe exists between these two.
Hybrid cloud is a middle ground that offers organizations the best of both cloud solutions. The most critical and client-sensitive data can be privately withheld on-prem, and the more frequently accessed heavy files used on a need-basis can be transferred to a public cloud provider like AWS and Azure. This, in turn, is allowing organizations to exist in a multi-cloud environment.
Multi-cloud environments are a combination of public, private, and hybrid. In other words, a multi-cloud verse combines on-premises operations with services and applications that run on any public and hybrid clouds. This combination enables an organization to reap the benefit of each platform and considerably reduce downtime, control costs, optimize performance, meet business goals faster by leveraging best cloud solution combinations.
Both hybrid and multi-cloud approaches significantly bring down the operational complexity for organizations and create a flexible remote working culture. Research shows that the global market for hybrid technologies will reach $100 billion evaluation by 2022 and the global multi-cloud management market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 30.9% from 2017 to 2022.
2. Containerization: Container-as-a-Service
A container is a package of software consisting of all the required dependencies bundled together so that I can run on any host system. Container-as-a-Service (CaaS), therefore, is a cloud-based service where that enables software developers to rapidly plant and scale containerized applications on a given cloud infrastructure.
Containerization allows developers to build and deploy applications faster and more securely. Traditionally, a code is developed in a specific computing environment. When transferred to a different environment, the code can encounter bugs and errors during the run due to changes in the operating environment. But with containerization, developers eliminate this issue by creating a package that contains the application code and configuration files, libraries, and other dependencies required for it to run uniformly on any infrastructure.
Containerization, therefore, provides increased flexibility, faster delivery, agility, portability, modernization, better life cycle management. Moreover, it is a vastly growing tool that can address multiple concerns of application developers and scale cloud solutions for organizations per specific user requirements. Gartner predicts that by 2022, more than 75% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in productions.
3. The Internet of Things and Cloud Platforms
The internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing combined will create a hyper-associated world, one of the most notable trends to watch out for in the coming years. IDC forecasts that IoT devices will staggeringly increase in numbers crossing the 80 billion mark by 2025 with no signs of reducing in the years to come. IoT cloud platforms are modern solutions that help connect an application with a device, and its data, creating a comprehensive cloud ecosystem. In addition, these PaaS or platforms-as-a-service solutions are scalable as they provide the support to build applications and services using the built-in IoT features.
4. Innovation with Edge Computing
Edge computing is a computation that takes place at or near the physical location of either user or the source of the data, thereby optimizing internet devices and applications by bringing them closer to the source data. This, in turn, helps minimize long-distance client-server communication that saves time and bandwidth with reduced latency. In addition, edge computing will make information processing and availability faster, helping intelligent operating systems function smoothly.
Cloud computing trends in the coming year will comprise IoT cloud solutions combining forces with edge computing to amplify performance and deliver an enhanced user experience. Combined with the power of cloud, edge computing will be bringing the data servers close to the end user, thereby creating an fast paced, agile cloud environment where the edges of high volume population centres connect the edges of networks. With edge computing, latency issues can be addressed massively as by pushing and reallocating crucial data to exist on the edge of a network.
5. The Growth of AI and ML in Cloud Computing
Cloud computing has a vital role to play when it comes to delivering AI services and creating an impact on society. Plus, cloud computing provides the infrastructure, the huge bandwidth and processing power that the AI/ML applications or platforms require. 2022 will witness Cloud & AI/ML create a space for a future that is more data-driven and strategic. Combined, they can create innovative algorithms, i.e., generative machine learning, with the power to create anything from art to synthetic data to train more AIs and language modelling, i.e., the accuracy of machines understanding and interpreting human languages.
6. Cloud Solutions Supporting Sustainability
Now more than ever before, climate change has become a priority for organizations. This has led businesses to realize their carbon-footprint and urged them to create cloud solutions that factor in environmental sustainability. The uncertainty created by the pandemic has pushed organizations to think about the physical world and prosperity of future generations. Thus, moving towards incorporating sustainability in their business strategy, organizations are bringing in solutions that use Cloud, AI, that can help reduce their carbon footprint. The focus is building up on using IoT, AI, and data analytics to create resilient infrastructures and intelligent operations.
It is Just the Beginning for Cloud Computing
The development of cloud computing can be considered one of the biggest and most significant in every single industry. It has disrupted the way traditional businesses got conducted. Given the uncertain circumstances presented by the pandemic, enterprises are faced with the urgency to upgrade their operations and systems in a limited time. Furthermore, it has pushed organizations to rapidly adapt and transform digitally to maintain their advantage in existing or new markets. Therefore, in the coming years, organizations need to acknowledge their existing cloud technologies and strategize their businesses accordingly to maintain a competitive edge.
