As organisations look to leverage better operational and business insights, adopting Cloud has become imperative for them, especially for those that intend to make use of other technologies like analytics and IoT. All the imperatives for moving to Cloud continue to grow stronger, while at least some of the reasons for resisting the trend are becoming indefensible. The key inhibitors continue to be security and data privacy concerns and back-up/connectivity issues. Also, as the Cloud ecosystem has matured, an important inhibitor has become cost considerations as many organisations are now evaluating whether the Cloud is indeed more cost-effective than on-premises options.
This article presents the Top 5 Cloud Trends for 2020 for the Cloud market in 2020. It is based on the latest data from the global Ecosystm Cloud, IoT and Cybersecurity studies, that are live and ongoing on the Ecosystm platform, and qualitative research by Ecosystm Principal Advisors Claus Mortensen and Craig Baty.
The Top 5 Cloud Trends for 2020
Here are the Top 5 Cloud Trends for 2020 that we believe will impact both businesses and consumers in 2020.
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Major Cloud Providers Will Push for Open Source
Open Source has always played a big role in Cloud and as we move into 2020, its role will only grow bigger. Infrastructure and Platform Clouds may not have been dominated by Open Source in the past, but all major Cloud players such as AWS, Microsoft, and IBM have been focusing on Open Source recently.
In 2020, major cloud providers will switch to Open Source to create a development environment that can achieve more than they would be able to develop fully in-house.
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Open Source will Drive the Adoption of Serverless Computing
Serverless computing is a cloud model where the Cloud provider runs and manages the server and the allocation of machine resources. Beyond just the individual servers, many vendors are now offering to totally replace the data centre with a virtual version that runs in the Cloud.
It has the potential to become a widely used solution for mid-range businesses. A dynamically scaled and priced data centre could offer them a much more flexible IT environment where they do not have to worry about capacity planning and scaling – even when compared to a more traditional Cloud environment.
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Cloud and IoT Will Drive Edge Computing
Edge computing has been widely touted as a necessary component of a viable 5G setup, as it offers a more cost-effective and lower-latency set up than more traditional infrastructure. Also, with IoT being a major part of the business case behind 5G, the number of connected devices and endpoints is set to explode in the coming years, potentially overloading an infrastructure based fully on data centres for processing the data
Although some are touting Edge computing as the ultimate replacement of Cloud, we believe it will be complementary rather than a competing technology – at least in the foreseeable future and certainly as far as 2020 is concerned. Edge computing will allow Cloud providers to better cater to companies that need low latency, quick access to data and data processing. On the mobile side, it will allow them to push workloads to the handset, reducing the backend workload and potentially enhancing data privacy.
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‘Cloud Creep’ Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better
What we have previously referred to as “shadow IT” is rapidly spreading – and worsening – as organisations move to the Cloud and many organisations are now suffering from what is referred to as “cloud creep”. There are several implications of cloud creep – the most significant ones being security issue and cost.
As the use of stand-alone Cloud services grows, the risk of sensitive data being used, stored and shared in non-compliant ways increases. As for cost, while LoB sourcing of Cloud services may save the strain on the IT department’s budget as the money may come from a different “bucket”, it makes it very difficult to get a true picture of the organisations total IT spend and it may mean that consolidation benefits from well-managed sourcing and usage cannot be achieved. A third and increasingly important factor is energy footprint and savings. A fall-out from cloud creep is increased “server sprawl” whereby virtual machines (VMs) and applications remain under-utilised, leading to poor productivity and proficiency.
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Alliances and Partnerships Will be Formed as the Battle for the Top Heats Up
The global Cloud market has been consolidating around 5 players: AWS, Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and IBM. Nothing really suggests that this trend will change in 2020.
But even for the current top 5 players, their ability to compete will increasingly come down to their ability to expand their service capabilities beyond their current offerings. Ecosystm expects these players to further enhance their focus on expanding their services, management and integration capabilities through global and in-country partnerships. One particular area might be partnerships – focusing on Cloud migration between Clouds and from Cloud to on-premises.
Download Report: The Top 5 Cloud Trends For 2020
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