As I navigate the virtual highways and backroads of the interwebs, I am always searching for new content that interests me. In this blog, I wanted share some recent articles related to Cloud adoption.
The Cloud is a common item on many IT leaders to-do lists, and yet the uncertainty around cloud migration and implementation can be daunting, resulting in this “to-do” frequently getting pushed down the list. These four articles are particularly noteworthy because they prognosticate the future of the Cloud, and they contain some common themes. Without much further ado, let’s get started:
The first article is from Network World and is entitled 10 must-watch IaaS cloud trends for 2017. Their analysis is fairly comprehensive, and many of their themes are mirrored in the other articles. Here is a quick summary and some comments:
- Revenues continue to climb – This one is painfully obvious because as cloud adoption grows, revenue should follow.
- Cloud 2.0 – Translated, to actual language, this means that cloud adoption will increase which seems almost identical the first point.
- Machine learning/AI – This is cool, and hopefully we will see more if it.
- Serverless computing – They point to AWS Lambda as an example, and I completely agree that this is an exciting trend.
- Containers – This is a hot topic, and containers were also mentioned in my DevOps trends blog.
- The uniting of private cloud and hyperconverged infrastructure – Hyperconverged vendors have focused on this merger for years so this one is not new.
- Hybrid cloud – the public cloud onramp – This makes sense because companies start with hybrid models and then eventually consider embracing the public cloud for selected workloads.
- Manage your cloud, or pay the price – Multi-cloud management is hard and so this is not easy to implement.
- Data center build-outs continue – This is interesting because it indicates that private clouds will continue to grow. (See #6)
- Market consolidation – will there be just three? – This bullets focuses on Chinese cloud providers and whether they can gain meaningful marketshare in the US. It is a very good question.
Geekwire shares some additional insights in their piece entitled: The Cloud in 2017: Seven key trends, from AWS and Azure to voice services and machine learning. Some of their views are similar to the Network World ones.
- Revenue will rise sharply for the big public cloud providers – Here comes revenue again!
- The list of computing resources available “as a service” will continue to expand – Okay, so cloud providers will offer more solutions? That hardly seems controversial.
- The cloud will be used more and more for production – This sounds a lot like NetWorld’s Cloud 2.0 although it is stated in more intuitive language.
- Private datacenters won’t go away – This looks like #8 above
- Machine learning, serverless computing, IoT and containers will all become increasingly important – This is another one of those no-brainers. I love the idea of throwing four buzzwords out there and then predicting growth. Talk about a no-lose situation!
- The voice interface will become a major focus. – Voice interfaces are fun, and I agree that they will persist. How far will they go?
- Multi-cloud efforts may persist – This is an interesting one because managing differing workloads across multiple clouds can be a real challenge. However, the trend is caveated with “may” which is the ultimate escape route.
CIO Magazine has some different perspectives in their piece entitled 6 trends that will shape cloud computing in 2017.
- Regional players complement ‘mega cloud providers’ – This is curious because most people think of only the big players when they think cloud. The idea of continued growth in the regional players is interesting, and I have seen this first hand at Actifio as many regional MSPs have embraced our technology.
- Cloud cost containment – CIOs will look for ways to manage cloud costs – Seems obvious and is like saying that 20% of New Year’s resolutions are to lose weight. Oh and 80% of these fail. Are we seeing a trend?
- Lift and shift those cloud apps – Goodness, I love cloud jargon. It makes you sound so cool…well, not really. Basically this one says that the apps will move to the cloud. Why don’t they just say that? It certainly is true.
- Hyperconverge your private cloud – Here comes the hyperconverged story again. At least this one is relatively jargon free although they are mashing up two popular terms.
- There’s a container for that – This is a hot topic both here and in DevOps and was mentioned in the previous two pieces.
- Enterprise apps come to public cloud – This is a natural evolution to the cloud.
The final post is courtesy of our friends at Microsoft and is featured on the Hybrid Cloud blog. This one is called Get ready for the 4 big trends in hybrid cloud.
- Hybrid cloud becomes the standard.
- Rapid industry expansion continues – Here comes revenue again! I guess that everyone thinks that the cloud will grow. Seems obvious. Count me in!
- Greater focus on holistic management – Oh boy, here comes the fancy jargon. Sweet! In this case, they are talking about general cloud management although they cannot help help but highlight a specific Microsoft management tool.
- Built-in security in cloud offerings – I agree with this one although the title seems to imply that we do not have built-in security today. Clearly, you can never have too much security; we must protect our cat pictures! 🙂
- Prepare your business for hybrid – Wow, so Microsoft is a big fan of hybrid cloud with two bullets focused on it. Could this perhaps be related to the upcoming launch of their hybrid cloud solution, Azure Stack?
Well there you go. I summarized four articles on the future of cloud trends. I am feeling a little snarky today, but, all grumpiness aside, the cloud is something that end users are talking about and is impacting IT. The cloud evolution is here now, and I am excited to see what the future brings.
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