In this IT era, the expectations from cloud computing have evolved. Executives are looking at cloud than just a mere tool to leverage their computing infrastructure. In fact, they are strategizing their business goals by exploring new ways of making the most out of their virtual infrastructure. Cloud computing has evolved from personal storage space to a level where it now facilitates storage and compute requirements to the enterprises.
Amazon Web Service is the first company which introduced the cloud computing services in the form of Elastic Compute Cloud EC2 back in August 2006. The second one was Google with its Google App Engine being launched in 2008. Soon after, when Gartner launched its report on the benefits of this new technology, cloud computing trends building up.
Let’s understand some of these trends which are shaping the cloud computing industry in the present year.
#1. Cloud Security
Examples like WannaCry Ransomware and other major cyber attacks have made it evident that past year witnessed higher number of cyber attacks than ever. Saying that, it wouldn’t be surprising if we see this trend continues to rise high. 2018 is expected to face more such attacks on individual and cloud infrastructure basis.
To prevent such attacks, cyber security needs to go one step further. We are in need of higher security practices and strategies to prevent such attacks in public, private and government sectors specifically. Due to this, more and more enterprises are heavily investing in malware detection and security information and event management systems.
With the release of GDPR, there are some specific challenges that you need to tackle, for example, breaching response and coordination, processing of personal data outside the European Economic Area, data ownership and risk management.
#2. Increasing Usage of Containers
It would not be commendable if we talk about cloud computing without involving containers in 2018. What Docker has become for containers, Kubernetes is becoming for Orchestration. Kubernetes is becoming a default option for software developers to easily manage and migrate their code on different platforms for the containerized applications.
In the past couple of years, there has been an extremely high adoption of Kubernetes across the IT industry along with Docker, Mesosphere DC/OS and Microsoft Azure. This proves our point that Kubernetes, as an open-source container orchestration system, is proving its effectiveness when it comes to automating deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications.
#3. Adoption of Serverless Technology
The major advantage of cloud is the spinning of extra resources and its pay for use consumption model. However, provisioning servers is still time consuming. In such models, the measuring unit is an ‘instance’ or VM. With serverless technology, this measuring unit has even got smaller with ‘functions’.
Functions are basically a small piece of code that runs automatically. Getting started with functions is pretty easy since there are multiple language options and minimum configuration management is required. Not only that, managing and scaling of the resources is managed by the serverless providers. Some of the popular ones are AWS Lambda, Microsoft Azure, OpenFaas, Google Cloud Functions, Apache OpenWhisk, etc.
With the companies like Netflix, Mapbox, Conde Nast and New York Times, multiple serverless use cases have emerged, accelerating the adoption of serverless technology. Saying that, it is bound to be mainstream in the upcoming years. However, for the effective acceleration in its adoption, the serverless vendors have to make sure that they stay relevant to the virtual, elastic and automated cloud-powered world.
#4. Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Strategy
Cloud Vendors are like OS providers. A lot of people get lured in due to great promises and then face locked-in their vendors. And that is the reason multi-cloud strategies are becoming mainstream. In recent report from International Data Corporation, 85% of IT enterprises will invest heavily in the adoption of multi-cloud strategy by 2018.
Multi-cloud strategies will be dominating the upcoming years. No need to stick with a single cloud when you can use multiple ones, each for its own specialities, best services and functionalities. With this, you can save significantly on the infrastructure. However, there is one challenge which you need to take care. Since it requires good amount of expertise with cloud platforms and migration, you will have to take utmost care while re-architecting your systems.
#5. Moving towards Microservices
Cloud architecture is moving from closed, monolithic applications with solely humans UIs into more open services. This also opens doors for APIs for other software applications to interact with them and make use of those capabilities together into whole new solutions. The usage of APIs and microservices based architecture have inspired an explosion of combinatorial innovation.
Due to the API integration, partners and customers can leverage these machine interfaces to business to drive their own digital transformations. This has given a rise to the “API Economy”. The advantages of the cloud-based APIs have changed how core applications are designed and built. Why multi-cloud? Because we know many of the cloud providers aren’t cheap and most of them don’t do what you exactly want.
#6. Cloud as an IoT Facilitator
The world have witnessed a rapid transformation in the way we interact, operate and do businesses. The usage of smart phones and devices isn’t just limited to accessing internet or purchasing items online. It is used now to control the systems and surroundings, for example, IoT.
By 2020, the number of IoT devices in the world will be at least 20 Billion as predicted in the report by Gartner. With the higher number of IoT devices, the role of cloud cloud computing is changing rapidly. Soon a cloud-based personal storage will be required by everyone of us to facilitate the storage facility for the file created by us.
Take Away!
In the upcoming years, the use of cloud will be employed more into providing higher performance and automation to the existing systems. Though it will be more strategic. What trends do you foresee in the upcoming years? Mention in the comment section or connect with me on Twitter @RohitAkiwatkar.
Really good article, looks like you covered all the important cloud developments … Also an interesting topic to look into is how microsoft and amazon now try to combine cloud and AI because one won’t work without the other in the future. Speaking of security, GDPR really had to change the way companies work with the cloud. We had to switch from dropbox in may to vboxxcloud (found that one because it was hosted in europe).