Over the past 10 years, cloud computing has built up a strong legacy. In fact, cloud solutions have allowed global businesses to remain open while preventing global pandemics such as the Covid-19 outbreak from spreading. Now that we’ve come full circle and can’t imagine living without cloud technology — especially in the context of computing — let’s take a look at some of the trends which will affect cloud adoption moving forward.
1. Hybrid Cloud
A significant advancement in the cloud industry is the hybrid cloud. In a nutshell, this entails integrating services supplied by several cloud platforms. For example, a company might have its own data center while using another provider’s public cloud infrastructure concurrently.
Businesses may use hybrid clouds to combine their own strengths with the agility and flexibility of external suppliers. While many businesses will likely start down this path to take advantage of complementary services offered by multiple providers, it’s reasonable to expect that most businesses will eventually consolidate their services. This consolidation can be with one or two major providers as standards are developed and containers become mature enough for widespread use.
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2. Serverless Architecture
You don’t have to manage separate servers and their resources, as the phrase “serverless architecture” implies. You are also freed from more difficult duties like scaling up and down your apps during busy hours.
Serverless design simplifies the deployment process by allowing functions to be provided via simple uploads. These functions can then be called using a single HTTP request. Serverless guarantees that these functions are run as soon as they are triggered and for as long as they are required to fulfill their duties.
Some key benefits of serverless architecture include fast development, greater cost-effectiveness, improved scalability, fault tolerance, and high availability.
In this approach, all server management responsibilities like capacity planning, hardware provisioning, or software patching are handled by cloud providers and other third-party vendors who will work together towards building out efficient platforms for application development and operations.
3. Incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI)
While artificial intelligence is one of the largest breakthroughs in technology and has been a significant driver of cloud adoption, it is essentially simply a marketing jargon. Software-based algorithms are not genuinely “intelligent” in the sense that they have self-awareness, free will, or consciousness. Nonetheless, because of their capacity to use vast data sets, they may learn from data and possibly make better judgments than people.
AI may be extremely useful for generating predictions and drawing conclusions from massive amounts of data. Machine learning algorithms, for example, might monitor social media postings about your firm to find sentiment trends and determine if you are trending positively or adversely among your target market groups.
AI also offers automation benefits for common tasks like image processing (e.g., identifying objects in photos), document translation (e.g., translating PDFs from Spanish to English), and voice transcription (e.g., converting voice recordings into text). Another exciting trend is using AI for cybersecurity applications, which includes automatically blocking hackers through advanced anomaly detection techniques that spot sophisticated threats at scale.
4. Edge Computing
The next big thing is edge computing. It is a distributed IT design that places data and processing power as near to users and servers as feasible, allowing for faster response times, lower latency, and less network traffic. Edge computing allows key programs to function even when they are removed from a network, makes better use of bandwidth, and lowers dependency on expensive private or public cloud infrastructure.
With edge computing, data can be processed at the edge of a network in small data centers or directly on the device itself rather than in the cloud. This means organizations can immediately process data without sending it back and forth from remote locations. For example, an autonomous vehicle doesn’t need to send its sensor data all the way back to a central location for processing; instead, it can be analyzed in real-time locally at the edge.
Benefits of edge computing include:
- Faster response time
- Local processing that cuts bandwidth costs
- Reliability (edge devices will continue working if connectivity is lost)
5. Multi-Cloud Solutions
Many companies are using multiple cloud providers. According to research from RightScale, over 75 percent of companies are using more than one cloud provider (up from 66 percent in 2016). With so many organizations adopting a multi-cloud strategy, it’s important that you identify which approach is the right approach for your business.
For most businesses, multi-cloud is the way to go. A multi-cloud strategy provides flexibility and optimization while also reducing vendor lock-in risk. However, there’s no cookie-cutter solution—multi-cloud strategies must be customized based on your organization’s specific needs. The first step to creating a successful strategy is understanding the benefits of each type of provider (e.g., public cloud vs. private cloud).
In addition to being flexible and optimized, a multi-cloud solution can also be more secure because it limits the risks of over-reliance on any one vendor. It’s important to have an experienced IT team that can advise you on how best to customize your strategy and ensure that it aligns with your company’s goals.
6. Cloud Security
Cloud security is a top priority for organizations adopting the cloud at any level. Security in the cloud requires a balance between risk and rewards – with proper cyber-hygiene and automation, enterprises can minimize risks and reap the rewards of moving to the cloud.
Security is a shared responsibility between the end-user and their cloud provider. The provider ensures secure data centers, secure network architecture, physical security, and logical security, while users are responsible for securing their virtual machines and applications running on their VMs. This model has enabled wide-scale adoption of cloud services. As people become more comfortable with operating in this model, they will rely less on legacy systems to manage data center operations. In other words: they will embrace DevOps as an accepted practice across all operations teams.
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7. Backup & Disaster Recovery
Backup and disaster recovery (BDR). Most cloud providers will also allow you to restore data, but it’s important that you verify the backup and disaster recovery policy of your cloud provider because it can vary greatly. You may decide to leverage the cloud for your backup strategy or use a secondary cloud-based location to store backups in case of an outage.
Solutions such as IBM Resiliency Orchestration and Zerto Virtual Replication allow organizations to back up their data in more than one place, which is essential for business continuity. Their functionality includes both single-point backup and replicated storage, so if a crash occurs on your primary server, you have reliable redundancy options.
Test. It is equally important that you test your disaster recovery plan before there is ever an emergency situation. This will help ensure that you can continue operating without interruption if a catastrophe occurs at your organization or with your provider’s infrastructure (as was the case with Amazon Web Services when a lightning strike took down a service center in Dublin last year).
The best way to do this is by simulating situations that could cripple operations while closely monitoring how systems perform under duress. In addition to testing DR systems, organizations should also test their business continuity plans regularly because they share common goals. These goals can include facilitating the rapid restoration of service and preventing crises from impacting customers and stakeholders negatively.
8. DevSecOps
DevSecOps is an integration of security practices into the DevOps process. This can include integrating application security, network security, infrastructure security, and operations security into DevOps toolchains.
For example, Quality Assurance is a key aspect of the software development lifecycle and traditionally has been carried out by testing teams at different stages in the SDLC. However, with Agile methodologies coming to the forefront combining development and testing practices has increased efficiency for teams.
Similarly, with DevSecOps, we will see greater adoption of automated tools for carrying out different aspects of Security Quality Assurance during the DevOps stage.
9. The Kubernetes Revolution
Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It was originally designed by Google and is now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
Developers use Kubernetes to build, change, and run modern applications in a microservices architecture. It allows them to manage aggregated containers as one single system to support their application infrastructure with greater speed and efficiency on the cloud.
10. Implementing FaaS
FaaS is a cloud deployment model that delivers applications as on-demand services. It makes software development more accessible by allowing developers to focus more on the code and less on the underlying infrastructure. With FaaS, you don’t have to worry about capacity planning, scaling up or down your servers, monitoring the environment, or maintaining your hardware stack because all of these tasks are handled by the cloud provider.
You may use FaaS to boost agility and concentration while also saving money. For example, if your application requires a new function, you can deploy it in a matter of minutes using FaaS. However, installing a full application using Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) may take weeks or even months. This increase in speed allows you to focus on your main company rather than managing an IT crew that handles these types of duties for you.
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These are the trends that will affect what companies do in the future
There are many trends that will affect the adoption of cloud computing. Some of these trends make it easier to use the cloud and others make it easier for people to create new applications or deploy applications on the cloud. Some of these trends also help increase confidence in the security of cloud computing or make it easier to store data on the cloud.
Conclusion to 10 Future Trends That Will Affect Cloud Adoption
Cloud computing has made it possible for millions of people to switch from office work to remote work and for global supply chains to remain on track. Experts predict that this technology will only become more prominent in the coming years as enterprises seek higher scalability and cost-effectiveness.
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