As we are at the end of 2017, business and IT executives are turning more of their attention to how they can use cloud computing to accomplish their 2018 business objectives. We’ve compiled a list of five trends in cloud computing that strategic businesses will prepare for in the coming year.
Cloud Security
As 2017 has come to an end, it witnessed the year of more cyber attacks than any other in history. Attacks such as the CIA Vault 7 hack, WannaCry ransomware, and the Equifax data breach are an example that IT industry will face more cyber attacks in future. It is expected that 2018 will see more individual and sponsored cyber attacks on cloud infrastructures.
As cyber attackers become more sophisticated, security analysts in public, private and government sectors will also have to become more sophisticated in their strategies and preventing attacks. Organizations have to invest in tools like security information and event management (SIEM) and malware detection systems for cyber security. Cloud services can play a role here as well, with managed security service providers offering robust services to businesses that could not otherwise implement full security measures.
Multi Cloud Strategy
Multi-cloud strategy in which organizations can deploy different workloads on different clouds and manage separately will become the dominant mode in 2018. In fact, the International Data Corporation predicted in a futurescape report last year that more than 85% of enterprise IT corporations will invest in and adopt multi-cloud architecture by 2018.
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Enterprises don’t want to be locked in by sticking to a single cloud provider. Enterprises can reduce significant cost of their infrastructure by adopting multi cloud strategy which saves millions of dollars a year. In a multi cloud environment, organizations can get benefits of different clouds’ best services and functionality.
Despite the increasing number of organizations who are adopting multi cloud strategy, one challenge is that many don’t understand how to truly architect (or refactor) for resiliency. Many Cloud architects struggle when it comes to designing a multi cloud architecture in this type of endeavor because it requires expertise with more than cloud providers and migration process.
Container Orchestration with Kubernetes
It would be inappropriate to talk about the cloud in 2018 without talking about Kubernetes. Like Docker for containers, Kubernetes has become the de facto cloud orchestrator. Use of Kubernetes enables developers to manage and easily migrate software code.
The recent adoption of Kubernetes across the industry – including Docker, Microsoft Azure, and Mesosphere DC/OS — shows that the open-source container orchestration system has proven its effectiveness in providing simpler cloud deployment, better scaling and more efficient management.
Cloud Monitoring-as-a-Service
Another trend that’s resulting from growing use of hybrid cloud solutions, is that more organizations are turning to Cloud Monitoring as a Service (CMaaS) to monitor performance across the multiple suppliers that will now be interdependent to an organization’s IT service delivery. It is essential that these services are independent of the providers themselves. It can also be used to monitor in-house environments and hosted and private cloud services by deploying or installing gateways into the monitored environment.
Cloud Cost Containment
Recently, AWS has announced per second billing for EC2 instances. Similarly, it is expected that some updates will be announced in pricing plans from other cloud providers for specific services.
Generally, calculating cloud cost of single cloud providers is simple but it’s not the same case with multi cloud. Calculating total cloud cost in multi cloud environment is difficult because cloud providers have different pricing plans. Also, AWS, Microsoft, and Google are making it more difficult by offering various cloud service pricing and consumption plans.
Some enterprises hire a executives just to help choose and negotiate cloud contracts. They monitor consumption of cloud services and optimize it which saves thousands of dollars a year. Also, there are cost management tools available like Cloudability, Cloud Cruiser and Cloudyn which monitor cloud consumption and provide cost analysis.
Serverless Architectures
The main advantages of the cloud are ease of use for spinning up extra resources and its pay per use consumption model. In this model, an instance or VM is the unit for additional compute resource. Now a “function” has become an even smaller unit of “use.” As Serverless computing works differently than traditional computing servers, it requires basic skills set to start with. This small guide on serverless architecture has covered all the aspects for the same.
Putting the onus of managing and scaling up resources on demand on the cloud provider is cost-efficient and takes the heavy lifting off of IT. With a limitless supply of virtual machines, no upfront cost and a little bit of effort, developers were able to fire up servers with their choice of operating system and they’re off running.
As of now, serverless computing is available in the public cloud. Next year we will see serverless computing start to appear in private cloud deployments as well. Though it won’t become mainstream but wider adoption will happen in the following years. For the effective use of Serverless computing, server and hardware vendors need to transform their business models to maintain relevance in the new virtual, elastic and automated cloud-powered world.
Cloud as a Facilitator for IoT
The world has undergone a rapid transformation in the last few years as far as communication and business transactions are concerned. Today, people largely use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to access the internet, inquire about businesses, purchase items, and much more. That’s when IoT came into play, rising above the use of mobile devices to accomplish more tasks.
Gartner Research predicts the number of IoT devices in the world to be at least 20 billion by 2020. You know what that means? With an increased number of IoT-powered devices, you should expect the cloud to have a much more significant role. Soon, you will need a cloud-based personal storage drive to save various files created across all your personal mobile devices, including documents, images, and videos. These and several other needs would result in the cloud driving IoT in innovative ways, and you should expect to see lots of it in action in 2018.
Conclusion
In 2018, use of cloud will become more strategic with the help of new technologies and strategies. It is expected that adoption of above services and technologies will increase because they provide higher performance and automation.
What trends do you see in cloud computing for 2018? Let us know in comments.
