David Linthicum of InfoWorld suggested that it’s about time we stop emphasising on the term “cloud computing” and simply say “computing” since the technology is now mainstream. In 2015, we observe that cloud infrastructure became scalable and best for running applications composed of micro services equipped with APIs.
Such services are likely to run in containers thus provide developers extra control than ever in creating, testing and organising applications. Containers in-turn support devops that leverage instrumentation, automation and monitoring taking new applications in production.
Cloud computing today shares such resources like never before however pose certain risks that demands improved security. Chief Executive of Facebook; Mark Zuckerberg predicted that the pace at which technology is advancing, it won’t be long before man would access the internet simply by talking out their mind and orbital laser technology would make it possible.
It seems that 2016 is going to be filled with amazing technology especially with cloud that’ll serve as a foundation for smarter future. Virtual reality, artificial intelligence and driverless smart cars are a few of many innovative trends powered by cloud and would make-way for versatile/multi-functional computing.
No doubt 2015 is the year when cloud became the ultimate go-to platform for business applications and data but there’s still a need for more maturing. Check out below what we expect from cloud computing in 2016.
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Hybrid cloud: The infrastructure foundation of next generation
Hybrid clouds saw evolved tremendously in the business world this year and is likely to become conventional in 2016 among the enterprise infrastructure. Ed Anderson of Gartner says; “The multi-cloud environment is to become the basis of future applications”.
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Security will remain a primary concern
Businesses that entered the cloud computing universe earlier lack advance security features for applications they moved to the cloud initially. As usage continues to grow at a rapid pace and business entities are taking cloud security to the next level, they also realise the benefits of doing so would eventually improve a wider range of applications. This includes applications that create, streamline and access sensitive data. Always remember that where sensitive data exists, increased security is a must have.
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Cloud-native applications to rule them all
With the success of the first wave of cloud computing, IT players are on the cusp of pushing the technology further. Initially, the focus of cloud was just to meet the IT needs from computer infrastructure perspective however it has now shifted to application-based. Cloud service providers are now focused to cater next generation applications that would feature things such as Omni-channel support, time-based analytics and micro-service support.
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Barriers to enter the cloud are lifted
Business organisations that were unable to exploit full benefits of the cloud because of complicated laws and strict regulations will enjoy freedom in coming years entry barriers are but lifted. State government are imposing new laws that also include cloud friendly features whereas service providers are ultimately offering improved services that meet these regulations.
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Containers will be typical
The growing significance of containers in the next generation of loud application is worth a discussion. Containers have and continue to emerge as a critical technology that enables agile development and pave way for micro-service infrastructure. This micro-service is a term that binds a series of cloud applications together and to do this, the demand for container platform and maintenance of applications would eventually surge.
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Data migration to cloud
An independent research suggested that cloud storage market in the US will grow from nearly $19 billion in 2015 to $65 billion approximately by 2020. Considering the profits and prevalence, cloud storage is likely to be worth bargaining for especially with business entities that also account for improved security.
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Hyper-converged cloud platforms in-line with speed growth
The next generation of cloud architecture will have its roots built on a hyper-converged platform and the trend is likely to push in 2016. Because there’s a large demand for cloud services and growing every day, hosting service providers have their eyes set on hyper-converged platforms to boost scalability and reduce maintenance expense. Hyper-convergence spending will approximately double from $808 million to around $2 billion by 2016.
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Developers to tap machine learning
Key players of cloud offers analytics as a service and also caters to machine learning APIs in the cloud with open source machine learning tools abound. The universal machine learning capability enables developers to come up with such apps that recognise patters in a data pool for face recognition, medical diagnoses, fraud detection, web ad-serving, infrastructure optimisation and much more that customers demand. Even Microsoft Office 365 cloud services are likely to get a haul with additional business benefits.
Conclusion
Only time would tell what the state of cloud would look like in 2016 but looking at the above trends pretty must suggest that something phenomenal is waiting to dive down. All we can do is wait!
