A 2016 predictions article already? We are only in July! But, you know as well as us, technology never sleeps, and in a rapid growth sector such as the cloud, we have to have our eyes on the next big advancement in technology – if only so we can pass the benefits directly onto you. So, with midsummers day looming large, let’s a take a quick look at some of the top cloud trends we’ve seen in 2015, and what might be in store for 2016.
2015 Trends
2015 was heralded as a big year for cloud computing services. The wider public were slowly waking up to the potential cost and time savings, whilst enterprises who had sampled the cloud would be migrating their entire it departments to a cloud service. Other cloud experts predicted more flexible “tiered” cloud payment systems for businesses and home users relating to their requirements and usage.
For the most part, these have all rung true. Rapid advances in cloud security and increasing confidence in those systems have indeed seen many organisations migrate to cloud services. Services like Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine, and Amazon Web Service give users confidence in their operations such is the ease of transition and accessibility of the service.
Nagging doubts toward the suitability of cloud services have similarly been erased by ongoing network upgrades across the UK, and further afield. As connectivity increases, and as with this year, expect to see more services create private business clouds for employees and clients alike. This migration will be helped by advanced in container technology for the cloud: the ability to contain part of an application, isolate it within its own cloud to work upon whilst not disrupting other operations.
The cloud computing industry was expected to grow to over $150bn by the end of 2015, up from around $46bn in 2008. But that isn’t the only impressive industry statistic. Global Software-as-a-Service sales are forecast to reach $106bn by 2016 – a 21% increase on the 2015 forecast, significantly driven by enterprise process cloud applications.
It is a growing industry, exceeding expectations, and Atlantec can help you join-in.
2016 Trends
With all this expected growth, you might consider the lay of the land in 2016. For one, the technology giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Oracle, IBM, and SAP are not going anywhere. Their innovation will remain central to the ongoing success of the cloud, though numerous smaller vendors will continue to appear – and this will contribute to rogue cloud operations. This new challenge will be central concern with big business and governments allocating significant resources toward building extremely agile threat responses to keep pace with a morphing landscape.
Cloud Applications
2016 will bring more applications to the cloud than ever before. Numerous businesses and organisations already spend a proportion of their IT budget on cloud applications. Expect to see this figure rise as applications are built specifically for the cloud, with desktop applications coming second.
Adding to this, we will simply see more developers focus their talents on cloud based services. Evans Data Corporation estimates there are more than 18 million software developers around the globe – but only 25% are developing for the cloud. 2016 will certainly see this number increase as more software developers accept that business revenue streams are switching to cloud services. Third party, commercial, enterprise, and contributor software will all begin to surface, attempting to take a slice of the market.
Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud solutions have made great gains throughout 2014 and the early parts of 2015, and we would expect that growth to continue in earnest throughout 2016, too. The mixture of on-and-off premises cloud facilities offers the best of both worlds to enterprises demanding growth, whilst reducing the complexity of making a pure-cloud switch to begin with. It will be more of an overlapping hybrid cloud combination, allowing complex cloud delivers in the simplest of deliveries.
Dominating Platform
The cloud will dominate all IT talk throughout 2016 as it emerges over 40% of enterprises have migrated at least half of their workload to the cloud, with educational facilities running closely behind. A fundamental rethink toward our relationship with data and the cloud will be underway, gaining speed in a consistent rollout of technologies.
The increased competition in the cloud will force providers to innovate, to provide better services, and to be cost-effective for SMEs as well as bigger business. Slightly against common marketing nomenclature, the cloud needs constant innovation to maintain its pace of growth. Businesses that attempt to replicate competitors will fail as their ill-grasp of the technology becomes apparent.
However, this drive won’t be led by the cloud companies themselves – it will be entirely enterprises, organisations, businesses, and governments curating both the growth and industry conversation needed to capitalise on the infrastructure expansion. The real value in the cloud lies with applications running in the ultra-cheap cloud, and extracting value from this will become the real task at hand.
XaaS
Image Source: http://blog.monitor.us/2015/02/everything-as-a-service-and-how-it-will-change-the-way-you-do-business/
This obliquely lettered acronym does indeed stand for something significant: Everything-as-a-Service. A rapidly expanding audience, a knowledgeable public, advances in networking and connectivity, and advanced cloud encryption will prove the breeding ground for other, rapidly maturing cloud service models. Everything from security, to database management, to CRM maintenance, even graphic-modelling software will be hosted in the cloud and delivered to you at a fraction of a full-license cost.
Companies will find themselves in a world of choice – and providers and vendors will have to respond accordingly.
Where Will Your Business Be?
As the cloud continues to expand throughout 2016, Atlantec will continue providing our service. Whatever developments do or do not occur throughout the year, we will still be here to help your transition to a more efficient mode of business, and as a Microsoft Partner, know we are committed to delivering the best solution each and every time.
