Let’s look into the future
Wandering around town the other day I stopped in a psychic’s storefront. I had time to kill, so it seemed like something useful to do. I asked the Psychic “what does the future hold for cloud computing?” She frowned and told me to leave.
It didn’t matter that she invited me to leave, in fact, it didn’t even bother me at first. But as I thought about it I came up with two reasons for her dismissal. The first was that, well that, she was a fake. The second and the one I am still thinking about is that the future of cloud remains, well cloudy.
Analysts predict what tomorrow brings, but if we go back and evaluate the picks compared to reality, it isn’t often close. Instead, the more reliable predictive mechanism is to predict trends. Some trends are exploding around cloud computing right now. The big one is Artificial Intelligence or AI. This is manifested in some ways depending on the cloud provider in question. Another huge trend right now is the application of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in the Cloud space.
I think it is important at this point to lay out the parameters of what will be trends in the cloud. At least what is the trends I predict will have an impact. There are many other emerging trends in what will be, but they remain in the emerging category and won’t be covered in this look at tomorrow’s cloud.
My top Cloud trends for the next 24 months
1. The reality of serverless computing (which is a misnomer, but it is more the concept of a non-defined entity on a server, unlike the traditional VM of today) will continue to be a trend.
2. The concept of asset priority will begin to be more relevant. Asset priority has many different names but is most often called Design for Failure. In the case of Asset Priority, we look to a specific component of functionality that is critical for the organization or business. That asset is prioritized at a higher level than anything else during operations. What we have to be aware of is the change in design this creates. The relevance of adding bursting cloud assets is diminished if we have a high Priority Asset that cannot be sped up. It allows the organization to begin using a holistic view of their applications.
3. Mobile devices are the client for cloud computing and have taken that place over the past five years. The reality of future cloud trend here is the integration across various solution sets. The trend will be the move towards intelligent screen use. That is a long winded way to say know what device I am on, and present information I can easily consume on that device. Don’t make me struggle to see the information.
4. Agile gave way to devops and now? Personally, I think the growth of GovOps or the merging of Governance Policies and Operations systems will continue to expand.
5. AI, Artificial Intelligence continues to expand. All the major cloud players have dabbled in the space, each of them proclaiming victory. It feels like for me that solution lies over the horizon still but will be more and more relevant over the next 24 months.
One of the problems with predictions is of course that you write them down and share them. Once they are shared, they are remembered. That said, these are the five trends that I think will be the ground floor for cloud computing going forward. The last trend I see is the more fun to consider which of the major cloud players will be on top in the next 24 months. I think you will see each of them with an offering in the trends I’ve listed, with a different leader in three of the five areas. That will create an interesting partnering atmosphere as we head into the new cloud era.
By Scott Andersen
