The rise of the cloud over the past few years has transformed business technology. From managing tech infrastructure to application development and management to remote work and beyond, cloud computing has become integrated into many business operations.
As the cloud continues to grow, it will also continue to shape the world of business tech in new and exciting ways. That’s why we asked a panel of Forbes Technology Council members what they see on the horizon for cloud computing. Their top cloud trend predictions are below.
1. Moving From The Cloud To The Edge
Cloud processing will continue to grow but will predominantly be for large-scale data analytics and processing. Machine learning and artificial intelligence will all happen in the cloud, but more localized processing will also slowly move to the edge. With 5G, there will be much faster processing for Internet of Things devices at the “edge”—where the user is—and periodic syncing back to the cloud for more detailed processing. – Jason Lau, Crypto.com
2. The Rise Of The Human Cloud
Tech departments around the world are struggling with the talent gap. However, not all of them know that the same effectiveness that the cloud offers them in the tech area can also be used to secure talent. The human cloud is an emerging trend in the business-to-business sector, with 22% year-over-year growth according to SIA. It provides on-demand access to an extensive, well-measured and flexible talent pool. – Przemek Berendt, Talent Alpha
3. A Move Toward Application Mobility
While the cloud continues to grow for enterprise customers, I see a major trend towards application mobility. Organizations are looking to break free from siloed dependencies on a particular cloud and for the ability to move applications on-demand between public and private clouds and to edge compute locations. This will drive cloud trends. We see it already as public cloud companies push the cloud to the edge. – Ed Fox, MetTel
4. The Rise Of Enterprise AI
Enterprises are maturing from consumer-facing AI applications into a comprehensive, organizationwide, 360-degree AI strategy. This will increase the demand for cloud, hybrid and on-premise systems to have scalable distributed and secure enterprise AI technologies. Emerging distributed AI standards such as Dask and others will play a significant role. – Brian Sathianathan, Iterate.ai
5. Vendor Consolidation
Within the next year, I believe we will see companies looking to reduce the number of disparate solutions they have and focusing on vendors that meet multiple needs and reduce the need for tool sprawl. – Terence Jackson, Thycotic
6. Security-First Thinking
Cloud adoption will be supercharged by security-first thinking. An integrated, cross-platform segmentation strategy will enable secure cloud migrations and avoid the legacy challenges of data sprawl, complexity and siloed solutions. Agile segmentation of assets, functions and apps will prevent opening up new areas of risk that didn’t exist before moving to the cloud’s expanded attack surface. – Philip Quade, Fortinet
7. Moving Analytic Data To The Cloud
More and more companies are moving their analytic data ecosystems to the cloud to enable more users to access more data faster and more reliably. The key advantage is the ability to load and query the same data set concurrently due to the separation of storage and compute, leading to faster time to market for customized customer solutions. – Linda Apsley, capitalone.com
8. Communications Platforms As-A-Service
While many IT applications have done a “lift and shift” to cloud, many telephony applications, such as call centers, remain deployed using on-premises equipment. With new Communications Platforms as-a-Service (CPaaS) offerings, such as those from Twilio, Nexmo and SignalWire, IT departments are now modernizing their “old school” telephony applications and migrating them to cloud as well. – Steve Pao, Hillwork, LLC
9. Blockchain, AI And The Cloud Joining Forces
Blockchain, AI and the cloud have a positive and symbiotic relationship. Their potential to join forces takes a multifaceted approach to next-generation cloud infrastructure and produces unlimited opportunities. Although it is being researched and applied at a small scale, this relationship will continue to grow, creating networks with immense opportunities and resources for efficiency. – Alexandro Pando, Xyrupt Technologies
10. Workstations As-A-Service
Traditionally, every employee is given a dedicated computer that they have 100% control of, but many only use its full capacity for a portion of the workday. With the entire computing power of your organization available to any one employee for short amounts of time, individuals could run complex tasks like code compilation and AI training throughout the day and receive near-instant results. – Luke Wallace, Bottle Rocket
11. Serverless Computing
In 2019, “serverless” evolved from a novelty to a ubiquitous approach. Next up: getting your business functions from an app store or marketplace for serverless computing. This is a totally new way of doing IT that focuses the IT part into the business part—not just the crossfunctional teams that we had in the past. – Robert Weissgraeber, AX Semantics
12. Data Fabrics
Cloud computing is one of the most important innovations in tech. It’s solved some huge problems, but it’s also created some—namely, a proliferation of data and an expectation for programs to work anywhere, anytime. Data fabrics take the next step in collaborative computing, breaking down data silos and making data integration projects a thing of the past. – Dan Demers, Cinchy
13. Connected Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality Through 5G And The Cloud
The advent of 5G brings with it the promise of low latency, high bandwidth and breakneck speeds. As a result, cloud-connected AR and VR implementations stand to increase dramatically. AR/VR requires processing power and bandwidth that pre-5G networks don’t handle as well. With 5G, organizations can now focus on building high-performing, cloud-connected AR/VR solutions. – Maurice White, Samsung
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