In this decade, the adoption of the cloud will only continue as more companies start to embrace this flexible consumption via multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
The Hybrid Cloud
For many companies, the hybrid-cloud approach is among the interim steps towards a lengthy process involving digital transformation. Owing to a lot of factors, including the reliance on existing legal systems and the need to comply with the different corporate regulations, most organizations have chosen to place their workloads on private and public clouds. According to predictions by Gartner, 90% of all organizations will have adopted this hybrid infrastructure agreement by 2020.
Besides this Hybrid Cloud, companies are increasingly adopting different kinds of multi-cloud solutions that combine cloud services across multiple providers. From a report by Kentik published in 2019, 58% of all organizations are already using combinations of AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud across their networks. This form of multi-cloud approach lets businesses examine and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the different vendors before making long-term commitments.
Nonetheless, there are still lots of companies that still have some reservations when it comes to the use of public clouds. This is one of the key reasons why the hybrid-clouds have gained a lot of popularity over the years. According to a recent report by FileCloud, 50% of organizations don’t have plans in place to move their mission critical workloads to public clouds. Another report by Symantec also states that 50% of all businesses face some form of challenges in terms of offering adequate protection for their workloads. Most also have fears that their security maturity might not be able to keep up with cloud adoption.
Security Questions
The mounting concerns about cloud-security have brought unique opportunities for providers. In many cases, cloud providers will integrate security capabilities and expertise in their products, which are far more effective than any organization would ever hope to achieve on their own. For this reason, security is a key driver for the adoption of the hybrid cloud. The security solutions for cloud-based systems have continued gaining traction for a great number of industries, which is especially true for financial services, government, and other kinds of highly-regulated sectors.
As mentioned earlier, cloud-based solutions in the previous year have also provided a highly popular way for acquiring AI capabilities. More and more organizations are now seeing AI as integral when it comes to their continues innovation and growth. According to a survey by Deloitte, the early adopters of AI consider this form of technology as critical or very important when it comes to the success of their companies. Executives who rated AI to be of critical importance, are expected to or will increase globally in the next 2 years.
From a survey we conducted, up until now, AI benefits have primarily been focused on enhancing products and services, and optimising the internal business operations. Within the next year, enterprises will most likely continue to implement AI in order to help them manage customer interactions, personalise products and services, develop and test products, and even allow a closer involvement of personalised assistants in the daily activities of consumers.
Future Opportunities
Due to the surge of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and the higher portability when it comes to computing power and AI tools, this is the perfect time for edge-computing to experience a drastic growth. Consider the following: Gartner states that organizations generated only 10% of their total data outside data centres or the cloud in 2019. This number will likely reach up to 75% in the coming 6 years. The IDC has also made a prediction that in about 3 years, the generated data will be stored, analysed, processed, and used at the edge of networks. This will likely be driven by IoT systems across industries such as logistics, retail, agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, energy, as well as companies such as acoustic consultants Auricl.