The last 12 months have witnessed a surge in cloud migration on a scale that is as unprecedented as it was unforeseen. This accelerated timeline has been a catalyst to drive new thinking on cloud. In particular, it has sparked a conversation about the adoption of a raft of emerging technologies, designed in the cloud with cloud needs foremost. Armed with next generation cloud-native solutions, enterprises are now ready to take migration to the next level and in so doing engage more fully with the digital transformation of their organisations. It looks like goodbye to reliance on legacy standards, quicker than CIOs were initially planning for, and hallo to a whole new generation of cloud-centric compute and connectivity.
In particular we are seeing:
- Acknowledgement of the role of APIs as a way for consumers of cloud services to interact with the providers of those services. The API also offers an ideal interface between network service providers and their enterprise customers. The API is a key building block of the on-demand, always available, anywhere at any time digital economy of the future.
- The rise of edge compute, a model whereby the cloud resources of the future do not live only in large data centers. A lot of tomorrow’s compute power will need to reside closer to the end user, who might be based hundreds of miles from the nearest data center. The ‘end user’ might just as easily be a thing as a person. In either instance there has to be a way to bring computing as close to where data is being used as possible.
- AI and automation are the future of cloud. The complex web of end points of tomorrow’s multi-cloud ecosystems will not be manageable unless smarter technology is deployed to control and secure them. AI and cloud are a great partnership, complementing each other in many ways, from managing vast datasets to enabling visibility into every corner of an enterprise’s activities.
- DevOps, where software development is harnessed to IT operations, is all about creating applications that are cloud-native and future ready. Containers and Kubernetes-based orchestration offer businesses the scalability and portability they need to be agile and build a competitive edge, enabling self-service provisioning and capacity on-demand with ease.
All these technologies are about reframing the business blueprint and helping enterprises to manage and optimise their cloud solutions. With increasing reliance on cloud infrastructure, it is vital that they are understood and appreciated at the highest level. The true test of 2021 and beyond will be how organizations adopt a cloud-first approach, and who they choose as partners to get them there.
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