Cloud is changing. Are you?
If you are someone passionate about cloud ecosystem and carefully following news, updates in the last 6-9 months from industry experts and announcements from main cloud providers (AWS, Google, Microsoft), you would realize something "very important".
Realization is, "Cloud" is changing. Changes are happening so fast, even as you read this article, that you cannot afford to miss the boat specially if you are in digital business.
I was spending sometime to see what's changing for the good, better and why. This article brings all those details. Be prepared for a slightly long read :)
Top 6 challenges are as below:
Security
Cloud providers offer various levels of access control rules, encryption, security monitoring services but such measures alone cannot guarantee complete safety against "external threats".
Business cannot completely eliminate risk; they can only manage it. Knowing common risks ahead of time will prepare experts to deal with them.?What are cloud security risks? Unmanaged Attack Surface, Human Error, Misconfiguration and Data Breach.
Architecture customization
As applications become more complicated due to interdependency and data collection from multiple sources, "customization options" become limited. Only some parts of the cloud can be fully customized in terms of design and architecture.
Any new setup in the cloud system, such as a application specific customization, must be checked for potential security vulnerabilities. Also heavy customization may slow down system performance, as the cloud architecture may not have complete control over outside resources and factors.
Rising costs
Requirements are rising for costly, state-of the-art cloud systems. Add to it the "increasing demand" for real-time processing, data monitoring and the rising volume of data being created, transferred and stored in the cloud.
The associated costs for computing, scale, storage space, bandwidth usage, security features, technical support services and other add-ons quickly add up when using cloud services at scale.
Cloud native testing
Testing in a cloud native environment can be challenging, as it involves testing across multiple platforms and services, using a diverse set of tools that can vary greatly across workflows. The distributed nature of cloud native applications means that testing must be performed end-to-end on a larger scale.
To overcome these challenges, organizations are adopting a cloud native testing strategy that incorporates "automation and integration testing" into the development process.
Compatibility
As more businesses move operations deployment to the cloud, compatibility among the various solutions and platforms becomes an increasingly important consideration. Newer solutions such as?SaaS are generally compatible with each other, but "integration with legacy systems" can be difficult.
The financial and time investments for changes to legacy systems can be so burdensome that companies simply opt to continue with their legacy systems managing limitations and even business loss.
Performance Challenges
Performance is an important factor while considering cloud-based solutions. If the performance of the cloud is not satisfactory, it can drive away users and decrease profits.
Efficient "cloud performance is critical" for maintaining business continuity and ensuring all relevant parties gain access to cloud services. This is true usage of public clouds and complex hybrid cloud and multi-cloud architectures. Typically, cloud performance metrics measure input/output operations per second (IOPS), filesystem performance, caching, and autoscaling.
Reference stories
Top 8 trends are as below:
Kubernetes
Kubernetes users are using "significantly more services" that are "cloud-managed" which has been growing significantly for 2 years now. They offer quite high availability, scalability and flexibility. In order to support the continuously growing ecosystem, Kubernetes provides tools, optimizations to the ones that working on cloud models.
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DevOps teams like Kubernetes because it was created with operations in mind. Developers choose it over other PaaS providers because it can easily package programs using its adaptive service discovery and integration capability.
Increased adoption of on-premise platforms
When uncertainty increases, executives often decide to freeze hiring. Digital business demands will, however, continue to mount. While this will likely fuel even faster cloud adoption, it will also cause a "strong uptick" in on-premises infrastructure.
This means as-a-service strong adoption via platforms such as Dell APEX, HPE GreenLake, Hitachi Storage as a Service, NetApp Keystone and Pure's Evergreen One. The past few years have seen increasing adoption of pay-per-use, on-premises payment models, as well as as-a-service options.?
Cloud cost optimization tools become mandatory
Cloud cost optimization tools such as Datadog, Spot by NetApp, Splunk, VMware or Yotascale show large and immediate returns, with average per-month cloud savings of 33%,?as per independent research. These tools are essentially a cheat code for "cost-effective usage" of cloud services.
As budget pressures mount and cloud adoption ramps up, more organizations will explore options to save money and get more out of their cloud budgets.
Increased investment in cloud security and resilience
Migrating to the cloud brings huge opportunities, efficiencies, and convenience but also exposes companies and organizations to a new range of cybersecurity threats. On top of this, the growing "pile of legislation" around how businesses can store and use personal data means that the risk of fines or (even worse) losing the trust of their customers is a real problem.
As many companies look to cut costs in the face of a forecasted economic recession, the emphasis is likely to be on the search for innovative and cost-efficient ways of maintaining cyber security in order to get the most "bang for the buck." This will mean greater use of “security-as-a-service” providers.
Edge computing
Edge computing ensures "greater privacy, speed, security, and efficiency". Now a days edge computing technology empowers various smart devices like smartwatches, smartphones, and smart cars to deliver connected solutions.
Businesses are moving their data and computation to the network’s edge because the conventional computation paradigm doesn’t fully meet network infrastructure security or efficiency.
The AI and ML-powered cloud
Cloud service providers are increasingly relying on AI themselves for a number of tasks. This includes managing the vast, distributed networks needed to provide storage resources to their customers, regulating the power and cooling systems in data centers, and powering cyber security solutions that keep their data safe.
We can expect to see "continued innovation" in this field as hyper scale cloud service providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft continue to apply their own AI technology to create more efficient and cost-effective cloud services for their customers.
Cloud in sports?& gaming
Cloud computing has already entered the world of sports, and its influence heavily impacts organizers, teams, and athletes. Information about an athlete's diet, training activity, sleep, and game performance can be captured using specialized sensors to "enhance their performance". For example, Formula1 gets its insights powered by AWS, bringing fans closer to the racetrack and enhancing their experience.
Cloud is foraying in the gaming industry, allowing the user to stream high-end games on portable devices, such as laptops, tablets, and mobiles, with fast network connectivity. Thus eliminating the need for "regular hardware upgrades" of Console/PC/Laptop.
The Greener side of cloud
Despite the cooling and energy "consumption challenges" when it comes to the cloud, it is increasingly being used as a tool by organizations to meet sustainability objectives and reduce their carbon footprint. The cloud remains the best option for maintaining energy efficiency.
The improvements to energy efficiency are proving that cloud data centers are more sustainable than on-premise data centers. For example,?a study from Microsoft and engineering firm WSP USA?revealed that cloud computing delivers 93 percent energy efficiency and 98 percent lower carbon emission compared to on-premise data centers.
Final words
Hope this article is useful and gave you good insights on how to prepare yourself and your business to innovate and grow with cloud technologies.
Thank you.
Referred material is from below websites
Nasscom, InfoWorld, Medium, AWS, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Forbes etc.
Building Facets.cloud | Platform Engineering
1 年The capability difference between the public cloud and the cloud-live private infrastructure (on-prem) is reducing because of platforms like kubernetes for 90% of use cases