Predictions for Cloud Computing 2016

Over the past few years, cloud technology has really integrated itself into every facet of enterprises, in my opinion we’re at the “knee of the S-curve” with larger growth to come still, and for good reason: It enables businesses to leverage existing infrastructure and follow a leasing model of computing power, thus bringing down the total costs of projects significantly.

 Businesses no longer have to set up their own server farms, since cloud computing is readily available, and is cheaper, more powerful, more efficient and more versatile and a standalone server-farm could ever be. In fact, we have seen the evolution of cloud computing from a simple concept to a technology that has redefined everything in the enterprise space.

 Major cloud-concepts have come and taken over the industry over the past few years, and companies are increasingly adopting these concepts since they are much more reliable and effective than traditional in-house solutions.

2015 was the year that cloud-technology took the leap and came into its own, and with new cloud-models on the horizon, we expect 2016 to continue that trend.2016 will be the year that little seeds sown into the field of cloud-computing would finally blossom, and we will see many new concepts maturing into a model that can be adopted by enterprises. 

1. Legacy Application Migration and the shift towards Cloud-hosted and Cloud-native applications 

The next big trend would be the migration of legacy applications towards the cloud. With increasing reliability of cloud-based systems, many enterprises would prefer running all but the most important applications on the cloud rather than on their own data-centers. It will be a two-step process: First would be the migration of existing applications towards the cloud, and second would be the creation of new applications specifically tailored towards the cloud. Most teams would be focused on the first, and a few would be working on truly cloud-native applications but the rate of growth is higher for the second class of applications.

 Cloud computing is cheaper and more reliable, and with increasing compatibility for running legacy apps, businesses would find more incentive to migrate their application stack towards the cloud. But while that has already been happening throughout 2015, cloud adoption is just going to increase through 2016. But the truly interesting field would be the field of cloud native applications, which would be built around the cloud and would actually leverage the advantages that the cloud provides. With native cloud applications, cloud companies too evolve with features that are more suited for running applications.

2. More focus on security

Security will also be a big focus for companies offering cloud-solutions in 2016. With an alarming number of breaches occurring, cloud companies would improve security using new solutions to both ensure data-security, enabling Zero-Trust use cases, and also to improve the reputation of the cloud itself. Many enterprises are hesitant to store all their data on the cloud, which is why cloud-companies would be chasing new security methodologies to ensure that the data of these companies is kept safe, and in the process encourage more companies to migrate towards the cloud. 

3. Adoption of Developer Driven multiple-cloud solutions.

One major thing that we will definitely see in 2016 is the increasing adoption of the hybrid-cloud, which is basically the usage of multiple cloud-networks and services to get the benefits of the cloud while keeping the data safe. Primarily this is driven by developers, as they are demanding access to infrastructure that can host applications quickly, is stable, and reliable for usage inside and outside the company firewall. There is a significant movement of "Developer Driven Infrastructure" afoot and hybrid solutions will be able to best serve the needs for such use cases. For example, businesses could have servers on premises, private clouds and public clouds (from cloud companies), and in that way avail all the benefits of the cloud while keeping important data safe. Hybrid clouds would be set up such that data-migration between the networks is easy, while also keeping security of the whole set-up in mind. With businesses finding many benefits from each cloud-option, a hybrid cloud solution may be the best of all.

 4. Adoption of Cloud Container Platforms

Now we talked about getting applications running in the cloud earlier in this paper, and with lots of these applications running together, cloud container platforms will become more popular. Cloud container platforms are basically just that: A normalized container (mostly Linux) that offer the minimum OS services needed to run an application, and related platforms to manage and run these applications, which becomes a complex task after more than a few applications come into the fold. Due to this complexity there will be a larger adoption of Container Platforms within 2016.

 5. Adoption of Cloud-Storage Solutions

Even if companies don't use the cloud to run their applications, they will use a utility that is basic to it, cloud storage, which will still become much more popular. This is because cloud-storage both is less expensive than traditional solutions, and also because data in the cloud is guarded against ransomware, malware and other malicious attacks. Local setups may have vulnerabilities, and while not all cloud-services are secure enough for critical data, storing data in the cloud is still the better option than storing data yourself for non critical dataloads.

 6.Emergence of the Cloud in the Telecom Industry 

One of the first major cloud trends of 2016 would perhaps be the migration of the telecom systems towards the cloud, simply because its easily scalable and is much more cost-effective. Cloud-computing is finally reliable enough to support communication systems, and with the decreased costs, increased efficiency and improved ease-of-use that comes with cloud systems, enterprises will leave behind inefficient and expensive in-house telecom infrastructure for deploying similar systems in the cloud, leveraging hosted PBX. Especially when such technologies can leverage Software Defined Networking such as NSX from VMware.

In fact, by and large the enterprise telecom space will be redefined by cloud-computing, since traditional providers would switch towards providing large-scale virtualized solutions towards companies, to make deploying such communication networks much more cost-effective. Then there would be the next tier of companies emerging in the horizon, leveraging the shift of telecom towards the cloud. These companies would offer services over the cloud-telecom infrastructure, and would mainly oversee the smooth functioning of these systems. With the help of these companies, enterprises could make these solutions even better, voice-testing, billing solutions, etc.

Summary

That's about it for major cloud-computing trends in 2016. A quick recap: Telecom companies would provide cloud-based solutions; enterprises would work on porting over legacy applications to the cloud, while also creating cloud-native applications. Adoption of cloud-storage solutions will also increase, and in the face of security breaches, there will be more focus on security. Companies will emerge that will leverage this increasing focus on the cloud to offer new services on top of it. Basically, technologies that have been in development over the past few years will finally get their big break in 2016, and the trends we have seen in 2015 will pick up pace in 2016. Overall, the future of cloud computing looks quite great and poised for significant growth in 2016.