Who would have thought the sudden outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic and the resultant lockdown will take the world by storm and disrupt our daily lives? None of us could foresee that Work from Home (WFH) would become the new mandate. We couldn’t predict that technology will emerge as the biggest enabler by not only simplifying our personal but also professional lives. Enterprises have hopped-on to the digital transformation bandwagon to ensure business continuity.

Across industries, this pandemic has made enterprises realize the shortcomings of the on-premise infrastructure. As a result, cloud has taken the center stage. According to IDC, 64% of India’s organizations are expected to increase demand for cloud computing, and 56% for cloud software to support the new normal.

As per a recent report by Deloitte, cloud computing will be a highly relevant technology in the “next normal. Further, the findings show that alongside cybersecurity, cloud computing will be an essential technology for businesses to continue to thrive in a post-COVID world.

So, below mentioned are the emerging trends in cloud technology that will shape the next normal.

Hybrid cloud will gain significance – Hybrid cloud offers greater flexibility to organizations as it combines the advantages of private and public clouds. It offers the best of both worlds. Hybrid cloud enables organizations to enjoy enhanced scalability, speed, and agility of the public cloud while maintaining strict security and privacy guidelines offered by private cloud. In the near future, more organizations will adopt a hybrid cloud approach as they’ll have no other option but to optimize their cloud infrastructure to maximize returns.

————————————————————————————————————–

Also Read: Why Enterprises need a Cloud Management Platform?
—————————————————————————————————————

Acceleration for Containers – With enterprises frantically moving their monolithic architecture to microservices, containers will continue to gain prominence. Container platforms have become an essential factor in the cloud landscape, accelerating cloud adoption in enterprises. Gartner predicts that by 2024, worldwide container management revenue will reach $944 million. Containers and microservices allow enterprises to speed up implementations, choose platforms based on specific applications and optimize environments for success. Hence, it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that containers are here to stay. They offer a host of benefits for organizations seeking speed, choice and flexibility. As the next normal approaches, enterprises will accelerate building their digital IT ecosystem for adoption of cloud and other emerging technologies.

Distributed Cloud Computing will be widely accepted – Distributed Cloud Computing has already made it to Gartner’s top ten strategic technology trends of 2020. The businesses of future will need distributed cloud infrastructure, applications, and databases to address modern workflows and their requirements. Since distributed cloud has geographically dispersed infrastructure that primarily runs services at the network edge, it allows organizations to reduce latency, network congestion, and risk of data loss. In addition, organizations can better ensure compliance with data sovereignty regulations since data can be kept in the country it was generated in. Industry experts predict that by the year 2023, the leading cloud service providers will have a distributed ATM-like presence to serve a subset of their services for low-latency application requirements. Many cloud service providers are already investing in ways to make their services available closer to the users that need to access them.

Cost optimization will drive cloud adoption – As per Gartner, by the year 2024 nearly all legacy applications that are migrated to public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will require optimization to become more cost-effective. Cloud providers will continue to strengthen their native optimization capabilities to help organizations select the most cost-effective architecture that can deliver the required performance. The market for third-party cost optimization tools will also expand, particularly in multi-cloud environments. Their value will concentrate on higher-quality analytics that can maximize savings without compromising performance, provide independence from cloud providers and offer multi-cloud management consistency. Recognizing the need for optimization, and developing skills, processes, and tools to analyze operational data to figure out cost optimization probabilities would be an integral part of cloud migration projects. In the coming years, apart from optimization opportunities offered by cloud services providers, enterprises would rely heavily on third-party solutions to augment their cloud infrastructure and maximize savings.