Blog

Home / Blog

Predictions for Cloud Computing in 2021

William Tsu
Data Analyst
Experienced data analyst working with data visualization, cloud computing and ETL solutions.
January 22, 2021


Cloud Computing

The public cloud vendors do tend to assert & cement their dominance as all enterprises work by generating hybrid clouds, open-partner ecosystems, PaaS, and augmented realities. In this latest technological era, cloud computing gained response and became the centre-piece of the world's technical response to the COVID-19 crisis. With "work-at-home" becoming a norm, all principal cloud providers substantially grew their revenues by delivering innovations at a strikingly blistering pace much like a blitzkrieg!

Cloud computing needs to keep evolving at this magnificent pace to keep up with data generated during this Corona-Virus pandemic period. Clouds keep expanding and smarter innovations do help with more data accommodation & storage. It is no surprise that cloud computing becomes central to the post-pandemic new normal in 2021!

Cloud Computing: Central to Post-Corona-Virus Era!

Cloud services helped all economies to stay afloat and our lives survived with the aid of this technology. Our evolution through the COVID-19 crisis gets apt help from the cloud computing services. The data generated during this era is stored in clouds as a massive amount gets generated every day from each home.

Cloud Computing in 2021 & beyond: Predictions!

Researches show, and it's no surprise that everybody relies heavily & thoroughly on clouds along with data-streaming, remote collaborations, smart sensors as well as other digital technologies for emerging from a pandemic that still continues to overbear us from the social side remorselessly! With an eye on this forecast, enterprise technology professionals adjust the cloud strategies to evolve through the pandemic era! Digital transformation initiatives with regard to cloud computing help to move-along the process as well! As it stands, the major players of cloud computing include tech-vendor-giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. They do provide full cloud-to-edge ecosystems that enable more seamless, new-normal lifestyles!

Cloud Computing

Public Clouds grow more dominant!

When the Corona-Virus pandemic struck, all public clouds rode to a faster growth. The numbers corroborate this trend as enterprise cloud spending in both public & private sectors increased by about 35% from the previous year. The non-cloud IT spending did decline slightly in this era; stats that should be taken into consideration!

As a prediction, in 2021 leading public cloud platforms of Google (Google Cloud Platform), Microsoft (Microsoft Azure), and Amazon (Amazon Web Services) cements their dominance in the cloud market. It expands their ways across many global economy sectors! Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to dominate & lead the market share with Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform closely behind. Alibaba continues to close the gap and people should keep an eye on all four cloud computing services. According to predictions by Deloitte, revenue growth remains explosive through this mid-decade.

Global cloud spending is slated to grow around seven times faster than overall IT spending. International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that worldwide spending doubles on public cloud services as well as related infrastructures by around 2022 - 2023.

Enterprises mitigate cloud lock-ins

The cloud enterprises mitigate cloud lock-ins via various hybrid as well as multi-cloud strategies. As a matter of fact, in the past year, a deepening dominance of public clouds get compelled by traditional enterprise computing enterprises that set their strategic focuses on hybrid & multi-cloud. It is predicted that in 2021, cloud computing enterprises grow more uneasy with how they rely on various top-tier providers.

In this era, IT professionals do seek out several hybrids as well as multi-cloud tools for reducing risks of being locked-in to specific providers. As per Flexera, this tactic is already a mainstream one as around 93% of cloud computing enterprises do come with a multi-cloud strategy, and about 87% showcase a hybrid-cloud strategy!

Future predictions & forecasts showcase that the growing maturity of various multi-cloud or hybrid offerings from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure (Microsoft), and Google Cloud Platform (Google) tempt all enterprise cloud managers to increase their spending with all these providers. The private cloud stalwarts include IBM, Dell EMC, VMware, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Cisco. These cloud computing enterprises continue to beef up and improve their hybrid & multi-cloud integrations with the dominant public cloud services to stay afloat in the enterprise IT share market. However, some of the hybrid cloud appliances that include AWS outposts & Google Anthos does not significantly boost the shares of their vendors in core public cloud market segments!

Cloud Computing Platform as a service grows in public cloud revenue shares

COVID-19 crisis due to the Corona-Virus pandemic created a rapid shift to work-from-home arrangements. The SaaS providers such as SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce offer & provide an essential platform to continue business regardless of any distractions or hassles. The remote works do remain a main-stream approach and SaaS providers of every kind are poised for a runaway growth in cloud computing services.

Gartner Projects predicts that in 2021, SaaS remains one of the biggest or largest cloud market segments based on growing revenues. The PaaS based applications are slated to grow even faster. They are driven by the customers of cloud computing enterprises with an increased emphasis on various cloud-native, containerized, and serverless cloud-platforms. As per research & forecasts, one of the biggest PaaS growth segments in 2021 is multi-cloud serverless offerings from Red Hat, Vendia, and Microsoft among others. The mentioned solutions as well as associated low-code platforms serve as essential ingredients with regards to cloud computing enterprises and their modernization, digital transformation, and business continuity strategies.

Intelligent edge becomes the principal cloud-on ramp

A rapid shift of most economic sectors triggered a boom in the sale of mobile devices during past years. The technologies to emerge this era include AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered automation, robotics, and IoT (Internet of Things).

As per various predictions/forecasts, in 2021, public cloud providers brings forth a shift with an increasing share of different workloads. The intelligent edge platforms in cloud computing services do deliver the low latencies as per needed by all cloud related applications. Predictions showcase that, approximately 90% of industrial enterprises do use edge computing. A demand for cloud-to-edge applications skyrocket with 5G slated to roll out in coming years. The cloud computing workloads involve an edge-based, and AI driven processing of smart sensor data.

IBM, Red Hat, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise along with Microsoft are slated to invest deeply in a strategic 5G, edge, AI platforms as per launched in 2020. NVidia is leveraging its Arm Requisition for deepening the portfolio of solutions. This process is being done for automating delivery of AI apps between a cloud-to-edge & hybrid-cloud environments. The new trends drive demands for software-defined Wide Area Networks (WAN) that benefits VMware, Arista, Juniper, and Cisco among others.

Big Tech emphasizes open partner ecosystems

In case of cloud computing services big tech do emphasize open partner ecosystems under regulatory siege. With 2021 closed in, the great trio of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google along with various Big Tech companies/firms fended off various law-suits, several regulatory actions along with other legislative pressures that needed to be broken up.

Forecasts suggest that in 2021 all dominant cloud providers slow down all strategic acquisitions for stopping major rivals on tracks. They ramped up open-partner ecosystems while positioning themselves as back-end fulfilment agents within various partner-led enterprise deals. These stalwarts intentionally downplay efforts to use their hybrid-cloud & multi-cloud solutions as a leverage to migrate enterprise workloads from on-premise platforms, and legacy.

Augmented Reality helps train the employees in need to support cloud growth

Augmented reality is another cloud computing prediction that pertain more to all cloud professionals and their working lives than to market for various cloud services. With enterprises re-tooling their cloud management processes, they tend to adopt a wide variety & growing range of augmented reality tools. These augmented reality tools do deliver training as well as guidance for all cloud technical staffs working from their homes.

Just like all businesses all cloud computing services/companies/firms/enterprises along with their clients & customers needs to ensure that the working personnel are safe, healthy, and productive in the distanced work environments. Various innovative approaches that include augmented reality is a way by which Amazon delivers its recently announced plan/promise to train around 29 - 30 million people worldwide for working in cloud computing. It is a fact to be noted that this is a daunting task as Amazon would indeed find it impractical to train these many people!

Cloud computing industry do face one of the biggest challenges in 2021 as they are bound to keep people safe from cyber-attacks. While doing so, they might move on with their plan to find, train, and equip several skilled people for supporting their customers' digital transformation initiatives.

Conclusion

Here on, we discussed various predictions regarding cloud computing in 2021. We looked up on various strategies adopted by cloud computing enterprises to deal with an ever-growing demand of cloud solutions. Embrace the information and devise strategies to effectively use cloud computing to your benefits.