Cloud computing is the most popular platform when it comes to transforming IT infrastructure. More CIOs are using hybrid cloud systems to transport business applications between public and private clouds running internally and hosted off-site by a service provider. It is a cost-effective solution that allows organisations to gain agility and speed.
With over 90% of companies projected to be in the cloud by the end of the year, it is more important than ever to consider how these trends will influence your cloud strategy and migration plans. Here is our list of 5 enterprise cloud strategy trends for 2020.
Hybrid cloud
Most businesses use cloud services from multiple vendors. A trend that will continue to grow in 2020, with the public cloud market growing to a projected $299.4 billion.
Hybrid cloud provides a high degree of flexibility. By utilising public cloud services in combination with private IT infrastructure, it serves as a massive cost-saving and reduction in IT resources. Hybrid cloud helps remove the need for capital expenditure and labour costs.
Customised cloud
Why pay rent for something that you’re not using?
Companies heavily invested in public cloud services will spend more money than intended as they are paying for an excess amount of resources that they don’t need. Therefore, businesses must develop a plan that allows them to distribute resources across different cloud platforms, private and public.
IT professionals and Managed Service Providers can determine the best configuration specific to your business needs, drastically reducing the costs. Scaling is made simple, and so is the reduction or redeployment of services. Businesses must start increasing their efficiency by avoiding unnecessary expenses.
Modernising apps for migration
Many companies have embraced the lift-and-shift approach when migrating their infrastructure to the cloud. It is one of the simplest and most cost-efficient ways to transfer their existing workloads.
However, if you want to achieve a competitive advantage, modernising your apps is crucial to your success. When migrating legacy applications to the cloud, optimisation is vital to operating more cost-effectively.
Third-party cost optimisation tools are also expected to grow, specifically for hybrid cloud environments. Cloud providers are always improving their optimisation abilities to deliver high performance to businesses at the right price.
Businesses can use containers and microservices to make apps easily accessible. Through focusing on high-quality analytics, it will maximise savings without sacrificing performance. Providing companies with freedom from single cloud providers and providing a consistent hybrid cloud management system.
Reskill for the cloud
By itself, moving to the cloud cannot drive innovation and value creation. Insufficient cloud skills will prevent 50% of businesses migrating to the cloud by more than two years. Rather than a lift-and-shift approach, organisations should be focusing on modernisation or refactoring. Lift-and-shift will not develop cloud skills. Creating a market where providers are unable to train and certify people in due time to fulfil the need for skilled cloud professionals.
CIOs must sell their employees on the value of the cloud and overcome the resistance of moving away from on-premises infrastructure. Skilling up and transitioning to cloud will future-proof your business and keep you one step ahead of the competition.
Service meshes and serverless
The growth of service meshes is another trend to watch in 2020. A service mesh enables you to remove applications from the network, allowing your operations and development teams to run separately. Service meshes promise to deliver robust security, visibility and inter-service networking. The fact that this is serverless enables the development of new programming models without the concern of infrastructure. While there is no clear leader in the field at this stage, Istio is making waves in the service mesh space.
Businesses need to consider how these trends will influence their cloud strategy and migration plans. It is essential to start planning now to prepare your IT infrastructure for the cloud.
If you are interested in learning more about implementing a cloud strategy, feel free to contact us. We’d be more than happy to set up a consultation where we will create the perfect solution for your business.
If you liked this article, you may also like:
6 IT roles prime for reskilling
Edge computing – What is driving the growth & how it affects businesses
Streamline workflows through cloud orchestration
