Cloud computing is a very beneficial technology for most businesses and organizations.  In 2015, companies around the world have spent close to $70 billion on public cloud services. That is seen to continue to rise to at least $141 billion in 2019, according to Forbes.com.

By all indications, cloud computing is here to stay and it continues to be beneficial for its users.

Here are some trends that will help shape cloud computing in the year 2017:

1. Businesses would be moving away from the public cloud.

For the past 10 years, Amazon, through its Amazon Web Services (AWS), has largely fueled cloud adoption.  It provided businesses and customers with very easy to use storage and compute resources.

In April 2016, Amazon reported revenues of $2.6 billion from its Amazon Web Service for the first quarter of the year, which is 64% more than the previous corresponding period.  AWS is fast becoming a $10 billion business for the online retailing giant.

However, according to Dave Bartoletti from Forrester Research, that may soon change as businesses that have the data centers, applications, and the budget are beginning to look into putting their mission-critical business application on their own private cloud.  Bartoletti adds that more than one-third of all businesses in Europe and North America are building private clouds, with around a third looking at buying into the public cloud.  Also, Forrester also found that 59% were adopting a hybrid cloud strategy.

2. Regional players will step in where giant cloud service providers cannot, thereby increasing their customer base and adoption.

Enterprises that start off with private clouds may see the need to switch to public clouds even when they have unique requirements that a giant cloud service provider such as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Google, cannot provide for them.

For instance, Capital One pulled the plug on their private cloud and opted to shift its focus on developing software for the company and then running it on AWS.   The same thing is seen to be happening for other organizations. However, some organizations have very unique requirements that may not fit with the public cloud service providers offering a one-size-fits-all service to its customers.

The big cloud service providers are seeing this and are responding accordingly.  For instance, Microsoft partnered with Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, T-Systems, to cater to customers in Germany and some parts of Europe that needs local control of their data.

Admittedly, however, even the big cloud providers cannot customize their services to accommodate every request, which opens the market for smaller regional players to come in.

3. Cloud costs are going to be monitored closely and minimized.

One of the advantages of getting onto the cloud is that businesses are able to save on costs.  However, because most cloud services are charged based on usage, there will be instances when businesses end up paying more than having these services hosted onsite.

One trend for 2017 would be focused on cost containment.  CIOs and IT managers will be fine-tuning their operations and usage, while also coming up with their own set of best practices.

Then there are the tools that you use to monitor your cloud usage.  For instance, Cloudability helps you track usage data from different cloud vendors and receive alerts when your usage approaches your pre-set spending limit.  Meanwhile, Cloudyn is a suite of cloud management tools that you can use for Google, OpenStack and AWS services.  This tool gives you cost comparisons using resource usage simulations.  Other cloud cost monitoring tools are available from Dell, AWS, and Scale, among many others.

4. Apps are going to be refactored for the public cloud.

Your business applications need to be rewritten to take advantage of public cloud services, instead of just putting your current app onto the cloud.  There are, however, tools that you can use to migrate your app to the cloud and these tools will be low cost and allows for bulk migrations.

5. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).

Part of the draw of cloud services is the extra layer of security it provides.  But there are risks when putting customer data and other important information in the hands of third party cloud service providers.  Plus, all cloud services need advanced levels of standardization, self-service accessibility, automation, virtualization, resource monitoring and other capabilities, which may not be easy or cost-effective to stitch together.

The good news is that there are hyper-converged infrastructure tools that can help.  These solutions give you storage and compute resources that are already integrated, making it easier and faster to apply cloud implementations.  Most businesses that are running private clouds would do well using HCI, specifically for workloads that need automated and fast scale-out.

6. Containerization.

Containers allow developers and other IT personnel to create and manage code.  Linux containers will be offered by every cloud platform in the earlier part of 2017.  Developers will be taking advantage of these containers in order to create stacks that will be behind microservices.  This containerization trend will also give rise to new challenges, such as in the areas of monitoring, networking, storage, and security.

7. More and more of a business’ applications will be on the public cloud.

CIOs used to be very uncomfortable at the thought of putting their organization’s apps on the public cloud.  But over the years, that has slowly changed.  For instance, men’s grooming products manufacturer Dollar Shave Club runs 22 custom applications on AWS.  These applications run their sales, marketing and customer service efforts.  They also have their recommendations engine on AWS.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Health runs a machine analytics software on AWS as well.  Called Splunk, the software uses algorithms to analyze log files and figure out what is causing the performance problems that have plagued the company for quite some time.  The software also gives the company a better view of how their IT systems work individually and together.  The software takes a look at very huge chunks of data and gives you an easy to understand report on the patterns it detects.

In 2017, we would see more and more companies that would run their business apps on AWS and other public cloud services, signaling that CIOs have finally relaxed enough to trust the public cloud with their most mission-critical software.

Need help moving your applications to the cloud?  Trust Four Cornerstone!  With just one phone call to (817) 377-1144, we can help you plan your move to the cloud and assist you with cloud deployment maintenance.

Photo courtesy of George Thomas.