Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Enterprises Will Embrace the Cloud
By Raj Verma, CEO, SingleStore
The era of COVID-19 has forced businesses to undergo digital transformation much faster than anyone could have predicted. Digital transformation that should have taken 2 years, happened in 6 months, and managing data was no longer a nice to have, but a necessity for enterprises to survive. I predict that 2021 will bring about a changing of the guard, which will give way for new technologies that are embracing the cloud and eliminating the complexity and costs of legacy data warehouses. Here are my top predictions for 2021 and beyond:
The database market will grow to $1 trillion by 2025
For the last two decades, there’s been an iron grip on the database market with IBM, Oracle and SAP HANA leading the charge. Now we are seeing a changing of the guard, which gives customers the option of deciding what is best for their business. Forrester even points out that the public cloud infrastructure market will grow 35% in 120 billion in 2021.
I predict that the database market cap will grow to $1 trillion by 2025 and over seven to 10 really strong database companies will grow significantly in the next decade.
One single SQL query for all data workloads
The way forward is based not only on automation, but also on how quickly and widely you can make your analytics accessible and shareable. Analytics gives you a clear direction of what your next steps should be to keep customers and employees happy, and even save lives. Managing your data is no longer a luxury, but a necessity–and determines how successful you or your company will be. If you can remove complexity or cost of managing data, you’ll be very effective. Ultimately, the winner of the space will take the complexity and cost out of data management, and workloads will be unified so you can write one single SQL query to manage and access all workloads across multiple data residencies.
Flexibility, efficiency, and security will win
COVID-19 had us pass 2021 and 2022, and land in 2023. All the digital transformation we had 2-3 years to do, organizations had to do it in 6 months. The existing legacy technology set within organizations was not capable of withstanding all the information– too much complexity and too costly. Gartner forecasts that by 2025, executives will be unable to deliver on critical digital initiatives with current computing techniques, and a variety of advanced computing architectures will emerge over the next decade.
In 2021, I believe that business leaders will come to realize that, now more than ever before, fast will win over slow when it comes to data. Cheap will win over expensive. Most importantly, flexibility of storing your data anywhere and being able to access it in the most secure manner is going to win.
Enterprises will embrace the cloud
Cloud computing was an ongoing trend before COVID-19, but it was more of a “nice to have” technology. However, now and in 2021, it will be a necessity for enterprises to survive and thrive. In fact, Ventana’s David Menninger recently noted that 86% of organizations expect the majority of their data to be in the cloud at some point in the future.
Combining, understanding, and acting on an onslaught of semi-structured, structured, and unstructured data became an even bigger challenge amid the pandemic. As today’s organizations are painfully aware, operating multiple databases also entails hiring and retaining multiple teams of IT professionals with various kinds of skill set. I predict that hybrid data ecosystems will no longer be the answer, and instead, cloud architectures will be embraced to adapt and uncover new means to innovate in these uncertain times. And in a world where cloud complexity and monthly cloud costs are rising sharply for enterprises, efficient use of cloud computing resources and human resources are crucial.
Big Tsunami of Operational Data
The next big tsunami of data that’s going to the cloud is going to be operational data–created via the marriage of historical data with real-time data to provide real-time insights–or what we call the data of Now. This data deluge will be many times bigger than what we’ve seen in the past. However, the unique economics will not allow for a fourth or a fifth cloud provider. That means that $40-50 billion of workloads now on incumbent technologies like IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud and SAP Cloud will migrate to the top three cloud providers.
2021 will be the year that businesses prioritize their data management and work to consolidate all of their data in the easiest way possible–using one platform– to make processes more efficient.
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About the Author
Raj Verma is the CEO of SingleStore. He brings more than 25 years of global experience in enterprise software and operating at scale. Raj was instrumental in the growth of TIBCO software to over $1 billion in revenue, serving as CMO, EVP Global Sales, and COO. He was also formerly COO at Aptus Software and Hortonworks. Raj earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from BMS College of Engineering in Bangalore, India.
