Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2014. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Robbie Wright, Senior Product Marketing Manager, CommVault
What’s on the virtualization menu for 2014 – Critical applications, cloud choices and a side of VM sprawl
It's hard to believe that a year has passed since we were
sharing our 2013
predictions, but the time has come again to look into our crystal ball and
see what the virtualization and cloud industries have in store for 2014.
Last year, we predicted that 2013 would see the increased
rise of cloud adoption and migration, paired with support from managed service
providers, by companies of all sizes. We believe that prediction came true, as
cloud and virtualization environments continued to spread throughout all
industries, and businesses stopped asking
if
they should move to the cloud, but instead
when.
However, 2014 will be the year of applications and choice, and below are some
of the trends we see happening next year.
- Virtualized
mission critical applications: If businesses want to truly see their cloud
environments succeed, pairing cloud adoption and migration with virtualization
of mission critical apps will be necessary in 2014. Although there are many
well-known benefits, such as infrastructure efficiencies and dynamic scaling,
many businesses are behind in their transitions of top tier applications, which
truly are the ones that would benefit most. When virtualizing applications, an
important question that many businesses will be asking in 2014 is private or
public cloud?
- Private
verse public cloud options: 2014 will bring a growing enterprise use of the
public cloud. 2013 helped bring the cloud to popularity, but next year,
enterprises will make strategic decisions about storing data publicly or
privately. Enterprises are becoming more comfortable and trusting of the
security and scale of public clouds with the help of providers including AWS
and Rackspace. The public cloud comes in handy particularly when virtualizing
heavy applications, and in 2014, enterprises will start to unburden their
private cloud environments from larger apps. That said, there will still be
growth with the private cloud from industries including finance and healthcare
where there are compliance and security issues that requite on-site data
hosting.
- VM sprawl
in the spotlight: As IT continues its evolution to be an application developer
and deployer in 2014, it will become increasingly easier to lose control of the
volume of virtual machines. Costs associated with VM sprawl will grow, and
enterprises will need to better manage data with storage tools to put
successful policies in place around sprawl and retirement. IT managers and
administrators have a new opportunity on their hands in the coming year to
efficiently manage and store the information that may never be used again.
From applications to choosing the right cloud, 2014 will be
a busy year for the cloud and virtualization markets. The public cloud will
continue to grow and businesses will be looking for ways to optimize critical
applications and VM environments to ensure efficiency and profitability, but
it's safe to say that this coming year will certainly be an exciting one.
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About the Author
Robbie Wright is
Senior Product Marketing Manager for CommVault. In this role, Robbie focuses on
Server Virtualization and Cloud solutions and is a veteran in the storage,
virtualization, and cloud market for more than 10 years. With former roles at
both Dell and Rackspace, he has extensive experience with VMware, Hyper-V, and
OpenStack, and is a frequent contributor to many types of social media. Robbie
holds an MBA from The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.