Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016. Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Mike Gero, director of product management, hosting and cloud, Internap
Hybrid, DevOps and More
2016 will be the year that hybrid cloud begins
to truly emerge. Meanwhile, the cloud will also facilitate a series of
improvements to the way applications are developed and delivered. Here are Internap's
predictions for the year ahead.
1. The Shift to Hybrid Cloud Will Accelerate
In the past, cloud platforms have not
provided the feature parity and technical maturity that enterprises needed in
order to deploy workloads on a combination of their own private environments
and service provider environments. Many clouds employed proprietary
technologies and promoted vendor lock-in, making it difficult to move workloads.
But cloud technology has been evolving to become more fluid, stable and
interoperable. Now, migration and movement is being made easier, thanks to
improvements to the interface between applications and the cloud.
OpenStack is a great example of this
evolution, having matured to the point of making hybrid cloud more accessible
to enterprises. While older versions of the platform couldn't match the
features and functionalities of other cloud platforms, it now enables on-demand
provisioning of bare-metal and virtual instances from the same management
interface. Its improved feature parity and hybrid capabilities have given
enterprise IT the flexibility and control they need to successfully deploy and
manage applications on hybrid infrastructure. The increased demand for hybrid
cloud is one of the main drivers of OpenStack's continued success.
2. Big Data-as-a-Service Will Emerge
Big data will continue to be a huge focus for
the enterprise, but instead of finding and managing their own big data tools to
try to best fit the needs of the business, enterprises will look to service
providers to handle it all for them. Big data-as-a-service (BDaaS) will shift
the burden off the enterprise and onto the service provider to create the
infrastructure to best support it. This approach will reduce complexity for the
enterprise and will also offer better performance and allow enterprises to
focus on developing powerful, reliable big data insights.
3. The Cloud Will Improve the Application
Lifecycle
The entire application lifecycle will move to
the cloud as enterprises recognize the need for faster, more agile and
collaborative development. The days of a monolithic architecture with a large
development team dedicated to the entire application are over. Instead,
organizations are recognizing the agility offered by easily configurable
infrastructure platforms, where everything from dev to QA to launch takes place
in the cloud.
Some companies with cloud-native apps are using
this approach to add new features and functionality on a daily basis. It can
benefit legacy applications as well; shortening the lifecycle by two-thirds or
more than 60% can have a significant business impact.
Cloud will also help developers provision
infrastructure on demand in a more fluid and cloud-like way. Complex approval
and procurement processes will be replaced with an API-driven approach.
4.The Enterprise Will Embrace DevOps
DevOps is all about enabling a fast and agile
development lifecycle. Ideally, there is very little lag time between writing
the code and making the functionality available on a web page or app, which
results in a near-continuous deployment process. Traditional software
development processes can't match this level of speed and time to market.
Enterprises will undergo a philosophical and
organizational change as they begin to adopt and embrace DevOps-style
processes. This new set of priorities will drive the need for frictionless
processes and increased infrastructure agility. Without access to on-demand server
provisioning and other cloud automation tools, the dream of implementing
DevOps-style processes will not become a reality. Ultimately, the ability of to
deliver disruptive software-based services depends on a foundation of flexible,
agile infrastructure.
5. Cloud Performance Comes to IoT's Rescue
The Internet of Things (IoT) will require
high-performance cloud infrastructure to enable efficient data processing and
decision making in real time. IoT technologies are already disrupting a variety
of industries, and businesses large and small will need to have a plan in place
to handle this disruption to their ecosystem. That will require a highly
responsive, scalable infrastructure to successfully derive value from massive
amounts of IoT data. Cloud will become central to IoT infrastructure to enable
instant calculations and analysis that will influence supply chain decisions.
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About the Author
Mike Gero is
director of product management, hosting and cloud, Internap