
Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016. Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Lynn LeBlanc, CEO and founder of HotLink
3 ways cloud pragmatism PLUS experimentation will dominate 2016
The cloud market is rapidly
growing and evolving, and its developments in 2015 have prepared the space for
an even more interesting climate to take hold in the coming year. Since many
companies in 2015 were already incorporating the public cloud into their
business operations, especially through use cases such as cloud-based disaster
recovery (DR), CIOs are highly invested in finding new ways for the cloud to help
reap major financial rewards. Meanwhile, convergence between on-premise VMware
infrastructure and public cloud resources became more important
AND attainable than ever for IT organizations, spurring new cloud projects for
some companies and piquing the interest of many more.
As we move into 2016, these
trends set the stage for a landscape where both cloud pragmatism and
experimentation reign. Below are three ways we expect to see these themes
playing out:
1. While Amazon leads, vendor lock-in fears
will make CIOs experiment.
It's no secret that Amazon Web
Services (AWS) has gathered serious momentum in recent years, and its
first-mover status will continue to have record-breaking growth and customer
acquisition. As the new year progresses, AWS newcomers will still begin their
journeys to the cloud by leveraging the service for non-critical workloads, but
we'll also see Amazon hosting more mission-critical applications and production
workloads. After all, when it comes to deploying non-critical workloads in the
public cloud, early cloud adopters have already been there, done that and
looking to move on.
Amazon's contenders will also win
new users in 2016, with a primary differentiator on price. CIOs are constantly
working to avoid vendor lock-in, and their first line of defense is to have
alternative platforms in hand. Monopoly-conscious CIOs are increasingly considering
options such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform while planning new
leaps to the public cloud. Although low-priority workloads will realistically
make up the first wave of interactions with such platforms, production
workloads won't be far behind the trend, meaning Amazon should avoid getting
too comfortable in its market-leading position given the financial resources of
Microsoft and Google.
2. True business continuity in the cloud is
finally within reach.
If you're part of a midmarket
company that hasn't previously been able to afford data protection beyond basic
backup solutions, adopting cloud-based DR is an easy - and profitable - choice
for your team. In 2016, companies of all sizes will take the next logical step
and access full business continuity in the cloud. The reasons why are obvious: building,
testing and maintaining mirror sites is a seriously expensive proposition, and
outsourcing comes with its own slew of fees and management issues - and now, a
number of commercial options are available and proven. Thanks to the economics
of the public cloud, cloud-based business continuity is dramatically more
affordable than its legacy alternatives. It also offers flexibility to the
organizations taking advantage of it, and the model supports a wider enterprise
trend of paying for services only as they're needed.
3. Since hybrid rules the data center, unified
management is critical.
While most CIOs have cloud
computing as a top priority, few are choosing to go "all in" for hosting their
full range of workloads in the cloud. As a result, hybrid will be the pervasive
computing model in 2016 and beyond. And to make hybrid IT a cost-effective and
practical reality for the enterprise, easy integration and a seamless operating
model for on- and off-premise environments must become the norm. With the increase
of cloud-based operations, hybrid management has to be first and foremost in
the eyes of enterprise IT teams.
Rapid changes in IT and cloud
computing trends have been the status quo for years, and the pace of innovation
will continue into 2016. New players are constantly entering and exiting the
market, and even for professionals deeply rooted in the cloud industry pivots can
be tough to predict. However, as the public cloud grows beyond its roots as an
IT vision and into its future as a mainstay of enterprise operations, CIOs will
continue to find new ways to derive value from public cloud trends and services
- and they won't wait for the market to settle down before they act.
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About the Author
Lynn
LeBlanc, CEO and founder of HotLink Corporation,
has more than 25 years of enterprise software and technology experience at both
Fortune 500 companies and Silicon Valley startups. Prior to founding HotLink,
Ms. LeBlanc was founder and CEO of FastScale Technology, an enterprise software
company acquired by VMware, Inc.