Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2017.  Read them in this 9th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by David Linthicum, Senior Vice President at Cloud Technology Partners

Five Cloud Predictions

1.     Large acquisitions become commonplace.  While we'll see lots of small companies being purchased, we'll see some game changers as well.  Some of these deals will be about survival, and some will actually be 1+1=3.  The mega-companies no longer have a choice, given the pressures of cloud computing. 

2.     More focus on management and operations.  Now that we have Global 2000 companies pushing past 500 workloads, most will find their tipping point.  This means that they can no longer manage their cloud resources using manual processes.  Thus, the focus on management and operations will be much greater in 2017, including big and small companies cashing in on the micro-trends that will be within the macro-trend. 

3.     Containers grow, but not at the rate predicted.  One of the biggest technology pushes in the last few years has been containers.  While they are important, we're not likely to see the growth that we expected.  This is largely due to the fact that, while net new applications are great fits for containers because you can design them from the start for containers, order applications are a tougher fit. 

4.     Lagging cloud talent reaches a crisis.  Most of the analysts' firms are calling for the lack of cloud architecture and development talent to limit the migration into the cloud for most companies.  This is going to be much more profound in 2017, to a point that companies will be paying signing bonuses over $100k for the right people.  This will diminish over time, considering that many others will push themselves into the cloud computing field to cash in.

5.     We'll see more on-premises breaches.  More traditional systems will fall victim to hackers in 2017, while cloud-based security becomes much stronger.  Clouds will be the hardest systems to break into, given the layers of sophisticated security, and proactive updating and monitoring.  Traditional systems don't enjoy the same protections; they are more vulnerable and will be the likely targets. 

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About the Author  

David Linthicum - Senior Vice President

As a SVP at Cloud Technology Partners, David provides core leadership in client engagements and strategic guidance for the company. Additionally, David leads key thought leadership activities for CTP including keynote presentations at most major cloud computing conferences and is a routine contributor to Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and Businessweek. David writes the cloud column for InfoWorld and is the lead author of The Doppler, CTP's cloud news and best practices publication. With more than 13 books on computing, 3,000 published articles, 500 conference presentations and numerous appearances on radio and TV programs, David has spent the last 30 years teaching businesses how to use resources more productively and innovate constantly. He has expanded the vision of both startups and established corporations as to what is possible and achievable. David's experience with cloud computing dates back to 1999 when he published a key paper about the use of infrastructure resources that can be delivered over the open Internet.

David's industry experience includes tenures as CTO and CEO of several successful public and private software companies, and upper-level management positions in Fortune 100 companies. David has delivered over $2 billion dollars in value by transforming companies from traditional to innovative technologies, moving them to lucrative exits that benefitted investors, employees, and customers. Prior to joining Cloud Technology Partners, David founded Blue Mountain Labs, a cloud computing consulting and advisory firm (sold to Bick Ventures in Feb. 2010).

David is a graduate from George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia, and still remains active with the alumni. He has been an adjunct professor of computer science for over 10 years and teaches courses on system design and database engineering.