Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018. Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Don Mal, CEO and co-founder, Vena Solutions
New Year, New Cloud Predictions
Ah, December. Time for holiday cheer, time
spent with family and friends, and last, but not least, new cloud predictions!
This year saw continued cloud growth, teeing up new trends we can expect to see
in 2018, including:
1. Simple, quick
collaboration will enhance cloud value for the enterprise.
Empowering easy
collaboration is the next benefit offered by the cloud that's ripe for the
picking. Today, a huge array of cloud-based collaboration tools are used in
offices across the globe - ever heard of Slack, Zenyu, Google Docs or HipChat?
These and other tools have become household names.
Vendors are
developing more and more third-party apps and add-ons to integrate with such
tools. Consider task management tools such as Trello, designed to automatically
notify the right channels in your Slack group when there are changes to
documents or workflow. Expect even more collaboration tools and built-in
features to come in areas like enterprise business and finance solutions,
especially as the next generation of millennial workers expect it.
2. Frictionless integration of the best - but
currently disparate - cloud platforms.
In the same vein as my first
prediction, the advent of easy-to-use integration and connection tools will
link even more systems together. Consider three familiar types of cloud platforms:
- Systems: NetSuite, Salesforce.com,
Marketo
- Storage: Dropbox, Box.com, Google
Drive
- Productivity: Office 365, Google
Docs
More and more users are linking these
systems together with easy to use and self-serve tools such as Zapier, Segment
and Microsoft Flow. This marks an awakening among cloud services; platforms no
longer exist in silos, rather they need to work together in order to help users
solve real business problems. We'll soon start to see services and vendors that
go beyond connecting applications as they add workflow, permissions, business
rules and other features.
What qualities will
make integration services most successful? Dead simplicity and the use of APIs,
rather than custom code for each integration or connector. Software providers
take note!
3. Cloud vendors doing security far better than internal IT departments.
Hear me out on this one. The truth
is that we're on the cusp of the lion's share of companies entrusting cloud
providers as de facto security experts. This is particularly true for
purpose-built cloud vendors like AWS who focus on one thing, and they do it
really, really well. As I've witnessed first-hand, even some of the nation's
largest, most conservative banks and financial institutions are, for a fact,
trusting their cloud vendors to lead the way on security.
Allow me to
demonstrate the value of cloud providers as security experts using the
following analogous scenario. Would you save your money in a bank that has been
designed from the group up to secure it in the best way possible, or in a safe
under your mattress - akin to a home-grown IT solution? Cloud vendors know
their offerings are as only as good as the security around them. More companies
will take their cue from leading financial institutions today and learn to
trust their vendors to lead the way in security.
4. Cloud
delivery will become the norm for enterprise software.
Based on what we've
seen in the market over the last half-decade, 2018 will see an overwhelming
majority (I'd say at least 90 percent) of new enterprise software installs
being cloud-based.
A recent Synergy Research study shows quarterly
cloud infrastructure service revenues alone (including IaaS, PaaS and hosted
private cloud services) have now reached $12 billion and continue to grow at
well over 40 percent per year. Further, worldwide revenues from cloud and SaaS
services will grow at an average annual rate of 23 to
29 percent over the next five years, passing the $200 billion milestone in
2020.
Medium and large
sized companies are increasingly adopting cloud software as a standard practice,
which will drive lower software costs and benefit enterprises in the long run.
Again, some of the world's highest tier banks and financial institutions are
leading the charge in moving their most mission-critical systems to the cloud.
We can expect to see more in the year ahead as the cloud continues to disrupt
the way we do business.
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About the Author
Don Mal
is CEO and co-founder of Vena Solutions, a cloud software company providing
budgeting, planning and revenue forecasting solutions for medium and large
sized organizations. See www.venasolutions.com for more information.