Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018.  Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Thomas Di Giacomo, Chief Technology Officer, SUSE

Open Source in 2018: Containers, Multi-Cloud and Collaboration

2017 was yet another important year for the open source community with the rise of new projects related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing, or other existing projects where participation and adoption have increased significantly. But as we look ahead at 2018, it's time for looking at more than solely the year ahead. Open source providers need to develop solutions and partner with vendors that are agile and flexible - ones that can help their customers succeed not only next year but five to 10 years from now.

To keep pace with the needs of today's customers, here are four trends open source professionals should keep in mind for 2018.

Containers technology will take off, bringing DevOps success

Container technology made huge inroads in 2017 and that success will only grow: Forrester predicts that the application containers market is likely to grow by 40 percent by 2020. In 2018, organizations will focus on optimizing their use of containers in the enterprise. This means adopting more container management and orchestration tools to scale extensive container deployments. For example, Kubernetes is allowing organizations to maximize their processing time and storage space. With a refined container strategy in place, developers and organizations will be able to further streamline their delivery/management processes, leading to a DevOps success story, by starting to forget about the underlying infrastructure, including that it runs containers.

Enterprises get ready for continuous IT transformation in 2025; Not just 2018

IT professionals can no longer afford to prepare for the year ahead only, including when thinking about new technologies; they need to prepare their infrastructure, where and how they run their applications and store their data, how they build their apps and what they do with their data, for the next five to 10 years. Many companies with legacy infrastructure are turning to open source solutions, which offer greater flexibility and customization, to prepare for the short and long-term future. This is not necessarily open source through smaller -or even very large- community projects; it involves the largest software vendors in the world. For example, we're already seeing some of our customers transition existing SAP applications to SAP S/4HANA on SUSE, allowing them to utilize new technologies such as IoT, machine learning, block chain with mobile applications. As enterprises assess their infrastructure in the new year, they will be prioritizing technology that doesn't create vendor lock-in and allows them to grow alongside their customers, as well as keeping the lights on for their existing assets.

Multi-hybrid-cloud multiples becoming the industry norm

With the public cloud landscape diversifying and a variety of vendors offering their own unique cloud services, 2018 is looking like a big year for multi-hybrid-cloud environments. IDC predicted that more than 85 percent of enterprise IT organizations will have committed to multi-cloud architectures by next year, driving up the rate and pace of change in IT organizations. To date, there is no single cloud that fits all operational needs so it's no surprise that IT professionals will continue adopting a multi-cloud approach to support business needs, workloads, manage costs and enable transparency.

More "intelligent" technology will take off, but collaboration is key

Gartner predicts that new open source powered intelligent (in the sense of IQ with analysis and prediction, not yet EQ) solutions are set to change the way people interact with systems and transform the very nature of work in 2018. However, open source professionals will need to work closely with other companies, including competitors, to develop the solutions that support an infrastructure to handle such technologies. With the broadening diversity of pieces interacting together, taking an "open" approach to collaboration will be even more key in 2018 than it was in the past.

The data explosion marks a tipping point for enterprise storage

The proliferation of data is nothing new. But similar to the immense volumes of data being created each day, the anxiety of data management and storage professionals has not translated into full action - yet. In fact, 92 percent of IT professionals are worried that storage will slow down their transformation initiatives as a result of data growth. 2018 is the year these concerns turn into action. As a result, companies are adopting new, software-defined ways to manage their storage, helping keep costs down and improve flexibility. Here again, open source is at the core of stable and mature software-defined storage technologies.

In the year ahead, open source professionals need to prepare for the immediate future but also continue developing and adopting cross-technology and processes to prepare for the years to come.

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About the Author

As Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo drives the rapid innovation and growth of SUSE's expanding portfolio from the enterprise Linux operating system to software-defined solutions such as the OpenStack cloud infrastructure, Ceph-based storage, software-defined networking solutions as well as solutions for developers such as Kubernetes containers and Cloud Foundry platform as a service. Di Giacomo has more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry, serving in various global leadership roles in engineering and product innovation, with expertise in open source platforms, development, and support of global information systems and technologies applied to various industries such as telecommunication, hospitality, and healthcare. Di Giacomo holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Geneva where he was a senior software developer & researcher involved in both academic work and joint corporate projects with international leading enterprises. Thomas is also sits on the Board of Directors for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.