Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Peter Guagenti, CMO of MemSQL
The Relentless March of Cloud, and AI/ML Takes Center Stage
AI and ML will become truly
transformational in our everyday lives in 2020. Aiding their rise will be the
ever-growing cloud ecosystem and the move of ever more business-critical
workloads feeding seemingly unstoppable growth. We'll also see changes in the
global pecking order among the big players, as Chinese companies reorder the
hierarchy in high growth markets. Change may be constant, but we believe 2020
is going to be a uniquely fascinating year!
Operational workloads move to cloud and
embrace AI and ML: Businesses
will expedite the move of their operational data away from legacy providers
like Oracle and SAP to cloud-native database management solutions. The need for
data management systems that are purpose-built for AI and ML functions will
skyrocket. This will continue the shift of workloads to Google, AWS and
multi-cloud service providers.
Rise of multi-cloud approach: Businesses are
significantly more wary of cloud vendor lock-in than they were even a year or
two ago. They are also much smarter about how they approach their use of the
cloud. I have been a huge proponent of "avoid cloud lock-in" since 2015, and
now it is happening in a big way. This started with the early technology
company adopters of public cloud providers, but now is especially true for
larger enterprises, who have gotten sticker shock at their cloud
bills. Look for more enterprises to move to multi-cloud environments,
including the further adoption of a "tripod" strategy consisting of two cloud
services providers and on-premise infrastructure using Kubernetes to behave as
a private cloud. The "winners" for being the third leg of the tripod will
likely be VMware (via Pivotal) and Red Hat.
Move over, "Big 3" Cloud Providers: The existing "Big
3" cloud providers - AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud - will lose more
ground globally in 2020 to Chinese providers like Alibaba and Tencent. It might
be the "Big 5" before long. Maybe not by the end of 2020, but not too much
longer after that.
BI tools go far and wide: The march toward being a data-driven
enterprise has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and in 2020 it will mean more
than "consume this report." We now have a generation of young business
professionals who are used to asking questions and getting immediate answers.
This dynamic has resulted in increased pressure on IT to make it easier and
faster to get answers to questions, and that pressure is only going to multiply
in 2020.
AI and ML go big - for real this time: We're going to
start seeing some dramatic breakthroughs and some real transformative changes
in 2020. To an extent not seen to date, AI and ML will, so to speak, emerge
from the lab and infiltrate your life. A recession, if there is one in 2020,
will accelerate this coming AI/ML impact. That's because a lot of the efforts
that AI and ML are focused on relate to automation and building efficiencies in
the way humans work.
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About the Author
Peter Guagenti ,CMO of MemSQL, oversees strategic and growth marketing at the company. Prior to MemSQL, Peter held marketing and product roles at Mesosphere, NGINX, and Acquia, and spent 15 years as a digital agency and consulting professional at companies including Accenture and Razorfish. Peter brings MemSQL a proven ability to build successful companies, and deep experience in business strategy, marketing, design, product development, and operations.