By Brian Trainor - Senior Virtualization Engineer at Syntax

Cloud-Native is the new normal

As we head into 2020, we will see the continuing trend of IT departments leveraging public cloud resources at a greater rate. Analysts have predicted continued increase of public cloud expenditure, where much of this will include a hybrid cloud approach. Companies will increasingly run workloads both on premises and in the public cloud since both deployment models provide different benefits. So, what additional trends will this bring about in 2020?

Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud are common industry terms that mean applications and data live in multiple places. Companies must have the infrastructure in place to access applications and data across multiple environments with low latency, but they must also have the ability to manage all aspects of these environments, including infrastructure, provisioning, monitoring, ticketing, automation, capacity, security, backup, cost optimization, service-level agreements (SLAs), etc., in multiple places.

Companies are looking for easier management of these diverse environments, and cloud providers are responding with solutions to better manage these environments with one consistent management platform or stack, like Azure Stack, AWS Outposts, VMware Cloud on AWS, etc. Many organizations will also continue to invest in solutions that leverage cloud APIs and automation to better manage the rapid growth and scale of these environments. "DevOps" and "Infrastructure as Code" have already become common vernacular in our enterprise shops, but these initiatives will continue to gain greater traction.

On top of this, we will see an increase in the use of data analytics and AI/ML to better handle critical aspects of management, such as performance monitoring, capacity management, event-driven automation and remediation. This area of emerging tech will find increased use in our quest to identify trends and streamline the efficiency, performance and availability of our mixed cloud deployments.

Security will continue to keep center stage in this hyper-connected digital world. Companies are spending more and more IT budget on security while expecting vendors to continue to innovate to meet the growing challenges and demands of an ever-increasing threat landscape.

Cloud providers will continue to ramp up security efforts in their offerings, especially in light of news-making security breaches within their walls. Customers will demand these increased efforts but will also seek additional cloud management solutions that can handle consistent security throughout the hybrid environment.

Carbon Black, which was acquired by VMware last month, is an example of one innovative approach to security. Its cloud-based big data solution uses data analytics and AI for improved detection and faster response at the endpoint. VMware intends to integrate this into their cloud management platforms for more robust and automated security for all devices in both private and public clouds. We'll see a push for other cloud management providers to provide more innovative and integrated approaches like this to secure workloads across the diverse landscapes and across all devices.

More enterprises are starting to think about modernizing apps to take full advantage of elasticity and extensibility of cloud environments. Public cloud providers have already provided platforms and services for developers to run cloud native apps. As companies search for ways to optimize resources, automate scaling and become more comfortable with development methodologies around DevOps, we will see more widespread adoption of cloud-native apps and containers in enterprise and mixed cloud environments.

We've already seen the massive growth in popularity of cloud-native technology this year.  Kubecon/CloudNativeCon had a 50% increase in conference attendance this year over last year. Enterprise vendor support also seems to have swelled at a similar rate. VMware has been investing in cloud-native technologies the past several years and recently acquired Heptio as they aim to further capitalize on this clear industry trend in application delivery. They announced plans to integrate cloud-native technology into their product offerings including the integration of Kubernetes into vSphere with Project Pacific. Offerings like this from enterprise vendors will continue as cloud-native tech space grows in maturity and popularity and becomes more accessible to traditional enterprise.

Rise of the new platform engineer

With hybrid cloud on the rise and the emerging technology around it, we will see IT professionals becoming increasingly cloud, security, and cloud-native savvy. We will see the rise of the new platform engineer who is prepared to manage the entire diverse stack, embrace development methodologies, acquire the skills to deploy and manage containerized apps and cloud-native solutions, and of course, continue to advocate for and enforce the rigorous security standards of mixed enterprise and cloud infrastructure.

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About the Author

Brian is a data center engineer with over 20 years of industry experience. Specifically, he holds technical expertise is in VMware virtual infrastructure, network operations management and optimization, infrastructure design and architecture, and systems engineering. His current role at Syntax is engineering and design focused. Brian is passionate about innovative data center technologies and presenting the business value of solutions to customers.