Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Andrew C. Oliver, Director of
Product Marketing and Evangelism, Couchbase
Foresight in 2020 - Four Technology Predictions in the New Year
As another year (another decade!) -passes, let's take a few minutes to
look at some of the technology trends that I foresee will unfold in 2020.
Topics like cloud and security are pretty much the staple items on every annual
prediction list, and it's always interesting to think about what could be next.
And the same for emerging technologies like edge computing, which still has its
fair share of "toe dippers" but also some who have completely taken the plunge.
And finally, open source: how will the cloud impact its future? Let's take a
look...
1. As cloud reaches critical mass,
underlying operations will standardize
2020 will mark a tipping point in cloud, as new applications
and software will become "cloud first" - and technology that avoids the cloud
will increasingly be seen as a costly oddity. This moment has always been
coming, as the history of computing is one of successful technology building
its center of gravity, and then suddenly shifting the balance to become the
default. In a lot of developers' minds, cloud has been the default for some
time, but 2020 will be the first year that adoption statistics match this.
As cloud hits its tipping point, we will also see greater
standardization of underlying operations. We have already seen microservices
and container management systems standardize, with the likes of Kubernetes and
Docker rapidly becoming the go-to default. In 2020, it will be the turn of
service mesh offerings; as more and more organizations use service meshes in
conjunction with their microservices, meshes will become as
common as Kubernetes. The market will mature and inevitably, the multiple
offerings available at present will be winnowed down to one or two clear market
leaders. Cloud providers will have a profound effect on this - by ensuring that
customers use their own specific offerings, which in turn will place more shackles
on businesses.
2. Open Source will once again be in peril - from a
new source
Open Source has always been popular with customers, meaning investors
have advertised it widely. However, it has never been as popular with investors
thinking from a business model standpoint - after all, how will the business
monetize it? The growth of cloud giants, and of IT as a service, will create a
real challenge to popular conceptions of Open Source in 2020.
Essentially, if open source software is used to provide a service
through a cloud provider, how can the innovators afford to create it? Some software vendors are attempting to
address this by creating new open source licenses that apply to everyone except
cloud providers. But this creates a significant turn away from Open Source's commonly-accepted definition,
specifically its prohibition on field of use restrictions. It also violates the
first of the Free
Software Movement's four freedoms. We're now in a place where some of the most
famous "Open Source" software can't, in all honesty, still be called open
source.
In 2020, vendors will have to realize that the Open Source game has
changed. If they still want to meet their Open Source goals, clever licensing
approaches will not be enough. They must instead see themselves as service
providers, from management to support and other value-adds, in order to ensure
that they can offer something that others cannot. The business model is to
innovate -- where cloud providers won't -- and to provide better and more
differentiated service, not just differentiated software.
Open Source is a red herring here. It is really about traditional
Enterprise Software sales vs. Software as a Service. If something is popular, the cloud vendors
will copy it regardless of its license and provide their own cheaper version
anyhow. Vendors must fight service with service, not with license restrictions
and lawyers.
3. Security debacles will mount
unless it is built into applications from the beginning
Security is one area in which 2020 is unlikely to differ from 2019: there will be a continuation of easily preventable, high-profile security breaches. The continuation is due in part to attitude-- too many organizations will continue to treat a security breach as an act of God, or something that
is essentially a random natural disaster that's
best addressed by ensuring adequate insurance coverage and dealing with any
fallout after the event.
However, unlike most natural disasters, security breaches -
or attempts at them - are preventable. Just as most of us will lock our house or car when we leave it, organizations should also
be taking all the necessary precautions. Security is the ultimate cross-functional
concern for the
entire business. Every decision taken at every level affects security, and vice
versa.
Security has to be built into applications from the very
beginning, by experienced developers who are trained in developing secure
software and know the rules to follow. This is not the method in common use
today, yet deploying security after software has been developed will inevitably
leave gaps that potentially leak user data in all directions. To avoid 2020
being more of the same, organizations need to change their approach and
prioritize hiring trained and experienced developers.
4. Computing will go from the Edge to Edgeless
In 2020, organizations will begin to fully exploit the
potential of edge computing. They will use processing on devices to 1)
provide faster services for end users, 2) avoid the risk of network
failure, 3) avoid having to create and share duplicates of sensitive
data, and 4) make their services more cost-effective when operational
costs, such as energy use, are shared with the end device (at least in part).
At present, there is still a clearly defined
edge and center, with smart devices processing data that ultimately feeds
information back to databases on central servers. In 2020, we will see the
concept of the "edge" be replaced with "edgeless." There will be more and more
use cases where the edge essentially works with itself: devices communicating
with one another to run applications without the "cloud," leaving
central servers out of the equation entirely, or at most involving them to act
as a data archive. And the result will be "edgeless" computing, where the
notion of an edge or center loses relevance. As the processing power of devices
will keep being eclipsed by the next generation, we will see the rapid growth
of edgeless computing, where processing can truly happen anywhere.
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About the Author
Andrew C. Oliver is Director of Product Marketing and Evangelism for Couchbase. He learned to code when he was 8. He founded
the Apache POI project and served
on the board of the Open Source Initiative.
He writes a column for Infoworld and is the Director of Product Marketing and Evangelism for Couchbase.