Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Cloud-native, Service-based staffing, FinOps, Analytics and Remote Work
By Peter Berry, CTO of Cloud Technologies at Navisite
It's hard to believe we're weeks away from 2021. And that
means, for many companies, IT planning and budget season is well underway -
making it the perfect time to reflect on the IT developments that took the
business world by storm over the past 12 months and think about how those
changes will impact priorities in the New Year.
Here are a few trends and priorities to keep an eye on for 2021:
1.
Cloud-native
projects will accelerate.
When starting their cloud journey, many companies choose the "lift and shift" migration approach because it offers
the fastest path to the cloud - and this is because on-premises workloads are
moved with little or no change to the underlying code. While lift-and-shift
continues to fuel digital transformation, it has mostly been about virtualizing
existing on-premises infrastructure, rather than architecting for the cloud.
In 2021, expect to see this change as organizations look to take
advantage of modern hardware and cloud-native
features of the hyperscale cloud. IDG's 2020 Cloud Computing Survey notes
that while 54% of enterprises' cloud-based
applications were moved from an on-premises environment to the cloud, a
significant 46% were purpose-built for the cloud. (1) We expect to see the percentage of
purpose-built, cloud-ready (refactored) applications increase in 2021 as
organizations look to gain the elasticity, scalability and cost benefits of the
cloud.
2.
IT
teams become business specialists.
The need for highly specialized expertise has placed a big burden
on IT leaders as demand skyrockets for skills in new cloud tools and
approaches, data analytics, cybersecurity and other technologies. Not only is
it challenging to find and retain the right people, certain skills are only
needed some of the time.
In 2021, we'll see organizations take a service-based approach to the skills gap. In this model,
internal teams become domain experts in the business. Instead of being consumed
by ‘keep the lights on' daily management, they'll look to partner with outside experts and
MSPs to help design, build,
architect and execute on their vision, as well as take on (or take over)
management of highly repetitive operational tasks.
3.
FinOps
expertise will be in high demand.
According IDG's report on The State of IT Modernization 2020, 69% of respondents said their companies
"experienced higher-than-expected public cloud costs." (2) To get control over cloud costs,
organizations will increasingly seek the expertise of specialized cloud financial operations (FinOps)
experts, who can analyze cloud workloads to find where overspend is
occurring and offer recommendations and strategies to reduce costs. In 2021,
we'll see the FinOps role grow in importance - and FinOps careers rise as well.
4.
Public
cloud drives analytics adoption.
According to Gartner, "by 2022, public cloud services will be
essential for 90% of data and analytics innovation." (3)Expect to see significant progress on this front as more
organizations move to the public cloud and benefit from a common framework and
for pulling data sources across platforms and processes. Taking advantage of
advanced analytics-especially around technologies like artificial intelligence
(AI), machine learning (ML) and robotic process automation (RPA)-is now a
realistic option for near-term digital transformation projects.
5.
Remote
work becomes the norm.
COVID-19 prompted the "work-from-anywhere" trend, but remote-work
policies will be a mainstay even after the virus ends. We recently polled over
100 C-level executives and IT professionals in the U.S. to determine how their
organizations were impacted by the "shelter-in-place" mandates from COVID-19,
and 83% of respondents said they believe their company will continue with
more liberal work-from-home policies post-COVID
19. (4) With remote work here to stay, in 2021
we'll see IT teams focus on
optimizing the "quick fix" solutions they
deployed in 2020. For example, many IT teams rushed to the public cloud to take
advantage of virtual desktops such as Amazon WorkSpaces and Microsoft Azure
Windows Virtual Desktop. They deployed the easiest and fastest configuration-a
single image across all desktops. By optimizing their virtual desktops,
organizations can create a taxonomy of desktop images tailored to different
groups (finance, HR, marketing, etc.) and individuals, which creates a
customized end-user experience and can significantly reduce costs.
We'll also see companies strengthen their security by taking new risk mitigation measures,
such as adopting a DevSecOps model, automating desktop provisioning, and
applying canary build concepts to how desktops are deployed.
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About the Author
Peter Barry, CTO of Cloud Technologies at
Navisite
Peter leads the
technical vision and development of Navisite's managed cloud services portfolio
to support the migration and optimization of customer environments in the
cloud. Peter's expertise spans infrastructure and cloud technologies, and he
brings over 20 years of project and technical leadership experience across
industries and in the public sector. Prior to joining Navisite as the director
of AWS solutions, he was the co-founder and CTO of clckwrk, a London-based AWS
migration specialist and consulting partner that was acquired by Navisite in
2019. As part of the founding team at clckwrk, Peter was instrumental in
building a successful business helping global enterprises throughout Europe and
North America migrate Oracle and other enterprise applications into the public
cloud.
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We cover these trends and predictions in more detail in our 2021 Trends webinar, and we are available to talk about any of the above in
more detail if needed. Let us know if you have questions or comments.
_______________________
2020
IDG Cloud Computing Survey, IDG (1)
The
State of IT Modernization 2020, Insight and IDG
(2)
Gartner
Top 10 Trends in Data and Analytics for 2020,
Gartner (3)
The
Overnight Shift to a Remote Workforce: Impact on Business Operations, Navisite (4)