Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Honestly evaluating cloud's strengths
By Executives from Deft
For 14 years, VMblog has been publishing the
industry's predictions, highlighting where infrastructure will go in the year
to come. For most of those years, the biggest trend felt so obvious it didn't
even need to be stated. To. The. Cloud. We could debate the specific paths
virtualization - and the cloud - might take, but we didn't doubt its
inevitability.
The cloud was the way forward.
It still is, for many things. That unquestioning
embrace of the cloud is starting to come to a close though. Many eager adopters
are now getting bills that wildly outstrip their expectations. In 2022, we'll
see something of a reckoning. Businesses will look to control costs by bringing
cloud assets back in house. Security and compliance will continue to evolve -
and be redefined - in a cloud-first world. And everyone will scramble for the
dwindling talent pushing the industry forward.
Cloud repatriation reconsiders
data centers
It's not a retreat from the cloud, but a
reevaluation of how best to deploy it.
The most sophisticated companies will start to
see the cloud for what it is - a powerful solution, not a cure-all.
Repatriation won't make sense for most. For some, though, crushingly big cloud
bills and a need for increased environment control will make it a conversation
worth having.
It's so easy to click yes and keep clicking
with the cloud, but the costs will add up. For backups and compute, bigger
companies are starting to reconsider data centers and reverse course on cloud
migrations. Stability was always the hallmark of data centers. In the race to
get greater adaptability, we forgot some of what data centers had to offer.
-- Jordan Lowe, Co-Founder and CEO, Deft
The cloud does what it does best
- automatically
When you need that elasticity, the cloud can't
be beat. While some workloads will come back to data centers, it won't be all
of them. In 2022, companies will embrace hybrid cloud in a more concrete way
than ever before, using the cloud to handle scalable workloads like AI and
machine learning that data centers just can't effectively support.
Edge cases will continue to thwart most dreams
of 100% automation, but we'll see companies embrace it wherever they can. It's
possible now to take off-the-shelf automations and string them together,
integrating them so cross-checks can happen with a minimum of custom code.
Monitoring and diagnostics is a prime example.
Instead of manually filtering through 1,000 alerts to find one root problem, AI
can identify commonalities and send one message suggesting where to look first.
Tech teams will be able to address underlying issues far faster.
-- Eric Dynowski, Co-Founder and Chief
Solutions Officer, Deft
Compliance makes the most of
cloud benefits, while regulators struggle to keep up
We've been seeing - and helping - companies
meet big compliance challenges using virtualization, the cloud, and
containerization. One of our clients was able to reduce
their PCI compliance burden down to next-to-nothing using a managed
AWS environment. It's a perfect example of what cloud can do that other
infrastructure cannot, and an ideal use case. Even the most risk-averse
industries are beginning to accept that cloud is more than just not evil. It's
potentially a better, safer solution for sensitive data.
Regulators are only just starting to wrap
their heads around this. We've worked with some who see and appreciate the
elegance of the solution and get a thrill from seeing their job made almost
perfunctory. Others refuse to accept the Schrödinger's Cat nature of
containerization and virtualization. The data is both there and not there, in
compliance and non-existent.
At some point, this shift will force a
complete rethink of compliance requirements. In our opinion, the sooner
regulation catches up to the current reality, the better. That may not be 2022,
but we should see progress on this path.
-- Thomas Johnson, CISO, Deft
Cloud brings a new standard of
security - but nothing is 100% safe
Two things that are true now will continue to
be true in 2022.
- Security
won't be a nice-to-have. It will be a minimum viable requirement for every
organization.
- A completely
secure environment is not possible. All the planning in the world can be
undone by a bored employee trying to watch YouTube.
This is not to say there's reason to despair.
Cloud continues to bring a higher standard of security to organizations of all
sizes and levels of sophistication. The first step to protection will continue
to be simplification and automation.
This is another area where AI and machine
learning will continue to come into their own. The complexity of environments
today can only be handled through automation. Containerization and
Infrastructure as Code both help to reign in sprawl. Together, they deliver
management and observability in previously unimagined ways, mitigating risks
associated with modern environments.
AI and machine learning will also help
organizations move from reactive response to proactive identification, finding
threats in time to stop or reduce them. The tools available to an organization
with a perfectly average AWS or Azure setup are miles beyond what they could
afford to build in-house, and all available pay-as-you-go.
-- Eric Dynowski, Co-Founder and Chief
Solutions Officer, and Thomas Johnson, CISO, Deft
An infrastructure talent shortage
squeezes everyone
Hiring the absolute best-of-the-best cloud talent
isn't easy. But it's a breeze compared to finding an experienced network
engineer.
More than a decade of everyone chasing cloud
as the latest and greatest has emptied out the talent pool for data centers.
We're lucky enough to have a deep bench, but as organizations look to
repatriate cloud, they're going to struggle. The brain drain is making it hard
to find the talent to keep workloads in-house - organizations who do will risk
a single exit wiping out institutional knowledge.
The amount of new blood going into learning
Cisco, core networking, and all of these skills is a droplet compared to the
cloud. You see traditional firms acqui-hiring talent to round out their skills
as much as their solution portfolio. All the focus on the cloud has obscured a
reality: The biggest apps aren't there. Dropbox, Reddit, Apple, and - perhaps a
less strong example recently - Facebook. A traditional cloud platform just does
not work for applications of this scale. Look in the right places, and there's
real opportunity to do cutting edge work in data centers, no matter the size of
your organization.
-- Jordan Lowe, Co-Founder and CEO, and Daniel
Brosk, Co-Founder and COO, Deft
The distributed workers who
remain increase demands
The bad news: Distributed workforces put you
in competition with literally everyone for the best talent. The good news:
People have opportunities to level up their skills like never before. The
access to broadband, to resources, to research, to education - it's just
exploding. Anyone who takes advantage can essentially chart their own career.
As employers, we need to embrace equating
success with personal and professional learning and growth. It's on us to give
our team members the agency to pursue the knowledge that interests them and
support this development. You're not selling a job anymore. You're selling a
story of purpose and personal growth. Sell a good one, and you can attract
talent capable of innovating faster than ever before.
-- Daniel Brosk, Co-Founder and COO, Deft
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