Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Data Growth and Migration Trends Brew a Perfect Storm for 2022
By Sergey Kandaurov, Founder and CTO of Flexify
If cloud computing hasn't
already become an essential component of our global economy, check out this
statistic from Gartner:
by 2025, more than 85% of organizations will embrace a cloud-first approach.
When you consider that cloud storage of business-critical information is
already a US$61B
market, it's easy to see how the market could reach US$390B by 2028. That's a
blistering 26.2% CAGR.
We originally built Flexify
with this trend in mind. Flexify.IO is a cloud storage virtualization and migration solution
that helps customers by simplifying migration and avoiding dependency on a
single cloud storage provider. We believe we are well positioned to serve the
needs of organizations who will find themselves seeking cloud-agnostic
solutions as the following trends accelerate in 2022:
1. Cloud lock-in will be avoided at all
costs. According to a recent study published by the IBM Institute for Business Value,
only 3% of business executives across 29 industries reported using a
single private or public cloud. The majority of enterprises choose a
multi-cloud approach to avoid dependency on a single cloud provider and
for the flexibility to run workloads and store their data where it best
suits their needs. Unfortunately, cloud lock-in is a huge challenge for
business and application developers worldwide. Going forward, the
anti-lock-in sentiment will become more vehement ("Vendor lock-in is
evil!") and the demand for cloud-agnostic solutions will rise.
2. We've just scratched the surface of
the data explosion to come. By
2025, the amount of data stored on cloud servers will surpass 175
Zettabytes, according to IDC. The COVID-19 pandemic already has driven more
people online, and more people from developing countries are becoming part
of the digital economy as telco networks expand. Plus, as 5G rollouts
continue, the anticipated rise in IoT, IIoT and private 5G applications
will have massive data storage implications. Businesses that can better
harness the power of their data will have an enormous advantage over their
competitors, and organizations that can leverage this data could
potentially develop innovative solutions to humanity's most pressing
needs. In 2022, organizations will amplify the search for solutions that
not only store data but also enable access to that data when and where it
is needed.
3. Cloud cost optimization will remain
a top priority. The
massive shift to cloud has been propelled by a value proposition that
includes efficiency, scalability, economics and innovation. However, cloud
costs are skyrocketing. Canalys reports that cloud infrastructure spending as of Q1 of 2021
had grown 35% year on year to reach US$41.8 billion. According to a recent survey by Anodot, 30% of data and analytics professionals
reported nearly a 50% increase in their monthly cloud bills over a
six-month period last year. Sarah Wang and Martin Casado argue in their
treatise "The Cost of Cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox" that "while cloud clearly delivers on its
promise early on in a company's journey, the pressure it puts on margins
can start to outweigh the benefits, as a company scales and growth slows."
It's no wonder then that cloud cost optimization has become a top concern,
with Gartner reporting that 52% of infrastructure and operations leaders
listed "lower costs" as one of their top three goals for 2021.
Cloud
storage is certainly a part of those skyrocketing prices. Fortunately, we're
also seeing commoditization of storage to a certain degree, with many smaller
cloud providers catching up to the storage capabilities of the "Big 3"
hyperscale cloud providers and offering more competitive pricing. Thus, the
flexibility to choose any cloud to store data at any moment becomes a valuable
weapon in the war on skyrocketing cloud costs.
4. Organizations have even more reasons
to migrate data. Data
protection and disaster recovery are two of the key reasons organizations
migrate or duplicate their data on multiple clouds. But there are many
more reasons why data migration is becoming a core cloud functionality,
including the rise in data sovereignty requirements, the need to control
costs, and moving data closer to compute resources and edge devices to
improve performance and reduce lag times. In the coming year, all of these
drivers for data migration services will become more intense, not less.
5. Talent shortages in IT will
necessitate wise resource allocation, driving growth in third-party
solutions. Everest Group
reports that 86% of enterprises view the talent shortage as a key
impediment to achieving their desired business outcomes, especially with
respect to IT and digital enablement skills. With engineers in short
supply, their time is too valuable to waste; therefore, organizations will
focus their IT teams on service delivery and software velocity, rather
than on building capabilities that are already readily available from
third-parties. The market for cloud-agnostic, proven tools that can be
either installed internally or managed as a service will be hotter than
ever in 2022.
I'm looking forward to what
the next year brings. All indications are that the data storage and migration
trends are all moving in the right direction.
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ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Sergey Kandaurov is Founder and CTO of Flexify. Before launching the
company with Sergey Smirnov and Alexey Schepetkov in 2015, he held a series of
product management roles at Acronis, connecting the company's technical teams
and business leadership with customer needs. The Flexify IO core data migration
and cloud storage virtualization product entered GA in 2019, and the company
has steadily gained presence in the multi-cloud storage space since.