Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022.  Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

2022: Readying for Massive Cloud Migration

By Clara Angotti, president of Next Pathway

Many large corporations have been sitting on the sidelines watching as other firms move to the cloud. But they are realizing that they have missed a great opportunity to take advantage of the digital transformation wave.  My prediction is that 2022 will be all about large organizations actively moving their massive legacy workloads (mainframes, data lakes and data warehouses) to the cloud.

While this massive migration to the cloud will be the defining enterprise IT characteristic of 2022, additional overarching trends will include:

• Enormous amounts of revenue will be spent on improving corporate operations to gain competitive advantages and create a better online customer experience.

• Technology risk management will also be a key driver as legacy software and systems support become harder to obtain.

• There will be a continued expansion of remote work technology and practice, such as cloud virtual desktop interface (VDI) and SaaS offerings.

Below is my full slate of predictions for 2022.

Dominance of hybrid work model

COVID will continue to be a concern going into 2022, and while companies will encourage staff to come back to the office, the reality is that most workplaces will lean towards a hybrid model. We will continue to see more improvements in virtual technology that enhance the productivity of teams that are embracing a hybrid work model (some at the office, some working remote). Note: The technology strategy will not be hybrid; users at home and on-site will use virtual technology, such as VDI. It will also support the mobile worker.

Hybrid cloud computing ramps up

This will be the predominant approach for managing corporate infrastructure. The hybrid cloud approach gives customers the flexibility of selecting which workloads make the most sense for a public cloud, and which make the most sense for private clouds. Cross-cloud architecture will become more prevalent as workloads are split between public and private clouds to manage risk.

Multi-cloud vendor strategies will take center stage

There will be no clear winner in the cloud wars. Instead, customers will select multiple cloud vendors to store and manage their cloud platforms. This creates more opportunity for nimble, innovative newcomers. Cloud hyperscale providers, such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft need to take notice and make some moves to encourage large customers to migrate to their cloud platforms.

Cloud providers to extend their offerings

One way cloud hyperscale providers will encourage larger customers to migrate to their cloud platforms will be to expand their offerings to include cloud management services. In part this is because customers will embrace a hybrid cloud strategy (public and private cloud), and, in the context of public clouds, will have contracts with multiple cloud providers. Cloud providers that offer the most compelling pricing model and robust service offerings will win in the long run.

Democratization of data

We’ve been hearing about the democratization of data for some time. But with the movement of cloud computing and faster networks, the notion of everyone being able to access and use data, regardless of technical know-how, will become a certainty.

Emergence of BI tooling

An emergence of BI tooling will allow users to access cloud data networks. Access to an abundance of data from various sources, combined with BI tooling, will enable powerful predictive analytics. As a result, the market for BI tooling will grow by 40%.

Sustainable energy solutions

These solutions will be a big focus in 2022, particularly those that impact climate change. Companies developing renewable energy technology will outperform the market. Sustainability of the cloud should be emphasized –  when companies migrate to the cloud, they eliminate older, on-prem or outsourced higher energy consuming workloads and therefore become more energy efficient.

More adoption of smart, wearable devices

We will see more people adopt the practice of wearing smart devices that track our health and integrate with lifestyle choices and health goals. The focus will be on disease prevention, maintaining a healthy lifestyle and living longer and healthier lives.

Hot topics that will ascend/gain greater traction

Cybersecurity will continue to be a hot topic, as organizations look to prevent data breaches and attacks and secure physical servers and cloud platforms.

The economics of cloud computing vs. on-prem will ascend as a hot topic as large corporations will be under pressure to eliminate costly legacy workloads to self-fund cloud migrations and minimize the transition cost of overlapping legacy and cloud workloads.

Trends that will fall out of favor

Smart devices that act as virtual assistants at home and at the office will fall out of favor. With the heightened sensitivity to profiling and security breaches, these devices will decline in use.

Blockchain, the digital accounting record, has not lived up to its promise and certainly has not fulfilled its over-rated expectations. It will not replace existing financial systems used by banks to any significant degree.

This may surprise some, but we also believe that there will be a massive corporate exodus away from those social media platforms that are not transparent and promote hate.

Predictions from 2021

Making predictions in the technology sector is difficult, as this sector  is so easily influenced by factors such as global economics, health matters, political and world events.

However, as we predicted at this time last year, we did see a strong movement to cloud computing, driven in part by the pandemic, but also due to the emergence of innovative companies that are building better tooling, platforms, and services to assist in the migration to the cloud. Other past predictions around the use of data to manage climate change have been (sadly) slower to come to fruition.

Predictions will often paint a picture of what we wish for, a change we hope to see for a better future, not necessarily what will happen.

Looking ahead to 2022, we hope for a better world, a more peaceful existence, more productivity, healthy lifestyles, and easier ways to work, purchase goods and receive services.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Clara Angotti has over 25 years of technology management experience. As President, Ms. Angotti is focused on Next Pathway’s mission of helping customers automate the end-to-end challenges their experience when migrating applications to the cloud.
 
From 1993 to 2000 she was the VP of Sales/Marketing for Sage Information Consultants, a technology consulting firm focused on providing services based on the Microsoft platform. After her management contract was completed with the acquiring company, Ms. Angotti co-founded M Systems Group (M) in February 2002. In 2005 M Systems Group’s success caught the attention of several multi-national firms and was acquired by Bell Canada in July 2006.
 
Among her accomplishments, Ms. Angotti has been a three-time finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Ms. Angotti is also a two-time recipient (2011 and 2018) of the prestigious Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100™ Award by the Women’s Executive Network.
 
At the 2012 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards, Ms. Angotti was awarded the prestigious PROFIT Award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship, which is awarded to an individual who has launched one or more successful companies, has a proven track record of growth and profitability, and who is a role model to other entrepreneurs.
 
Ms. Angotti received her Honours Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto in 1988. She is active in several charities and art organizations in Toronto, and currently sits on the Board of Trustees for the Hospital for Sick Children, and the Board of Governors for Branksome Hall.