Cloud Computing has grown to be a force to be reckoned with, and the pandemic has only further strengthened its position. As businesses tried to cope with changing times and navigated through remote workforces while ensuring business continuity and scalability, it is Cloud Computing that served as a backbone by ensuring a smooth transition. Thus it is no surprise that the year 2020 witnessed a remarkable surge in the Cloud budget of more than $330 billion. As more businesses shift to Cloud Computing, it is important to keep oneself abreast of the trends that Cloud Computing is bound to witness in 2021. Read on to know more about the five biggest Cloud Computing trends that 2021 will bring forth.

1. The Growth of Multi-Cloud

Multi-Cloud basically enables users to integrate platforms irrespective of their Cloud provider. This allows businesses to share information with their partners while not worrying about data standards and applications. With Multi-Cloud, when Cloud providers partner with each other, they can capitalize on their strengths and enable faster time to market for their launches. Thus it’s a win-win situation for both the providers and the users. 

However, despite its several advantages, the Multi-Cloud approach does not allow Cloud providers to upsell higher Cloud capacity and their other offerings. Despite this, Gartner predicts that 80% of customers will be adopting Multi-Cloud into their Cloud strategy.

2. Integration of Artificial Intelligence

Cloud experts believe that integrating AI into Cloud Computing could further revolutionize the latter and help utilize its full potential. A strong AI engineering strategy could ensure that AI projects don’t fail by improving the performance, interpretability, scalability, and reliability of AI models. 

Integrating AI would help businesses to streamline their processes and automate repetitive tasks. Thus by helping businesses be more efficient and insight-driven, AI could help them considerably increase their cost-savings. Developers working with low budgets can leverage Cloud Computing services such as PaaS or IaaS to completely utilize the benefits of AI. Thanks to its numerous benefits, the global Artificial Intelligence market is expected to reach $267 billion by 2027.

3. Increasing Need for Data Security

Cloud Computing does open the door to new possibilities and innovations. However, it also comes with the risk of data security breaches. The State of Cloud Security Report of 2020 states that almost 70% of organizations hosting data or workloads in the public Cloud have experienced a security incident in the last year. Thus, improving data security is definitely the need of the hour. With Cloud providers placing more emphasis on data security, 2021 will witness security technology being an engineered-in component of the Cloud with fewer risks and simpler configuration options.

4. The Move to Edge Computing

Reports by Forrester suggest that this year will witness the emergence of new business models that facilitate the deployment of edge, and components such as rapid AI and ML integration into the Cloud will increase the number of edge use cases and push Cloud towards the edge. 

Simply defined, ‘Edge’ is a computing model that reduces the data source distance, and in turn, optimizes internet devices and web applications. Forrester also predicts a shift of Cloud strategies toward the edge in the next three years to improve connectivity and innovation.  Edge vendors are also predicted to trim 5 points from public Cloud growth in 2021.

5. The Ascent of Cloud-Native 

With the rise of Multi-Cloud, there will also be a surge in the adoption of Cloud-Native technologies to optimize processes. The Cloud-Native stack includes Serverless Computing, Containerization, and Orchestration Platforms. The Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud report named Serverless as one of the top five fastest-growing PaaS Cloud services. Another very significant Cloud-Native capability is Containerization. With the advent of Kubernetes, the use of containers has increased in the Private Cloud as well. In addition to this, IDC predicts that 95% of the new microservices will be deployed in the containers by 2021.

The world of Cloud Computing is highly innovative, and hence the trends of 2021 are not limited to the ones that we have discussed in the blog post. However, we can be sure of the fact that the digital transformation wave that has been sweeping around industries is not going to wane anytime soon. As to Cloud Computing, the spending on Cloud services keeps increasing, and Gartner predicts the worldwide end-user spending on Public Cloud services to grow from $257.5 billion in 2020 to $304.9 billion in 2021. The disruption caused by COVID-19 has further pushed businesses using Cloud services to increase their Cloud spending and consequently has painted a brighter future for Cloud Computing.

By,
Amritha Nampalat
Marketing Executive, RapidValue

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