Omni-cloud takes over from multi-cloud

Last year, we predicted that multi-cloud would remain the leading way in asset deployment in the world as organizations embark on the routine deployment of workloads across different areas. However, as we usher in an era where applications become more portable, and compute time as well as data integration platforms get streamlined, multi-cloud slowly become omni-cloud. In 2020 as vendors form alliances, we might start looking at omni-cloud.

Security concerns will be top of the agenda

The S3 bucket faults in AWS, which resulted in data breaches last year, was an eye-opener that highlighted the need for security in cloud platforms at the enterprise level. Going into the future, cloud leaders will invest in their native security while cloud management providers will build or purchase security capabilities. This was evident last year when VMware acquired Carbon Black to boost its security, management, container products and virtualization. Heading into 2020, businesses will stop asking whether a cloud provider is secure. Instead, they will focus on improving their security and compliance posture.

Cloud-native convergence will come of age

In 2018, Google released Istio, an open-source service. This together with AWS Mesh enterprise service, signifies a potential advancement of enterprise mesh services in the future. These signs were evident in 2019 as technology continued to mature, and organizations started seeking proper ways to manage the complexity of traffic, enforcement of access policy and aggregation of data. The market will increasingly mature as cloud providers ensure customers become independent. Service meshes according to Forrester, will enhance visibility and security and will see the rise of new programming models. 2020 will see efforts to simplify the process of application development and deployment as seen in 2019, where developers turned their focus on technologies that provided interoperability and consistency across different platforms.

Private cloud repatriation will get real

As companies continue being enthusiastic about moving to the cloud, the public cloud is slowly waning as workloads increase. This has resulted in enterprises bringing their resources back in-house. A report by 451 Research on cloud repatriation stated that 20% of companies that were surveyed noted that cost had driven them to relocate from public clouds to private clouds. As such, cloud service providers have been helpful in their quest to develop solutions that make repatriation to the private cloud easy and visible. Accordingly, many companies are now taking advantage of these aspects as they seek to familiarize themselves with the benefits of private cloud environments. Although this is the case, it does not mean that the grand entry of private clouds into the equation will reduce the speed of migration to the public cloud. Instead, it will help in the smooth flow of traffic allowing multidirectional traffic, enhance performance and cost savings in the end. This availability of both public and private clouds and ease of repatriation will enable an increase in hybrid clouds.