I am On Cloud – What’s Next?

The last few years has witnessed a tremendous growth in cloud computing. Today 49% of the world’s stored data resides in cloud environments.

Major players like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure are trying to increase their market share, with several new players like Digital Ocean, Linode, and Vultr joining the foray, as they try to solve challenges faced by businesses using traditional software models. From serverless architecture, Infrastructure/Platform/Software-as-Service (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), and containerization, cloud has ushered many new technological trends. Cloud has changed what you can do and how. For instance, Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics has recently introduced a feature that supports monitoring your REST APIs, URLs, and website content every single minute, 24×7. Thereby, alerting you when your application endpoints don’t behave as intended for use. However, this is just a piece of the pie!

So, what lies in the future of cloud computing. Here are my thoughts.

1. Hybrid Cloud Computing

In the past, enterprises have struggled to build an IT infrastructure that is responsive enough to move at the pace of business. A hybrid cloud could be the answer for the future.

Hybrid in this context can mean several things, but it is critical to get into the details to understand the future of cloud computing. On one level it could mean that companies can leverage both public clouds like Azure and AWS, as well as have private clouds.

Several companies and organizations are rushing to move from on-premise to cloud solutions. While others are trying for a hybrid option including some features of the Cloud while continuing with on-premise solutions. Nevertheless, most of the businesses are very comfortable in using and adapting cloud technologies. Just like many other technologies, once you get comfortable, innovation knocks the doors.

Several experts in the field claim that the future of the cloud is a radically different hybrid cloud computing model in which isolated workloads can flex up or down, span multiple public clouds, be moved at any time, and be managed with one set of controls.

In addition to the abilities of Hybrid cloud computing, in the near future cloud providers and solutions could also aim for the best software infrastructure, including authentication, encryption, network segmentation, data management and data integrity across several public clouds.

2. Blockchain Cloud Computing

Blockchain technology gave birth as a form of online banking for cryptocurrency. But has now taken many new forms creating businesses and solutions to customers. Much like the cloud, even blockchain technology has the potential to function in completely decentralized simultaneously hosted computers, which is an added security benefit for blockchain.

Security in cloud solutions have been a concern right from the beginning. Data loss and inadequate data backups, disaster recovery, phishing and social engineering attacks, system vulnerabilities are some of the major issues concerning security in cloud solutions.

Security rules and regulations like the GDPR has impacts on how much you leverage cloud solutions. And several organizations even today don’t give a green signal to have their solutions or data stored completely on the cloud.

In my experience, I have brought up solutions on the cloud. But due to the security regulations like the GDPR; I have also brought down data stored on cloud to on-premise.

But things might be changing in the future of cloud computing. A blockchain company in France named iExec, demonstrated their decentralized cloud alongside their software extensions as a POC (proof of concept) leading to a new form of secure cloud computing.

3. IoT and Cloud Computing

Many businesses have faced difficulties in handling the complexity and sheer quantity of data created by the IoT (Internet of Things) devices. Especially handling real-time data generated by these IoT devices can be one big challenge. Even though IoT has been around in the past from several decades, it hasn’t seen a rise until now due to these challenges.

Fast forward to 2020 – driverless cars, smart elevators, drones for home delivery, robot taxis, and connected trains and parking lots – all of which are the present, could potentially change our future to a great degree.

Over 75 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices anticipated to be in use by 2025 worldwide. Giant companies like Google and Ericsson are constantly investing to make these connected devices safe and usable for the end users thereby improving their Quality of Experience (QoE).

All thanks to cloud computing and advanced technologies Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Virtual Reality (VR). IoT and cloud computing go hand in hand and the future is bright for both! Here’s why.

While IoT generates large amounts of data that help the devices to stay connected, cloud computing facilitates and manages the storage of this data. On top of that, it also helps to effectively navigate and process this data using artificial intelligence algorithms when required by these devices.

With all this ease of use, cloud computing is also welcoming a new concept of ‘NoOperations’.

NoOps is a concept in an IT environment where there is no need for a dedicated team to take care of the underlying infrastructure. This new concept will help developers focus only on the business requirements and leave the infrastructure management and stability of the application to the cloud provider.

IoT along with cloud computing could potentially be the future of data we store and consume.

Concluding thoughts – Cloud Computing for Climate Change

Several studies have found that including cloud computing technologies can lead to a 38% reduction in worldwide data center energy expenditure, compared to what it would be otherwise. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) also reached a similar conclusion. It learned that several big US companies that use cloud computing can save energy costs up to $12.3 billion. Additionally, 85.7 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually are stopped by use of cloud computing. These energy savings are equivalent to 200 million barrels of oil – enough to power 5.7 million cars for a year.

Indeed, technology has the potential to save and ease our lives. But how we use technology to leverage our needs is what matters the most.

What are your thoughts on the future of cloud computing? What cloud providers do you use?

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Nihar is a Senior Software Engineer at Capgemini who’s interests lie around technology, innovation, and new ideas. Her hobbies include photography, blogging, gaming, trying out new recipes, and watching dog videos. Travelling to exotic locations also thrills her.