Where Will Cloud Computing Go in 2020?

Forrester Research published a new research paper exploring how Cloud Computing will change and evolve in 2020. The public cloud market is expected to reach around $411 billion by 2022 so it pays for executives to be thinking ahead to the trends that will shape the market this year.

The research identified 5 key areas to watch:

1. Change in the player landscape; large companies such as IBM and Oracle are likely to focus more on applications and development – withdrawing somewhat from cloud services. Alibaba will join AWS, Microsoft, and Google as a leading supplier of cloud services.
2. SaaS vendors scrapping proprietary platforms; SaaS vendors need to focus on the applications they are offering, not the basic infrastructure of the cloud. It’s likely that more vendors will just use services such as CloudSuite on AWS.
3. High-Performance Computing in the Cloud; HPC is expected to increase by at least 40% in 2020. It has traditionally been quite difficult to dynamically allocate (and reduce) resources fast enough to support HPC, but cloud management systems are now getting smart enough for it to be feasible.
4. Service meshes; applications are being broken down into smaller and smaller components and these microservice groups are being managed using containers – managing many thousands of these simultaneously is a challenge.
5. Cloud management focusing on security; security has always been on the radar for all the cloud management systems, but after the Capital One data breach – which was based on AWS – everyone is now paying far more attention to securing systems and data.

The Forrester research identifies some important trends, not least the creation of a ‘Big 4’ in cloud services. Alibaba is already a major player in China, but it will be interesting to see if they can develop their services in markets such as Europe and the US.

To my mind, the rise in HPC and focus on security are the two important areas to watch. It is becoming possible to do much more with cloud services than ever before and this will lead to more investment and growth, but as more sensitive data and services move to the cloud it will be important to maintain a focus on security – this is one trend that nobody can ignore.