Intelligent CIO Europe Issue13 | Page 44

FEATURE: 2019 TECHNOLOGY FORECAST Jake Madders, Director at Hyve Managed Hosting and hybrid computing strategies as IoT and the global network of sensors pile on more data than the average cloud has had to handle in the past. This transition will ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// models that only enterprises could truly deal with the management overheads for. By piecing together the right services from the right suppliers, multi-cloud services are often likely to be the best technical solution for a company. However, multi- cloud often requires a middle service management tier to help remove the pain of the contractual, commercial and support model variations. Managed service providers and the management tool marketplace are continuing to evolve at pace to support this demand and deliver simplicity, making multi-cloud solutions accessible to SME and SMB organisations. In 2019, I expect organisations of all sizes and industry verticals to take steps to leverage the benefits of multi-cloud architectures to drive their Digital Transformation strategies.” Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud were popular themes among these IT experts. Neil Barton, I EXPECT ORGANISATIONS OF ALL SIZES AND INDUSTRY VERTICALS TO TAKE STEPS TO LEVERAGE THE BENEFITS OF MULTI-CLOUD ARCHITECTURES TO DRIVE THEIR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIES. officially crown edge computing as the next big thing. According to a study from IDC, 45% of all data created by IoT devices will be stored, processed, analysed and acted upon close to or at the edge of a network by 2020. In the process, edge computing will take on workloads that struggle on hosted cloud environments, passing the torch over to HCI platforms. “Multi-cloud is one of the most pervasive trends in technology today,” said James Henigan, Cloud and Managed Services Director at Six Degrees. “Historically, this started in some cases by accident rather than through strategic direction and many companies encountered the pain of dealing with multiple suppliers, technologies, commercial, contractual and support 44 INTELLIGENTCIO CTO at WhereScape, commented: “Cloud-first is the new norm. In 2019, large enterprises will fully embrace this stance and will expend considerable resources on creating and maintaining hybrid cloud environments. Alongside this, as businesses modernise their data infrastructure, we’ll also see a move to being automation-first – making automation of data ingestion and processing a standard part of any cloud migration effort. New environments bring fresh challenges and companies making this transition will not only be evolving how they work to best leverage the cloud, they will also be navigating working within an infrastructure where their data resides both on-premise and in different cloud environments. Companies will need to become more agile in how they execute a multi-cloud strategy, so we will see increasing rapid adoption and development of new cloud environments, powered by automation.” The CEO and Founder of Cloudhouse, Mat Clothier, is also looking towards a year of more cloud. He commented: “As more and more enterprises move away from legacy systems and towards a cloud-based future, they will realise that migrating traditional apps is challenging; there is a growing need for the tools that offer portability which may not be possible otherwise. In 2019, [we] will inevitably see more enterprise workloads move to Azure, AWS and Citrix, but what remains to be seen is how many businesses will realise the importance of tools that manage the delivery of these applications across a global network of data centres.” Gregg Mearing, Head of Managed Services at Node 4, had a slightly different prediction for the cloud market next year. He said: “The drive towards AI will become much more of a focus for businesses next year, particularly as companies begin to realise the huge benefits in efficiency when it comes to building and deploying applications in the cloud. Take Microsoft for example; increasingly, its customers are using Azure AI to build apps that are smarter, more intuitive and responsive in order to free up people power and we will see more of this in 2019. Businesses utilising the cloud will do well to leverage the mantra that ‘knowledge is power’ and applying predictive analytics to data that helps drive AI can mean companies can act on it and get ahead of the game. James Henigan, Cloud and Managed Services Director at Six Degrees www.intelligentcio.com