9. Amazon’s expansion into new industries will drive cloud
opportunities to Azure and Google
Amazon’s dominance in the retail space has created a scenario where rival retailers look-
ing for public cloud resources generally steer clear of the market leader. These retailers
will take Azure, Google, anybody but AWS. Expect more of this in the near future as
Amazon invades other businesses, such as grocery, pharmacy and shipping. This will
help rival cloud players, but it will hurt the overall cloud market. Enterprises tend to pre-
fer multi-cloud environments, and with this development, one of the primary options will
be eliminated from their evaluations. The right mix of cloud resources will then be based
more on business issues than on the quality of the feature set. Developers trained on
AWS will be eliminated from certain jobs, and companies will have to train differently –
all because Amazon pushed its way into their marketplaces.
10. IT teams will be smaller – and more localized
Until recent years, rolling out a mobile application across multiple geographic locations
required input from huge teams located in a company’s central office. That is changing.
As more IT processes become automated – procurement, QA, networking, standing up
hardware – the teams that oversee these functions are getting smaller and more local-
ized. This trend will continue. It will eliminate jobs and force remaining team members
into new roles. While this trend will take a while to play out, we will see continuing evi-
dence of teams shrinking and being concentrated in remote locations.
11. Technologists will take more control of their own
destinies
As roles in IT continue to change, technologists will need to take more personal respon-
sibility for their own career development. We are already seeing roles change based on
automation and the influence of the hyperscale cloud providers. This demands that
technologists take inventories of their own skill sets. Without clear visibility into what is
required in the marketplace, the speed at which technologists could be left behind will
be overwhelming. This is about taking ownership of your career and not relying on your
company to give you a growth path. The good news is, the coming year will open up a
wider ecosystem of training for people: everything from YouTube videos, to certifica-
tions, to podcasts, to thought leadership materials such as The Doppler.
WINTER 2019 | THE DOPPLER | 11