For all who need to keep up with current market developments, cloud computing has become a natural part of everyday IT operations. This is especially true for multinational companies, but not less for medium-sized companies. As a result, their requirements for cloud providers are growing rapidly. More and more cloud users are looking for scalable services, professional cloud consultants and multi-cloud technology.
Gartner, a well-known IT market research company, has integrated cloud trends. Thus cloud computing is immediately ahead of widespread productive use. Findings from Gartner Gregor Petri analysts: Cloud technology is the main choice today - not just one of the many choices of IT infrastructure. Nearly 90 percent of organizations and businesses that already use cloud services build cloud-first strategies.
Here are important developments that you should not ignore: 10 Cloud Trends 2019.
1. Security first! AI provides data security in the cloud
With the rapid growth of business applications in the cloud, the amount of sensitive data also increased dramatically. More than a quarter of all company data already exists in the cloud today - a big incentive for cyber criminals! Critical vulnerability is among many cloud providers, especially with a variety of as-a-service collaboration tools that help businesses improve their efficiency and significantly improve customer relationship management. The interface to various communication channels is still not sufficiently protected. This starts with a basic configuration error on the Platform as a Service application. Additional pressure on data security is carried out by the European Union Data Protection Regulations, which came into force in May last year.
In 2019, choosing the right provider is one of the most important cloud trends. As a responsible IT manager, you must look for certified data security here. Only an external consultant independent audit of all aspects related to cloud-based infrastructure infrastructure that can provide the security needed for sensitive company data for your organization. C5 endorsement from the Federal Office for Security in IT (BSI) sets the standard here. In 2019, current developments in artificial intelligence (AI) will also find their way to cloud security. The self-learning process automatically recognizes when unusual network traffic is used, so that unacceptable data streams can be avoided.
2. Artificial intelligence in the cloud becomes the standard
Not only in the area of AI data security is an important part of the cloud. As such, the importance of AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) will continue to grow, making Analytics on a standard scale to automatically identify requirements in the company's IT landscape. This technology will achieve the maturity of the final market - clearly recognizable because more and more new providers are emerging in this market segment. Of course, traditional predictive analysis tools are needed to manage complex multi-cloud infrastructure. But that is precisely why intelligent operations in IT management are standard in operating functions.
3. Multi-Cloud wins
The use of several different cloud services is standard in many companies. As a result, multi-cloud edge management will be even more important this year and become a key business asset: multi-cloud management tools organize and integrate many multi-end cloud landscapes. It is this endpoint that provides mission-critical, processing data that provides critical insight and decision support for business management.
4. The service platform replaces isolated individual projects
In companies, digital transformation creates solutions that almost perfectly represent individual business processes. However, through this replica, the company did not develop further. For this reason, service platforms are on the rise, which on the one hand allows the implementation of fast solutions for use cases and, on the other hand, offers solutions for many additional use cases. This significantly reduces the development efforts needed for new solutions. Specialist departments can independently develop their application programs on service platforms or even model them themselves. The interface to other enterprise cloud applications provides interoperability.
In the company's digital transformation, it becomes clear that many individual projects are too far from IT solutions that are important for achieving company goals. Although customer needs must be the center of attention, in practice, for example, it depends on supplier extranets or interfaces that are missing in the customer's application. Big data is generated at these points, but this data is often incompatible with your own IT solution, which is actually the company's DNA.
In addition, each of the isolated projects mentioned above often produces processes that do not really advance the company or bring tangible benefits to customers. This problem is increasingly solved in Cloud Trends 2019.
5. Artificial Intelligence designates digital content
Especially in industrial production companies, more and more digital assets are created. B. Blueprints, photos or documents. Here, digital asset management solutions help manage and use assets effectively. To share this content with customers and affiliates, the most useful cloud solution. The discovery of assets that is fast is directly related to the quality of related keywords. Even if the indexing of new assets is done manually in accordance with predetermined standards, in practice often new aspects are created, which are then searched but nothing is found. Third party services that are key assets are often too general. This is once again Artificial Intelligence.
6. Cloud computing will increase the agility of SMEs in 2019
Even in SMEs, cloud services are increasingly being used. This development will be driven by additional aspects in 2019: small and medium enterprises will only be competitive if they react flexibly to changing markets, offer better customer service, score points with innovation and act more aggressively than larger competitors. All of these features are more easily achieved through cloud services. Big players in an industry often face cloud integration problems when deploying and using cloud services, literally tapping the change management project on the wall. Although many cloud computing tools are available in large companies, they are not used according to business objectives. This weakness can be used by small and medium-sized companies for their competitive advantage, because the barriers to integration are much smaller here - the strategies currently used are increasingly successful. In particular, SMEs will benefit on several occasions from the introduction and use of cloud technology.
7. Cloud management replaces cloud management
In large companies and organizations, there are always a large number of stakeholders who want to have a say in cloud service decisions. Although the company's demand for cloud services continues to increase, at the same time the desires of all stakeholders must be taken into account - which does not always have to go in the same direction: Financial controllers, for example, look at cost-benefit ratios, in turn, devices hard and special management tools. Balancing everyone takes time and effort. The associated risk is that cloud services are used without the knowledge needed in the company.
Here, leading cloud providers see the transition from cloud management to cloud governance as an important core task in the coming year, especially those related to multi-cloud platforms. Complying with cloud standards in accordance with ISO 27017 and ISO 27018 standards not only creates trust in new technologies in organizations, but also creates the basis for using multi-cloud products with increased levels of security.
8. Cloud services as a subscription
Other trends in cloud computing can be seen in scalable resources that allow customers to respond to changing demands on their IT infrastructure. The peak demand for computing power, storage space, and database size must be intercepted separately at any time. That is why many companies introduce subscription-based cloud services, which allow them to respond to short-term needs. However, such subscription models go far beyond the exclusive scalability of cloud platforms. Because cloud providers adapt their service offerings to meet customer needs in a flexible way, a new billing model appears with the name "Cost Management as a Service" or "Solution Architect as a Service". They must facilitate the development and expansion of complex IT architectures.
9. Latest trends: container management
In the field of corporate cloud adoption, container management emerged for the first time on Cloud Trends 2019. With the right container solution, companies can deploy a large number of bundle applications in the production environment. The advantage of this is the option to drop the level of abstraction between the on-premise system and public cloud. For example, container management systems help facilitate interoperability between different cloud worlds and solve integration problems. Such containers can run both on the platform and on the open IaaS platform, and in both environments simultaneously.
At present, the use of container management systems is still in its infancy. Therefore, IT departments must now begin their first efforts with this technique, for. B. Bundles and scroll applications in the Linux environment. We recommend container solutions for companies and organizations directed at the DevOps approach and especially want to build micro-service architectures.
10. Growth through the launch of digital products in the cloud
Their manufacturing operations and sales departments often take a long time to get new product information throughout the company. This is not very helpful for purposeful market research. Information from the sales department often does not reach the company office. What and which sales activities are successful and where markets have problems with product launches - all this information requires shorter reaction times.
A feasible solution to this problem is the launch of digital products in the cloud. All relevant internal departments - from product management, marketing, sales to accounting to the legal department - as well as expanded organizations (regional sales managers, retailers, branch managers, etc.) can be integrated into business processes as equal partners. In this way, the digitization processes are perfect, normalized and accelerated. This process forms a strong basis for growth and profitability.
