The cloud has a rich history of continual improvements. 2019 will usher in some fairly significant ones that enhance capabilities, simplify operations and reduce costs.

Five Major Trends That Guide His Cloud Predictions For 2019:

1. Advances in Technology Will Make the Cloud Substantially More Suitable for Critical Applications

IT staff now have become more comfortable with the cloud for critical applications. Their concerns about security and reliability, especially for five-9’s of uptime, have diminished substantially. Initially, organizations will prefer to use whatever HA failover clustering technology they currently use in their data centers to protect critical applications being migrated to the cloud. This clustering technology will also be adapted and optimized for enhanced operations in the cloud. At the same time, cloud service providers will continue to advance their ability to provide higher service levels, leading to the cloud ultimately becoming the preferred platform for all enterprise applications.

2. Dynamic Utilization Will Make HA and DR More Cost-effective for More Applications, Further Driving Migration to the Cloud

With its virtually unlimited resources spread around the globe, the cloud is the ideal platform for delivering high uptime. But provisioning standby resources that sit idle most of the time has been cost-prohibitive for many applications. The increasing sophistication of fluid cloud resources deployed across multiple zones and regions, all connected via high-quality internet working, now enables standby resources to be allocated dynamically only when needed. This will dramatically lower the cost of provisioning HA and DR protections.

3. The Cloud Will Become a Preferred Platform for SAP Deployments

As the platforms offered by cloud service providers continue to mature, their ability to host SAP applications will become commercially viable and, therefore, strategically important. For CSPs, SAP hosting will be a way to secure long-term engagements with enterprise customers. For the enterprise, “SAP-as-a-Service” will be a way to take full advantage of the enormous economies of scale in the cloud without sacrificing performance or availability.

4. Cloud ‘Quick-start’ Templates Will Become the Standard for Complex Software and Service Deployments

Quick-start templates are wizard-based interfaces. It employ automated scripts to dynamically provision, configure and orchestrate the resources and services needed to run specific applications. Among their key benefits are reduced training requirements, improved speed and accuracy. Not forgetting the ability to minimize or even eliminate human error as a major source of problems. By making deployments more turnkey, quick-start templates will substantially decrease the time and effort it takes for DevOps staff to setup, test and roll out dependable configurations.

5. Advanced Analytics And AI Will Be Everywhere and in Everything, Including Infrastructure Operations

Advanced analytics and artificial intelligence will simplify IT operations and improve infrastructure. Finally, it would help application robustness, and lower overall costs. Along with this trend, AI and analytics will become embedded in HA and DR solutions. As well as cloud service provider offerings to improve service levels. With the ability to quickly, automatically and accurately understand issues and diagnose problems across complex configurations, the reliability, and thus the availability, of critical services delivered from the cloud will vastly improve.

Concluding his cloud predictions for 2019, according to Melnick, “2019 is set to be an exciting year for the cloud with new capabilities and enhancements further driving migration to the cloud.  With these new improvements, built atop an already-solid foundation, the cloud may well achieve that long-anticipated tipping point where it becomes the preferred platform for a majority of enterprise applications for a majority of organizations.”

SIOS Technology Corp.‘s president and CEO Jerry Melnick’s cloud predictions for 2019 is reproduced with permission from SIOS

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