The quest for a Better, Simpler Cloud

Cloud computing has transformed the way enterprises manage and deliver IT infrastructure to meet business needs. The evolution of the cloud as we know it today has evolved over the last three decades, however its dominance and omnipresence has really taken off in the last ten years. While public cloud platforms have significantly transformed the way IT infrastructure is deployed, there is an ever-increasing focus to get more from the cloud.

The early days of the cloud (Cloud 1.0) was largely powered by Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) services and applications. It took a giant leap (Cloud 2.0) with the mass availability of cost effective, scalable Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) services in the last decade. Now there is talk of Cloud 3.0 being built for the mobile workforce of the future and the aspirations seem endless.

Enterprises are pursuing actions in the following areas as the next step in the evolution of their cloud deployments.

• Innovation using cloud-based services and ecosystem
• Increased use of Managed Services and Serverless Architectures
• Hybrid and Multi Cloud deployments
• Cost Optimisation, Automation and FinOps
• Cloud Security, Business Continuity and Resilience

Innovation using cloud-based services and ecosystem

This is probably the most exciting part of the cloud play where enterprises are looking to piggyback on boutique offerings from Tech Startups as well as established public cloud providers to plug and play Innovative solutions into their landscape. These services range from data offerings such as Data-as-a-Service to more complex solutions such as NLP, Image processing, consent management, rating and behavioural scoring capabilities. AI and ML capabilities built on cloud and available on the tap are increasingly democratising the availability of cutting-edge technologies and many enterprises are eager to consume these off the shelf capabilities and managed services.

Increased use of Managed Services and Serverless Architectures

While the focus of early cloud providers was to get workloads off their data centres and move them to the cloud using Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS) components, there has been a move towards adopting managed services and serverless solutions in recent years. Enterprises will continue to adopt serverless architecture, and some of them are rewriting applications using cloud native and containerisation technologies to enhance agility and realise cost and effort savings.

Hybrid and Multi Cloud deployments

Over the past few years both enterprises and regulators have seen excessive dependence on a single infrastructure or cloud provider as a recipe for disaster and taken steps to mitigate risks by mandating adoption of some form of hybrid or multi cloud strategy. Several analysts have estimated that over 80% of large and midsize enterprises have already adopted a hybrid or multi cloud strategy. This number is steadily increasing and a trend of rebalancing workloads across cloud providers is emerging.

Cost Optimisation, Automation and FinOps

While several enterprises had initially seen the cloud as the panacea for all their woes with traditional data centre hosted infrastructure, there is a realisation that cloud services costs are steadily rising and there is a need to develop effective strategies to manage it. Strategies for cost containment that involved siloed approaches involving tinkering of services being used and automation are not necessarily providing the required levels of benefits and enterprises are now looking to adopt more comprehensive disciplines such as FinOps. This is helping enterprises understand their cloud spend and bring about significant changes to their ways of working by bring engineering and finance functions together and collaborating to make the best possible data driven decisions regarding their cloud spend.

Cloud Security, Business Continuity and Resilience

The popular adage “with great power come great responsibility” probably best explains the need to secure and protect both data and IT assets on the cloud. Every few months we hear news of a major data breach or an infrastructure downtime that has impacted large number of users. Regulators have also increased their attention on customer data security, business continuity and resilience and have brought in stringent regulations that enterprises should meet. While enterprises have always focused on these areas for a long time, securing cloud hosted data and applications need tailored solutions and this will continue to be a focus area in the foreseeable future.

In summary, as is true with most technologies, the cloud has come a long way since its inception. While the infrastructure hosting related factors were the prime drivers during early cloud adoption journeys, the focus now is towards using the cloud as the engine to efficiently improve business agility and innovation while responsibly handling customer data. As enterprises continue to evolve to meet business needs, the quest for a better, simpler cloud will only continue to gain momentum.