One year on from the pandemic, and the events of 2020 have swerved many experts' predictions going onto this year. 

No trend is more relevant and can compare to cloud computing. 

Cloud has been the backbone of our economy whilst the economy has been forced to be shut down and put into a lockdown. Our economy’s infrastructure relies on it, from everything from contact tracing to home delivery services, remote medicine, and working from home all has been revolutionized by cloud services. 

Throughout 2021, we can expect to see the rate of this change accelerate as more businesses get to grips with adopting cloud models, and delivery of data from the cloud to our devices becoming more and more integral to our daily lives. 

So , what does this acceleration in cloud technology mean for all of us business leaders going into 2021?

Here are some of our predictions for the ways in which we can see this playing out over the course of this year:

1. Businesses are demanding Multi-cloud approaches, which will lead to a breakdown of barriers between the top 3 cloud providers

Currently the marketplace’s big cloud providers sit with Amazon, Microsoft and Google who are the ‘big players” in terms of reach. 

While these big players dominate the marketplace with their USPs all consisting of promoting their platforms as a “one stop shop” covering the common organisational needs including cloud products, storage and data.

However with the uncertainty in today’s current climate, it appears that organisations are increasingly demanding a platform that has the model capability to migrate to a hybrid or multi-cloud environment. The main reason for this is because many organisations are using more than just one cloud platform, with many companies typically now using up to 3 different cloud platforms across the board.  

What this means is that there are growing calls for these big providers to create “bridges” between their platforms. 

Of course, this runs contrary to their individual business models, which have been reliant on an ability to upsell their own greater cloud capacity as well as other additional services as their customers’ cycle journey. 

With this new demand, these top 3 providers will see that adopting to be more collaborative with their “competitors” will enable customers to take greater advantage of the fast-growing multi-cloud trend. In addition to this, from a business perspective, organisations will also benefit from a more streamlined process from switching between the cloud platforms when needing to share data for example or when needing to access different software that are compatible with different cloud servers when communicating with partners in their supply chain.

2. Hybrid and on-premise cloud solutions are growing in popularity 

Organisations throughout last year were faced with choosing between a public, private, or hybrid cloud environment which has proved to be challenging. 

Each cloud offers pros and cons when it comes to agility, performance, security, and compliances. While the cloud ecosystem is relatively mature, companies understand that there is no one size fits all solution to this. 

Hybrid or multi-cloud environments, where organisations can pick and choose their individual elements of each service providers' offerings to suit their needs, have grown in popularity, leading to a situation where the top 3 giant providers have begun to reassess their models of delivery, considering a collaborative approach (as explained in point 1).

Amazon and Google, for example, have traditionally been market leaders that relied on upselling their customers' space on their public cloud platforms, whereas Microsoft and IBM have traditionally been more flexible with enabling users to deploy their cloud tools and technologies across their existing, on-premises networks.

Now it appears that these providers have woken up to this growing demand in their customers’ need for different platforms and approaches within each individual organization – for example companies are utilizing public cloud to provide content delivery while storing and processing personal customer data and other controlled information via private or on-premise solutions. 

This need to consolidate these user requirements will be a driving force behind the direction in which cloud services will evolve throughout 2021. 

3. The future will involve employees working on Virtual Cloud Desktops

The typical workstation environment in an office has been revolutionized to where we have all adapted to working from home on our laptops or desktop screens. 

This will mean that organizations will look into taking advantage of “by-the-hour subscriptions” for the time their employees spend working at their machines. 

Whatever cloud subscription they choose to deploy will help to further eliminate the cost of hardware updates and in turn see an overview of any redundant technology to dispose of. 

In practice, this can be used by organisations to increase efficiency across their workforce by ensuring everyone is using up-to-date and synchronized technology. It also benefits security as all devices can be managed in a centralized way, rather than having to make sure everyone on the network is following best practice. 

This flexible functionality means virtual desktop services are likely to become increasingly popular in the upcoming years to come.  

On the other hand, we would love to hear your thoughts on cloud trends for this year. What do you think we all should expect to see change within cloud computing?

At Savant recruitment, we pride ourselves on our consultative approach towards the current market place. 

Savant Technology offers a range of recruitment and search services across Cloud, Salesforce, Transformation & Change, Analytics & Data, Security & Architecture, Development & Testing and Infrastructure & Operations. For more information please visit www.savantrecruitment.com or contact our technology team directly on technology@savantrecruitment.com

Please do not hesitate to get in contact for a consultative discussion on how we can help you recruit top talent. 

We look forward to hearing from you.