Top 5 Cloud Trends in 2019 – Cloud management being the primary focus

In the age of digital transformation, a significant number of organizations are migrating to the cloud environment. Leaders and executives are integrating cloud into their business strategy. Recently, Gartner published research that public cloud revenue will take a leap of 17.3% in 2019 to a whopping $206.2 billion.

While cloud computing is gaining popularity in various applications, some major significant trends like cloud cost management, hybrid cloud etc. are taking place on a larger scale.

Here are five major trends that you should keep under your radar:

1.   Adoption of Cloud Technology

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are diverse solutions available for organizations to choose according to their business operations. The exponential increase in the adoption of these services is because of its flexibility, scalability, higher performance agility, cost saving, and automated security. This trend picked up the pace in late 2018 is going to be an eye-catching cloud trend in 2019.

Here is how to choose the most suitable cloud for your infrastructure.

2.   Cloud Cost Management

Cloud cost management is the most concerned issue for organizations that have switched to cloud or undergoing migration. One of the key findings of a global survey shows that 43% of IT leaders have trouble curating cloud management strategy. Keeping up the pace with emerging cloud services, 57% of IT leaders have surpassed their cloud budget.

To prevent this, enterprises can incorporate cloud and cost optimization toolset to track oversized or orphaned resources. Another approach is to use an cloud management platform. This acts as a front-end interface between users and public clouds and allows enterprises to implement a buying and resource tracking process in order to govern and acquire apt resources.

Also read: Why Cost Management for your Cloud is Beyond Essential?

3.   Hybrid Cloud Solutions

Rapid adoption rates of cloud services unfold the diverse technology and service models. Majority of organizations plan to integrate a hybrid cloud strategy to grasp security and customization of private cloud for various applications; while benefiting with the cost reduction of public cloud wherever required. Such hybrid solutions provide leverage to organizations to migrate at their own requirements. It is a clever solution and going to be a popular cloud trend in 2018.

Adoption Rate of different types of clouds i.e. hybrid, public and private as of 2018.

4.   Automation – the most thriving trend

Organizations are realizing cloud as the need of the hour. But at the same time managing huge data and different applications can be hectic and can lead to repetitive tasks. Automation is the answer to this. In 2019, enterprises will be requiring cloud tools to automate cloud management.

Automation can provide predictability around the creation and instantiation of cloud resources. This will help organizations cut down on cloud bills or forecast the cloud bills based on resources required. Cloud visibility & monitoring platforms will be required for public cloud functions such as auto-scaling. This is so because autoscaling can lead to exceeding cost budget.

Earlier, monitoring tools and platforms are not designed to elasticity around workloads. They are designed for traditional data centers which have limited resources.  On the other hand, newer platforms can monitor dynamic cloud environments and spot variances from predicted spend. Tools that can automate cloud architecture will be helpful in smoothing adoption of the cloud environment. Automation is the key to save cost and time and eliminate manual processes such as sizing, backup tasks etc.

5.   Cloud Security

Cloud technology is leading to numerous possibilities for innovation in businesses. But cloud security is still a concern that is often left untouched. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is pushing organizations and big players in cloud computing to focus on safe and secure data practices. Organizations switching to the cloud environment are using platforms for sensitive data too. So, it is of the highest importance to complement cloud infrastructure with appropriate security and backup solutions to keep all the data secure.

Here is a list of 18 best practices to help strengthen your cloud security posture in 2019.

Conclusion:

The last few years have been a period of evolution for cloud technology. The trends mentioned above surely tells about the concern of organizations and what will be the major developments that we can expect in 2019. Cloud technology is evolving at an exponential rate and increasing adoption of this technology brings in a lot of boon and bane along with it. Get a head start by avoiding the forthcoming troubles by using a cloud management platform atop your infrastructure.