As another year comes to close, we’re already looking ahead to what’s in store for us in 2019.
The technology trends that we heard so much about in 2018 will largely continue throughout the next year and into 2020, according to multiple forecasters at Forbes, Gartner and elsewhere: subscription offerings “as a service,” security concerns tied to new GDPR regulations and the push for hybrid cloud. This list of trends is not exhaustive by any minds. You will also hear about quantum computing, democratized AI, digitalized ecosystems, do-it-yourself biohacking, blockchain and IoT.
As a premier managed service provider in San Diego, we are constantly analyzing technology trends and how they might impact your business:
Everything being offered “as a service”
The subscription offerings started small: software-as-a-service (SaaS), followed by infrastructure and platform as a service (IaaS and PaaS, respectively). In the next year, we will continue to see an explosion of new cloud services and managed solutions, and here are some stats to back it up.
- Subscription-based SaaS will grow at an 18% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) by 2020, according to Bain & Company. Gartner expects SaaS to reach 45% of total application software spending by 2021.
- Investment in PaaS will grow from 32% in 2016 to 56% in 2019, making it the fastest-growing sector of cloud platforms, according to KPMG.
- Research giant Gartner predicts that the IaaS market is set to explode to $67.4 billion worldwide by 2020, more than double the $30 billion recorded in 2017.
It’s no wonder that this trend is continuing. The availability of affordable, on-demand and easily provisioned IaaS has essentially eliminated the need for many organizations to build and operate their own datacenters. The growing portfolio of SaaS offerings has also enabled organizations to directly procure solutions with little or no assistance from IT, eliminating the need for upfront capital and reducing the lag time from decision to value.
GDPR security concerns
It’s no surprise that security will continue to be an issue with cloud technology, especially now with the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR is a four-letter word that has been evoking fear and panic for months now, and while this may be a European regulation, the impact is being felt around the globe, especially in the United States and Canada. Given the advantages of cloud computing, many businesses will likely rush into it without serious consideration of the security implications or how GDPR is involved. More enterprises in the cloud mean the cybersecurity threats will increase as well, so security and compliance services are going to be in demand.
However, cloud compliance under GDPR is not going to be an easy task. Results from a survey done in December 2017 by Commvault showed that 89% of the 177 global IT organizations surveyed admit to still being confused by key elements of the regulation, revealing considerable gaps between current knowledge, and the required fundamental implementations required to establish a data management strategy to enable GDPR compliance. This raises the assumption that companies that use cloud services will be more vulnerable to the ramifications of this regulation.
Companies continue to look for hybrid approach
The benefits of moving workloads to the cloud are widely understood and accepted among enterprises. It’s been widely reported that more than 80% of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2020, with 40% of workloads on public cloud platforms and another 20% on hybrid cloud platforms. Some companies are continuing to resist the trend of moving to the cloud as it seems like a difficult, if not impossible, task. Between keeping everything on premises and moving everything to the cloud comes a middle ground to settle at: hybrid cloud. With hybrid cloud becoming the next major computing platform, IT decision makers can benefit from increased efficiency to flexibility that could meet disparate needs whenever required.
With a hybrid cloud, companies can transition to the cloud at their own pace, with less risk and at a lower cost. In 2019, more companies will choose a hybrid-cloud approach that will allow them to access the efficiency and effectiveness of cloud solutions.
Count on us
You can count on Pointivity to be not only aware of these trends but able to address them. Reach out to us today at 858-777-6950 or email sales@pointivity.com to see how you can benefit from adding something “as a service,” beefing up your security and compliance, or investing in a hybrid solution.
