Keeping up with Leaders
in Cloud Transformation?
The business case for cloud
www.commsbusiness.co.uk CLOUD SERVICES / SOFTWARE
There appears to be no slowdown in the number of applications being developed and taken up by business in the
form of a cloud-based consumption, ‘as a Service’ model so what should we look forward to in the market this year
transformation is clear. Flexible,
on demand and autoscaling
infrastructures are far better at
supporting the ever-growing need for better
and faster business insights. Traditional
architectures, with huge xed costs data
centres, under-utilised computing and
communications infrastructures and large
operations functions are fast becoming unt
for purpose.
So says Nick Weisfeld, Director of PwC
UK who adds that ‘business leaders see cloud
computing as a key priority’.
Weisfeld, while addressing the nancial
sector but with comments that could be
applied across the business piste, observes
that amongst the leading cloud adopters
there are notable similarities.
“Many have technology leaders who come
from strong engineering backgrounds, often
with experience across multiple industries.
Because of this, they know only too well how
much time and eort it can take to purchase
hardware, install it into data centres, ensure
the operating system is compliant and
controlled, and deploy code.
e time spent on these activities takes
developers away from what they are on the
ground to do – to write code that build the
applications of the future. is, combined
with the cost of running traditional onpremise
data centres and the vast operations
teams required to support them, is steering
CIOs and CTOs to consider new approaches
to delivering applications and infrastructure.”
As the traditional role of the CIO keeps
evolving, 2019 promises higher pressure on
them to deliver IT solutions that will meet
the expectations of customers, partners and
employees.
According to IDC, almost half of IT
spending was cloud-based in 2018, reaching
60% of all IT infrastructure and 60-70%
of all software, services and technology
spending by 2020.
Asokan Ashok, from the Forbes
Technology Council, says that it is imperative
for CIOs to see cloud computing as a critical
element of their competitiveness, not just as
a cost that needs to be carefully managed.
In 2019, CIOs will have to balance the
capabilities of the newest cloud technology
while focusing on security.
Business magazine Forbes says there are
three trends in cloud computing that CIOs
should prepare for in 2019:
The number of cloud services and
solutions (SaaS, Paas, IaaS) will continue
to rise
ere will be an explosion of new cloud
services and solutions, and here are some
stats to prove it.
• Subscription-based software-as-a-service
(SaaS) will grow at an 18% CAGR by
2020, according toBain & Company.
• Investment in platform-as-a-service (PaaS)
will grow from 32% in 2016 to 56% in
2019, making it the fastest-growing sector
of cloud platforms, according toKPMG.
• e infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)
market is predicted to reach $72.4 billion
worldwide by 2020, according toGartner.
If we judge by the current cloud
computing trends, the number of cloud
solutions in public and private sectors will
further expand in 2019. Forbes expects to
see more organisations take advantage of the
simplicity and high-performance the cloud
guarantees.
More businesses will opt-in for hybrid
cloud solutions
Making a full transition to the cloud has
proved more challenging than anticipated,
so here is where hybrid cloud solutions will
play an important role. 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 eciency and eectiveness of
cloud solutions.
e 2016 State of the Cloud Survey from
RightScale indicates that a business using the
cloud will access at least six dierent clouds.
ese clouds could be multivendor systems
(aka AWS, IBM, Google) or a blend of
private and public clouds. With the adoption
of the cloud at its peak, organisations need to
understand the advantages and disadvantages
of each of the clouds before making a
decision that best suits their businesses.
With GDPR, cloud security will become
more confusing
Security will continue to be an issue with
cloud technology, especially now with the
introduction of the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR). Given the advantages of
cloud computing, many businesses will likely
rush into it without serious consideration of
the security implications.
According to Gartner, “rough 2020,
99% of vulnerabilities exploited will
continue to be ones known by security and
IT professionals for at least one year.”
In 2019, companies will have the dicult
task to ensure that their data practices fully
comply with the requirements of GDPR.
Driven by digital transformation, we will
see more and more enterprises move to the
cloud this year, which means cybersecurity
threats will increase as well.
83% of enterprise workloads will be
in the cloud by 2020 - 41% of enterprise
workloads will run on public cloud
platforms while another 22% will be
running on hybrid cloud platforms.
Forbes says that cloud compliance
under GDPR it is not going to be an
easy task. Results from a recent survey
done by Commvault showed that only a
small number (12% of the 177 global IT
organisations surveyed) understand how
GDPR will aect their cloud services. ese
results raise the assumption that companies
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