Predictions for cloud are many and varied for 2016. The jury is still out on whether cloud is mature or mainstream, but there is agreement on widespread adoption.
Cloud has been helping IT departments become more strategic in 2015, so they spend less time on day-to-day issues, says Venugopal Lambu, Vice President and Global Head of Markets, Infrastructure Services, Cognizant. "Cloud adoption has gained wider enterprise acceptance across complex and hybrid models (public, private cloud). It is becoming the board agenda and hence when choosing to move to cloud, CIOs/Heads of IT are involved, also in some cases CFOs, CMOs, Heads of Security and business heads are getting involved," he said.
"Business heads are looking for superior time-to-market, agility, and response to industry events and seasonality of demand bursts on the cloud, along with the ability to address compliance and regulatory requirements...This is further strengthening IT’s position as a ‘business enabler’ than just a ‘business supporter’."
Companies began embracing cloud concepts with a vengeance in 2015, says SolarWinds. "The complete adoption of virtualisation, as well as investigation into cloud and other strategies, is far more advanced than expected—particularly amongst small-medium businesses. Making applications truly mobile is redefining how companies think about their IT infrastructure," said the Head Geeks* from SolarWinds.
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| Source: Cognizant. Lambu. |
"Business heads are looking for superior time-to-market, agility, and response to industry events and seasonality of demand bursts on the cloud, along with the ability to address compliance and regulatory requirements...This is further strengthening IT’s position as a ‘business enabler’ than just a ‘business supporter’."
Companies began embracing cloud concepts with a vengeance in 2015, says SolarWinds. "The complete adoption of virtualisation, as well as investigation into cloud and other strategies, is far more advanced than expected—particularly amongst small-medium businesses. Making applications truly mobile is redefining how companies think about their IT infrastructure," said the Head Geeks* from SolarWinds.
Microsoft Office 365 and a number of previously ‘untouchable’ infrastructures that were never considered pliable enough to leave data centres are now being housed offsite and it’s an exciting change. Successful implementations of Office 365 have driven more companies to consider the move to offsite locations. The general feeling for portability and software-based configurability of infrastructure is beginning to take off," remarked SolarWinds' Geeks.
A media alert from Brocade concurs. "The migration of old, legacy IP network architectures to New IP networks will accelerate, reaching near-mainstream adoption as enterprises and service providers transform their networks into an open, software-driven platform for innovation and a competitive edge," the company stated.
Going workload-centric
John Roese, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, EMC, said that a new mature approach to cloud will emerge in 2016 where IT will use a portfolio of cloud services with offerings optimised for different application workload types. "For example, the cloud service used to support your SAP workload is different than the cloud service you will use to run your new customer loyalty mobile application," he explained.
"To date, IT has largely been searching for a single cloud service to meet all its needs. This has always been an oversimplification of the technology. As we see cloud move from the deployment to execution stage it will become clear that there are four types of cloud services IT can choose from. Two are based on moving existing ‘second platform’ investments to the cloud and two are based on creating entirely new ‘third platform’ cloud services and infrastructures," he said.
Going workload-centric
John Roese, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, EMC, said that a new mature approach to cloud will emerge in 2016 where IT will use a portfolio of cloud services with offerings optimised for different application workload types. "For example, the cloud service used to support your SAP workload is different than the cloud service you will use to run your new customer loyalty mobile application," he explained.
"To date, IT has largely been searching for a single cloud service to meet all its needs. This has always been an oversimplification of the technology. As we see cloud move from the deployment to execution stage it will become clear that there are four types of cloud services IT can choose from. Two are based on moving existing ‘second platform’ investments to the cloud and two are based on creating entirely new ‘third platform’ cloud services and infrastructures," he said.
Roese named the four types of cloud as:
- On-premise second platform cloud
- Hybridised off-premise second platform cloud
- On-premise third platform cloud
- Off-premise third platform cloud.
"It is likely that enterprises are going to have to adopt a cloud strategy that embraces all four types of cloud services. If they do not have a plan for all four they might find they are running workloads in the wrong cloud environment – whether that is from the perspective of economics, efficiency or regulatory compliance," he said.
Interconnectivity across the different cloud types will be important too. Roese called the concept 'cloud interworking'. "It will be incredibly important for applications to able to access data transparently and securely across the four different cloud platforms. And linked to this will be the degree to which applications can treat off-premise cloud resources in the same way they would on-premise resources. This is highly complex to achieve, but is now possible through the use of technologies like cloud gateways, cloud abstractions such as CloudFoundry and Virtustream xStream, software defined data replication, and advanced data encryption services," he said.
Mohan Veloo, VP of Technology, APAC, F5 Networks, said more workload-centric cloud apps will be supported by developments in the cloud computing ecosystem. "In 2016, we expect to see an acceleration of applications (apps) moving to the cloud as technology matures and public cloud services evolve. Where previously, most of the apps that were moved to the cloud were collaboration-type applications, increasingly we will see more diversity in the range of apps moving to the cloud," he said.
"This will be supported by the improved latency brought about the opening of more data centres in Asia to support growing cloud adoption, as well as a fuller range of enterprise services. Decisions around the cloud will also increasingly be done by the business rather than IT organisation within the enterprise. These factors are leading to the growing importance in the programmability and management of apps and its services."
Data centres evolve
CenturyLink also acknowledges differences in cloud adoption and the need for overarching management of the whole, using 'hybrid IT' as their umbrella term. David Rosengrave, Head of Business Development and Product Strategy, Asia Pacific, CenturyLink, defined hybrid IT broadly as "any mix of outsourced and/or in-house IT services, including data centre colocation, managed services and cloud", and predicted that 2016 will see a further evolution of the data centre and a heightened appreciation of managed services as businesses outsource more.
"With a hybrid IT provider... organisations can identify and establish the optimal mix of existing infrastructure and outsourced services with which to drive agility, modernise their IT environments and maintain competitiveness without over-committing resources on capital expenditure," he said.
Interconnectivity across the different cloud types will be important too. Roese called the concept 'cloud interworking'. "It will be incredibly important for applications to able to access data transparently and securely across the four different cloud platforms. And linked to this will be the degree to which applications can treat off-premise cloud resources in the same way they would on-premise resources. This is highly complex to achieve, but is now possible through the use of technologies like cloud gateways, cloud abstractions such as CloudFoundry and Virtustream xStream, software defined data replication, and advanced data encryption services," he said.
Mohan Veloo, VP of Technology, APAC, F5 Networks, said more workload-centric cloud apps will be supported by developments in the cloud computing ecosystem. "In 2016, we expect to see an acceleration of applications (apps) moving to the cloud as technology matures and public cloud services evolve. Where previously, most of the apps that were moved to the cloud were collaboration-type applications, increasingly we will see more diversity in the range of apps moving to the cloud," he said.
"This will be supported by the improved latency brought about the opening of more data centres in Asia to support growing cloud adoption, as well as a fuller range of enterprise services. Decisions around the cloud will also increasingly be done by the business rather than IT organisation within the enterprise. These factors are leading to the growing importance in the programmability and management of apps and its services."
Data centres evolve
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| Source: CenturyLink. Rosengrave. |
CenturyLink also acknowledges differences in cloud adoption and the need for overarching management of the whole, using 'hybrid IT' as their umbrella term. David Rosengrave, Head of Business Development and Product Strategy, Asia Pacific, CenturyLink, defined hybrid IT broadly as "any mix of outsourced and/or in-house IT services, including data centre colocation, managed services and cloud", and predicted that 2016 will see a further evolution of the data centre and a heightened appreciation of managed services as businesses outsource more.
"With a hybrid IT provider... organisations can identify and establish the optimal mix of existing infrastructure and outsourced services with which to drive agility, modernise their IT environments and maintain competitiveness without over-committing resources on capital expenditure," he said.
Added Lambu from Cognizant: "As companies gain more traction on their digital business agenda, a significant portion of their compute and storage will be on cloud and they will leverage hyperscale data centres optimised for big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile. Enterprises will move their needle towards software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based cloud applications for faster provisioning to businesses...next generation service management will become critical for this new ecosystem."
Securing the cloud
“Cloud servers, for example, will remove some risks relating to the build and configuration of a large numbers of servers and their ongoing maintenance. However, the cloud also allows mistakes to be made at an unprecedented scale and magnitude. A recent error that exposed more than a million healthcare records reminds us that using the cloud without proper cyber security safeguards can result in widespread damage,” said Sanjay Aurora, Managing Director, Darktrace APAC.
"Rather than proactively updating their security software, many companies are increasingly implementing cloud-based security-as-a-service offerings. This is already broadly used in email services such as Gmail. However, security-as-a-service is now being taken on to protect all facets of organisations’ IT infrastructure. Now, with so many IT services being outsourced, cloud-based security is likely to explode," forecast Rosengrave of Centurylink.
"With so many IT services being outsourced, companies considering a hybrid IT approach should look out for providers that can deliver a full spectrum of security products and services, and the ability to deliver comprehensive protection inside the company’s offices, in the data centre, and in the cloud."
"Gartner predicts that by 2018, 25% of corporate data traffic will flow directly from mobile devices to the cloud. As the majority of consumer facing businesses in Singapore go digital, organisations are looking at investing in mobile and cloud security solutions that can help them mitigate risks associated with digital business. The high interest areas around security from organisations in Singapore include security monitoring, identity and access management, advanced threat prevention, IoT security, application security, cloud security and governance, risk & compliance (GRC), among others," said the Head Geeks from SolarWinds.
SolarWinds also said that large industry players such as Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Heroku are likely to create cloud offerings but will need to secure them effectively. "Rushing to get the services to market means they could lack substance and be extremely vulnerable to breaches," the Geeks warned.
"Following the security hacks of 2015, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that during 2016 a cloud service provider will become victim to a breach. The repercussions of a breach of this type will be increased due to the fact that many businesses have been so keen to move to cloud services so quickly that many haven’t invested enough time and money in security protocol and data encryption," they predicted.
Cloud is definitely vulnerable, agreed FortiGuard researchers. Fortinet's threat research division, FortiGuard Labs, makes annual predictions of the most significant trends in malware and network security going into 2016 in its New Rules: The Evolving Threat Landscape in 2016 report. Researchers said: "The Venom vulnerability that surfaced this year gave a hint about the potential for malware to escape from a hypervisor and access the host operating system in a virtualised environment.
"Growing reliance on virtualisation and both private and hybrid clouds will make these kinds of attacks even more fruitful for cybercriminals. At the same time, because so many apps access cloud-based systems, mobile devices running compromised apps can potentially provide a vector for remotely attacking public and private clouds and corporate networks to which they are connected," the researchers said.
Securing the cloud
“Cloud servers, for example, will remove some risks relating to the build and configuration of a large numbers of servers and their ongoing maintenance. However, the cloud also allows mistakes to be made at an unprecedented scale and magnitude. A recent error that exposed more than a million healthcare records reminds us that using the cloud without proper cyber security safeguards can result in widespread damage,” said Sanjay Aurora, Managing Director, Darktrace APAC.
"Rather than proactively updating their security software, many companies are increasingly implementing cloud-based security-as-a-service offerings. This is already broadly used in email services such as Gmail. However, security-as-a-service is now being taken on to protect all facets of organisations’ IT infrastructure. Now, with so many IT services being outsourced, cloud-based security is likely to explode," forecast Rosengrave of Centurylink.
"With so many IT services being outsourced, companies considering a hybrid IT approach should look out for providers that can deliver a full spectrum of security products and services, and the ability to deliver comprehensive protection inside the company’s offices, in the data centre, and in the cloud."
"Gartner predicts that by 2018, 25% of corporate data traffic will flow directly from mobile devices to the cloud. As the majority of consumer facing businesses in Singapore go digital, organisations are looking at investing in mobile and cloud security solutions that can help them mitigate risks associated with digital business. The high interest areas around security from organisations in Singapore include security monitoring, identity and access management, advanced threat prevention, IoT security, application security, cloud security and governance, risk & compliance (GRC), among others," said the Head Geeks from SolarWinds.
SolarWinds also said that large industry players such as Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Heroku are likely to create cloud offerings but will need to secure them effectively. "Rushing to get the services to market means they could lack substance and be extremely vulnerable to breaches," the Geeks warned.
"Following the security hacks of 2015, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that during 2016 a cloud service provider will become victim to a breach. The repercussions of a breach of this type will be increased due to the fact that many businesses have been so keen to move to cloud services so quickly that many haven’t invested enough time and money in security protocol and data encryption," they predicted.
Cloud is definitely vulnerable, agreed FortiGuard researchers. Fortinet's threat research division, FortiGuard Labs, makes annual predictions of the most significant trends in malware and network security going into 2016 in its New Rules: The Evolving Threat Landscape in 2016 report. Researchers said: "The Venom vulnerability that surfaced this year gave a hint about the potential for malware to escape from a hypervisor and access the host operating system in a virtualised environment.
"Growing reliance on virtualisation and both private and hybrid clouds will make these kinds of attacks even more fruitful for cybercriminals. At the same time, because so many apps access cloud-based systems, mobile devices running compromised apps can potentially provide a vector for remotely attacking public and private clouds and corporate networks to which they are connected," the researchers said.
New rules for cloud computing
In 2016, SolarWinds says cloud is no longer the next big thing, but well past the height of its hype cycle. "In 2015, it truly became just another tool in the IT pro toolbox. More importantly, management came to trust it in terms of availability and security, and budget managers discovered the flexibility to scale up or down as required," said the Geeks at SolarWinds.
"In 2016, we’ll see more and more businesses looking to bypass the model of apps simply running in the cloud. They’re already migrating to fully managed services like Amazon RDS and Azure SQL, and away from private Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL boxes. (2016) will bring further experimentation with cloud-native database systems, queues, communication brokers, distributed cache, and other foundational cloud technologies. The possibility for paying only for what you eat is too attractive to miss."
Workday argues that microservices is a better cloud model. "With cloud leading the way, the conversation will now shift to determining the right cloud architectures. While not all cloud architectures are created equal, microservices architectures - where software applications are designed as suites of independently deployable services - will go beyond the realm of consumer Internet designs like Netflix and become the most important advancement in enterprise applications since the shift to the cloud," says Timothy Darton, General Manager, Workday Southeast Asia.
"This next chapter of in-memory data will be the de facto framework for enterprise applications, so customers can keep pace with a real-time analytics environment and technology vendors can deliver on the five nines of availability (99.999%). Technology vendors that do not transition to this architecture will be left behind."
New challenges for cloud computing
As companies go cloud-first in designing new products and services in 2016, Cognizant's Lambu predicted that there will be more oversight for cloud-based processes. "It is critical to form a ‘cloud council’ to review the cloud migrations, security, application portability and procurement processes. Highly regulated industries and fault-sensitive industries will look at ways to make it work in order to stay competitive in comparison with more nimble competitors, though internal change management will slow down a few companies," he said.
"The industry will move towards increasing consolidation of private cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) players and companies will adopt measures to bring ‘user excitement’ through cloud-enabled workplace solutions."
In 2016, SolarWinds says cloud is no longer the next big thing, but well past the height of its hype cycle. "In 2015, it truly became just another tool in the IT pro toolbox. More importantly, management came to trust it in terms of availability and security, and budget managers discovered the flexibility to scale up or down as required," said the Geeks at SolarWinds.
"In 2016, we’ll see more and more businesses looking to bypass the model of apps simply running in the cloud. They’re already migrating to fully managed services like Amazon RDS and Azure SQL, and away from private Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL boxes. (2016) will bring further experimentation with cloud-native database systems, queues, communication brokers, distributed cache, and other foundational cloud technologies. The possibility for paying only for what you eat is too attractive to miss."
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| Source: Workday. Darton. |
"This next chapter of in-memory data will be the de facto framework for enterprise applications, so customers can keep pace with a real-time analytics environment and technology vendors can deliver on the five nines of availability (99.999%). Technology vendors that do not transition to this architecture will be left behind."
New challenges for cloud computing
As companies go cloud-first in designing new products and services in 2016, Cognizant's Lambu predicted that there will be more oversight for cloud-based processes. "It is critical to form a ‘cloud council’ to review the cloud migrations, security, application portability and procurement processes. Highly regulated industries and fault-sensitive industries will look at ways to make it work in order to stay competitive in comparison with more nimble competitors, though internal change management will slow down a few companies," he said.
"The industry will move towards increasing consolidation of private cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) players and companies will adopt measures to bring ‘user excitement’ through cloud-enabled workplace solutions."
*SolarWinds comments were made by the SolarWinds Head Geeks: Patrick Hubbard, the IT Management Geek and Technical Product Marketing Director at SolarWinds. Leon Adato is the Network Management Geek and Technical Evangelist at SolarWinds, Thomas LaRock is the Database Management Geek and Kong Yang is the Virtualization Management Geek.
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