As a new year dawns, it marks the perfect time to assess the industry landscape. According to the latest note from Synergy Research, 2018 saw the cloud market hit $250 billion (£196bn) globally, with a 32% annual growth.

While plenty of the critical acclaim goes on the public cloud infrastructure side of the house, the analyst firm posited that all market segments had risen comfortably over the past 12 months.

The wider bucket of infrastructure hardware and software saw particularly impressive growth in 2018, with public, private and hybrid cloud. The leading vendors in this space are the usual suspects in terms of network and infrastructure equipment; Dell EMC, Cisco and HPE, with a note for Microsoft and VMware. In terms of software, enterprise SaaS saw a 30% gain, with unified comms as a service (UCaaS) at just over 20%.

IaaS and PaaS however remained the biggest growth area with an almost 50% gain. This would be considered poor fare compared with previous years, but as Synergy itself noted during the most recent round of financial postings, expecting 100% growth off the bat every time would be optimistic. “[This] is just the law of large numbers kicking in,” said chief analyst John Dinsdale at the time. “You cannot keep on growing at 100% when you reach massive scale.”

The leading cloud providers also continued speculating to accumulate in 2019. As figures from November found, hyperscaler capex hit more than $26 billion, with spending up 53% from the first three quarters of 2017. This represented the largest spend – barring anomalies – since records began.

While spending on cloud services first overtook spend on the hardware and software used to build clouds in 2016, the previous two years has seen that gap ‘widen dramatically.’

“In 2018, cloud started to dominate IT spending in some areas, sucking up potential growth opportunities for non-cloud technologies and services,” said Dinsdale. “Cloud technologies are now generating massive revenues for both cloud service providers and technology vendors and our latest forecasts show that while market growth rates will inevitably erode due to the sheer scale of the numbers, the overall market will double in size in under four years.”

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

The cloud is a vital part of any enterprise infrastructure. The convenience of having a database that can be accessed from any location has dramatically improved efficiency within workforces. While many companies had previously been afraid of making the move, as the open nature of the cloud makes it less secure than on-premise solutions, new advances in cloud security have vastly reduced the number of successful attacks. With 2019 here, it is time to look to the future and predict where the cloud is heading.

Increased enterprise spending will make the biggest public cloud providers even bigger

While there are numerous public cloud providers out there, six stand above the rest. Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, Alibaba and Oracle are the alphas in the cloud provider space and they will only get stronger throughout 2019. The growth of these providers will come primarily from increased revenue in their business services and SaaS services, as well as from new and powerful third-party apps being brought to their respective market stores. Their growth will have the adverse effect of making them a bigger target for malicious attacks and at least one of them will suffer a major breach because of this. However, it will not be enough to slow down momentum. We predict that by the end of 2019, all six will see an increase in profits.

Cloud-based applications will be forever changed by open-source containers

2018 saw the rise of enterprise container adoption with Kubernetes leading the charge. Twelve months ago, Microsoft stated that adoption of Kubernetes on its Azure service had increased by 10x compared to the year before, matching similar reports in 2017 from Google that showed a 9x increase. The open-source nature of Containers provides companies with a lot of freedom to develop secure, scalable and enterprise-ready applications, such as application load balancing and traffic monitoring tools.

There will be a rise in cloud security vendors embracing Kubernetes and other containers for their new solutions in 2019; this will help push containers into the mainstream for any cloud-based application in the future.

DDoS threats will only continue to increase as companies begin adopting multi-cloud

As the cloud becomes a bigger requirement for companies, we will begin to see many adopt multi-cloud strategies. Unfortunately, in doing so, more entry points for hackers to enter the network will become available.

As we have seen in recent years, those with malicious intent will continue to evolve their DDoS threats in order to bring down companies and accomplish their end-goals, whether it be ransomware, cryptomining or something else. This is to be expected. To counter these, many enterprises will adopt next-gen cloud security tools like convergent firewalls and secure service meshes. As the tools of hackers evolve, so must the tools of the industry.

Cloud load balancing to become the glue that keeps the cloud together

Load balancing technology is not new, but as more companies move to both the public and private cloud it has become increasingly vital. Cloud load balancing is more agile, offers greater efficiency and can be easily used with multi-cloud offerings. As the cloud becomes more complex, companies will be forced to rely more on cloud load balancing until it becomes the most important cloud security tool within a company’s SOC. A big reason why cloud load balancing is a great tool is because it offers a wide visibility of the cloud and allows for greater analytics and insights. In addition, it easily integrates with containers and utilises automation to offer instant security. It also integrates easily with the big service providers like Microsoft Azure and AWS, which makes it available to many.

Conclusion

2018 saw the cloud become a vital part of enterprise infrastructure and 2019 will continue to see it become increasingly mainstream. Many of the fear’s businesses had around the cloud have slowly subsided as next-gen security tools have become more available, with proven track records of preventing DDoS and other malicious attacks. But just as the hackers will continue to evolve, so must the companies who need to keep their data safe.

Having customised, open-source tools and containers will become more important, along with a reliance on cloud load balancing to offer full protection of a company’s cloud offerings, whether it be single, hybrid or multi-cloud.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

While a hybrid cloud can ease that transition, designing and deploy that hybrid cloud still offers challenges for organizations concerned about lack of available cloud skillsets within their organization. Managed service providers offer a unique opportunity to fill those gaps and get organizations of all sizes on a hybrid cloud that meets their comfort level, while delivering enhanced benefits for cost, efficiency, agility, mobility, and elasticity.

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Clare Hopping

On-premise or off, you have powerful tools available to maximize the value of your infrastructure and you demand more visibility and operational control. Fortunately, data center management tools keep a vigil on memory contestation, power, thermal consumption, server health, and utilization, allowing better control no matter your cloud’s shape. In this session, learn how Intel software tools enable real-time monitoring and precise management to lower operational costs and optimize infrastructure for today even as you’re forecasting for tomorrow.

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Connor Jones

Google has added a little app expertise to its skillset with the acquisition of DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment). The move will aim for the research firm to help ‘continue to create delightful experiences for developers and operators’, in the company’s own words.

DORA said the company’s positioning was a ‘natural fit’ for Google Cloud with both organisations “known for mutual commitment to the developer and operations ecosystems.”

In a statement, DORA noted: “DORA’s data-driven approach has helped teams leverage automation, process, and cultural change to improve the quality of their software and the quality of their work-life. Google Cloud is beloved for its contributions to the open source community, and is known for its research-driven approach to understanding how developers and operators work, and what makes them successful.”

It’s difficult to argue with that. Google’s mission with regards to openness is evident, and like all the other cloud behemoths there is a panoply of products available for building and running applications – although AWS may quibble at the depth of its competition.

As far as DORA is concerned, its annual State of DevOps report is, alongside an equivalent from software automation provider Puppet, one of the benchmarks of research in the sector. The most recent offering, published in September, found organisations’ initiatives had matured to the extent that a few ‘elite’ performers across industries were becoming apparent.

“The key here is that companies who exhibit all signs of cloud readiness – on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, elasticity and measured service – are significantly more likely to be in the elite group instead of the lowest performers,” this publication put it at the time.

This is the latest example of a large company acquiring consultancy and expertise. Over the past 18 months Hewlett Packard Enterprise bought both Cloud Technology Partners and RedPixie for its cloud consulting arm, acquiring Amazon and Azure skills respectively. It’s worth noting that the most recent DORA State of DevOps report had Google Cloud as its primary collaborator.

“The best, most innovative organisations develop and deliver their software faster, more reliably, more securely, and with higher quality, standing as high performers in technology,” said Dr. Nicole Forsgren, DORA CEO and chief scientist in a statement. “We are excited to join a team committed to delivering research-backed DevOps practices, and we look forward to continuing our work to understand key capabilities, measure value-driven outcomes, and optimise processes to help teams deliver their software as they move to the cloud.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Read more: Why efficient multi-cloud management and DevOps requires transparency

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

At CloudEXPO Silicon Valley, June 24-26, 2019, Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with expanded DevOpsSUMMIT and FinTechEXPO programs within the DXWorldEXPO agenda. Successful transformation requires a laser focus on being data-driven and on using all the tools available that enable transformation if they plan to survive over the long term. A total of 88% of Fortune 500 companies from a generation ago are now out of business. Only 12% still survive. Similar percentages are found throughout enterprises of all sizes.

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The global market for server virtualization technologies has experienced relatively low growth as more CIOs and CTOs consider alternative approaches to support their developer's need for agile IT infrastructure deployment. While some early adopters are experimenting with 'serverless' solutions, the mainstream market is utilising software applications container solutions.

According to the latest worldwide study by 451 Research, the emerging applications container market will continue to expand and be worth more than $2.1 billion in 2019 and more than $4.3 billion by 2022 – that's a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 percent.

Application container market development

When 451 Research first published a forecast on the container market two years ago, there were 125 companies identified in their market analysis. Included in the most recent forecast is an examination of 184 vendors, which represents about a 50 percent increase from the number of vendors in late 2016.

While the revenue contribution from containers for the vast majority of participating vendors is still relatively small, the widespread interest in application container technology remains a defining feature of this emergent market.

Growth in the containers market and ecosystem is being driven by increasing enterprise interest to help application developers move faster, manage infrastructure more efficiently and meet digital transformation goals. That being said, serverless technologies have a similar goal with a cloud computing functions-as-a-service (FaaS) model.

According to the 451 Research analyst's market assessment, about half of enterprise organizations are either using application containers today or planning to use them in the next two years.

"The promise of container technologies to increase developer speed, efficiency and portability across hybrid IT infrastructures, as well as microservices, are all driving growth," said Jay Lyman, principal analyst at  451 Research. "Broader and deeper vendor participation along with increasing enterprise use indicate this market will continue to grow and as that growth continues, consolidation in the market is likely."

The market study also indicates that both startup vendors and established leaders within the enterprise software industry are addressing a variety of container use cases — such as management and orchestration, monitoring, DevOps, IT security, networking and storage.

Outlook for application container innovation

This is not only indicative of the broad applicability of container-based technologies but also highlights how revenue is spread across a diverse vendor landscape. Moreover, the openness of this market may encourage a variety of additional vendors to enter the container market and fuel further growth.

"The industry is already seeing these mergers and acquisitions that include IBM’s recent acquisition of Red Hat and VMware's purchase of Heptio. These recent deals demonstrate how the container market is ripe for more consolidation as well as growth," added Lyman.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

Dave Mitchell

Excellent admin controls and great integration with third-party apps