(c)iStock.com/baona

As the sun rises on 2017, a highlight of this New Year will be the gathering strength of the cloud. If the big question posed by businesses and their CIOs in 2016 was whether they should migrate to the cloud; in 2017 the question will be what is the best way to get there.

A recent IBM survey of more than 1,000 C-suite executives from 18 industries found that almost every company we surveyed is using cloud, but only in pockets of their business. 78% of respondents say their cloud initiatives are coordinated or fully integrated, compared to just 34% in 2012. At the same time, nearly half of workloads – or 45% – are expected to remain on-premises with dedicated servers.

As businesses continue to benefit from integrating their on-premises infrastructure with the cloud, they are also increasing their investments in new workloads on public clouds. Clearly, the cloud – and especially hybrid cloud – is becoming a platform for innovation. With that backdrop, here are five emerging or accelerating trends that we see happening for cloud in 2017:

The rise of cognitive computing will be driven by the cloud

An increasing number of the things we depend on in our daily and work lives resides in the growing ocean of data that surrounds us. An indisputable truism of the digital age is that data is growing faster than our ability to make sense of it.

In fact, 80% of the world’s data is essentially “dark” – collected and stored by computers – but invisible and unusable by humans. Cognitive systems, delivered via the cloud are lifting the veil on this so-called “dark data.”

Servers, storage and software are now being built for a hybrid cloud world that is rapidly moving towards cognitive solutions made possible by computer systems that can understand, learn and reason. In 2017, cognitive solutions delivered via the cloud will continue to drive new experiences and transform whole industries — from financial services and retail to healthcare and airlines.

Blockchain is bringing truth and trust to the digital age via the cloud

One of the most exciting technological breakthroughs in recent years is the advent of blockchain, the first peer-to-peer, global platform for business and personal transactions.

Blockchain is a trusted distributed ledger secured by advanced cryptography, making it the most secure and fail-safe system ever developed for the digital age. Only a closed circle of participants have access, and each party can only view the information they are authorised to see within a transaction.

More and more companies and organizations are choosing blockchain on the cloud. This trend will continue in 2017. In fact, it is estimated that applying blockchain to global supply chains could generate more than $100 billion in annual efficiencies. The best systems are built to scale, broadly accessible and consumable as APIs or solutions on the cloud.

Serverless cloud computing is eliminating complexity and cost for app development

Serverless computing is now making the physical and virtual servers developers use to run apps completely invisible.

This technology, delivered on the cloud, is beginning to unleash game-changing competitive advantages for organisations, large and small. In 2017 more businesses will take advantage of its many benefits, including reduced development time and lower cost.

Cloud will become an enabler of security

In 2016 we frequently saw news of a major IT security breach that adversely affected businesses, governments or citizens. And even as more of us are moving to the cloud, security concerns still loom as a big inhibitor to adoption. While the threat is real, major cloud providers are taking extraordinary steps to build in security protections.

In 2017, new cognitive capabilities will accelerate the transformation of the cloud’s perceived security vulnerabilities into a strength. Built upon security intelligence, cognitive solutions generate not just answers, but hypotheses, evidence-based reasoning and recommendations for improved decision making. As a result, cognitive security will help address current skills gap, accelerate responses and help reduce the cost and complexity of dealing with cybercrime.

Culture transformation is driving the journey to the cloud

As more and more organisations adopt the cloud, the journey will require a transformation of more than just the technology. Developers, startups and organisations must embrace a culture change that prioritizes the user experience, and values collaboration, the freedom to experiment and a laser sharp business focus.

In 2017, we will see more IT companies creating actual physical spaces – innovation centres or garages – where talent is attracted and nurtured and small teams can gather to learn new skills and collaborate on breakthrough innovations.

As the New Year begins, cloud platforms will accelerate innovation and the key role of information technology in the transformation of business and society. 

(c)iStock.com/baona

As the sun rises on 2017, a highlight of this New Year will be the gathering strength of the cloud. If the big question posed by businesses and their CIOs in 2016 was whether they should migrate to the cloud; in 2017 the question will be what is the best way to get there.

A recent IBM survey of more than 1,000 C-suite executives from 18 industries found that almost every company we surveyed is using cloud, but only in pockets of their business. 78% of respondents say their cloud initiatives are coordinated or fully integrated, compared to just 34% in 2012. At the same time, nearly half of workloads – or 45% – are expected to remain on-premises with dedicated servers.

As businesses continue to benefit from integrating their on-premises infrastructure with the cloud, they are also increasing their investments in new workloads on public clouds. Clearly, the cloud – and especially hybrid cloud – is becoming a platform for innovation. With that backdrop, here are five emerging or accelerating trends that we see happening for cloud in 2017:

The rise of cognitive computing will be driven by the cloud

An increasing number of the things we depend on in our daily and work lives resides in the growing ocean of data that surrounds us. An indisputable truism of the digital age is that data is growing faster than our ability to make sense of it.

In fact, 80% of the world’s data is essentially “dark” – collected and stored by computers – but invisible and unusable by humans. Cognitive systems, delivered via the cloud are lifting the veil on this so-called “dark data.”

Servers, storage and software are now being built for a hybrid cloud world that is rapidly moving towards cognitive solutions made possible by computer systems that can understand, learn and reason. In 2017, cognitive solutions delivered via the cloud will continue to drive new experiences and transform whole industries — from financial services and retail to healthcare and airlines.

Blockchain is bringing truth and trust to the digital age via the cloud

One of the most exciting technological breakthroughs in recent years is the advent of blockchain, the first peer-to-peer, global platform for business and personal transactions.

Blockchain is a trusted distributed ledger secured by advanced cryptography, making it the most secure and fail-safe system ever developed for the digital age. Only a closed circle of participants have access, and each party can only view the information they are authorised to see within a transaction.

More and more companies and organizations are choosing blockchain on the cloud. This trend will continue in 2017. In fact, it is estimated that applying blockchain to global supply chains could generate more than $100 billion in annual efficiencies. The best systems are built to scale, broadly accessible and consumable as APIs or solutions on the cloud.

Serverless cloud computing is eliminating complexity and cost for app development

Serverless computing is now making the physical and virtual servers developers use to run apps completely invisible.

This technology, delivered on the cloud, is beginning to unleash game-changing competitive advantages for organisations, large and small. In 2017 more businesses will take advantage of its many benefits, including reduced development time and lower cost.

Cloud will become an enabler of security

In 2016 we frequently saw news of a major IT security breach that adversely affected businesses, governments or citizens. And even as more of us are moving to the cloud, security concerns still loom as a big inhibitor to adoption. While the threat is real, major cloud providers are taking extraordinary steps to build in security protections.

In 2017, new cognitive capabilities will accelerate the transformation of the cloud’s perceived security vulnerabilities into a strength. Built upon security intelligence, cognitive solutions generate not just answers, but hypotheses, evidence-based reasoning and recommendations for improved decision making. As a result, cognitive security will help address current skills gap, accelerate responses and help reduce the cost and complexity of dealing with cybercrime.

Culture transformation is driving the journey to the cloud

As more and more organisations adopt the cloud, the journey will require a transformation of more than just the technology. Developers, startups and organisations must embrace a culture change that prioritizes the user experience, and values collaboration, the freedom to experiment and a laser sharp business focus.

In 2017, we will see more IT companies creating actual physical spaces – innovation centres or garages – where talent is attracted and nurtured and small teams can gather to learn new skills and collaborate on breakthrough innovations.

As the New Year begins, cloud platforms will accelerate innovation and the key role of information technology in the transformation of business and society. 

(c)iStock.com/Leslie Achtymichuk

The fact of the matter is thus: if you want to stay ahead of the pack, you’ll need to get your head into and around the cloud. However, the reasons and rationale behind cloud migration are very different to that which greeted CTOs in the mid-2000s, and it is this shift that businesses and their staff need to be aware of today.

According to IDC: “more than 70% of western Europe enterprise IT organisations will commit to hybrid cloud architectures by 2017, vastly driving the rate and pace of change in IT.” And just this week, a new IBM Study, ‘Tailoring hybrid cloud: designing the right mix for innovation, efficiency and growth’, documented the meteoric rise of hybrid cloud. In responses from over 1000 C-suite executives from 18 industries, 78% of them now say their cloud initiatives are coordinated or fully integrated, compared to just 34% in 2012.

Executives expect hybrid cloud adoption (in particular) to support their organisation’s growth in three main ways: by facilitating innovation, lowering total cost of ownership and by enhancing operational efficiencies and enabling them to more readily meet customer expectations.

Cloud has evolved and attitudes towards it have matured from a ‘nice to have’ technological innovation in the mid-2000s, to an integral part of business enablement strategy today.  Successful organisations understand that technologies like cloud and (moving towards the future), cognitive computing are key to improving operations, customer experiences and, crucially, bottom lines. 

But even with the rising use and acceptance of cloud technologies overall, almost half of computing workloads – 45% – are expected to remain in on premise data centres for the foreseeable future. Given this, it is imperative that companies determine and regularly re-assess which mix of traditional IT, public and private cloud best suits their needs.

Until relatively recently, cloud was viewed by many as (primarily) a cost reducing project. However, today, the realisation of what cloud can actually proactively provide has led to a more rounded and balanced overview of it as a platform for innovation and competitive advantage too. 

But once every business is in the cloud (as will be the case in due course if adoption rates are to be believed), just who will win and how is the key question many are keen to understand.

Based on its findings, the most recent study recommends three areas, all current and future adopters of the technology need to understand, if they are to drive sustainable and competitive advantage through cloud adoption:

Deepen your understanding of business implications and financial cases of cloud

A custom-made environment will be possible when employees truly understand business needs and how IT technologies can help deliver these successes.  This includes identifying key business stakeholders of cloud initiatives, selecting target improvement areas, and establishing a current performance baseline for comparison.

Strengthen your ability to manage the complexity of multiple cloud ecosystem partners

Ecosystems by design will be in continual flux as companies collaborate with value chain participants. Success will depend on fostering the next generation of business and IT hybrid talent, embracing the full cloud ecosystem as a community in which participants can deliver more value as a group than acting alone.

In establishing collaborative, long term relationships with partners through mutually beneficial opportunities, companies will be able to tap into the API economy and other ‘open’ technologies that allow them to build on top of existing innovation.

Extend the limits of compliance with security and regulation through new internal capabilities and external solutions

This requires a re-work of operations to build data protection and security measures into system and IT infrastructure by design, rather than retrofitting. It’s also imperative that you select vendors with security and compliance expertise in the cloud space. 

Hybrid cloud represents a pivotal transformation for businesses. But managing a dynamic and symbiotic cloud environment will require both a new mind-set to traditional approaches, but also new skills to deliver upon these. 

(c)iStock.com/phototechno

Cloud is often seen as the answer to a wide range of business challenges from business innovation to cost reduction. However, there is uncertainty as to whether corporations should operate a model of public, private or hybrid cloud. Here, we will discuss the common perceptions and misconceptions surrounding public and private cloud and the benefits to the enterprise in the adoption of a hybrid model.

Public vs private cloud

According to IDC, overall spending on infrastructure for cloud environments will hit $38.2 billion in 2016. It’s clear that whichever way an organisation chooses to adopt cloud services the capability will be there, but getting to that final decision on what type of services the organisation needs can be a complex process. In the past, the choice of which cloud model to adopt was largely predicated by the business conditions of the industry a company is operating in. For example, private cloud is ideally suited as an entry point for the financial services industry. Private cloud gives the organisation greater control of security and data placement decisions enabling it to comply with the audit requirements of regulators more easily, which is mission critical within the industry.

When looking at the pros and cons of public cloud, one benefit of public cloud is the near unlimited scalability. Scaling up or down can be done quickly, giving greater elasticity for unplanned projects or those that expand rapidly without warning. On the flip side, there are concerns surrounding the security and privacy of data due to the number of attacks to the public cloud. The onslaught of attacks to services that are publicly available, which invariably transcend borders is a mounting concern for companies using public cloud.

Yet, businesses are learning that despite previous barriers to the initial adoption of cloud computing technology such as compliance, customisation, utilisation and privacy requirements, hybrid cloud can offer what the business of the future needs in a secure environment. There no longer needs to be a trade-off between public and private.

Why hybrid?

The hybrid cloud market is growing fast. For the enterprise, hybrid cloud seems the natural evolution from a traditional model, providing huge benefits such as, agility, improved experience, security and compliance and increased innovation.  Markets and Markets published a report last April estimating that the global hybrid cloud market is expected to grow from USD 33.28 Billion in 2016 to USD 91.74 Billion by 2021.

Flexibility and agility

Customer expectations are ever-changing, and as such businesses are under constant pressure to providecontinually improving customer experiences. This requires a systematic and iterative approach to capitalising on a range of technologies’ capabilities – meaning fast, agile development is required. A complete hybrid cloud portfolio enables businesses to place workloads where they make the most sense. An enterprise can align its architecture to take advantage of performance requirements that only dedicated servers can offer. In addition, there is the capability to build upon prior investments in applications and IT infrastructure that an enterprise has already made.

Security and compliance

A common concern about cloud technology among enterprises is security and multi-tenancy. There is growing business pressure to shift data and processing to the cloud, but with mounting regulatory requirements and in some situations regulatory uncertainty, failure to meet these requirements could have critical business impact. A hybrid cloud system satisfies these concerns by allowing a business to choose dedicated servers and network devices that can isolate or restrict access and enabling an organisation to choose exactly where data can be placed. Yet, at the same time this can be orchestrated into one, singular, integrated piece of architecture.

Speed and experience

Cloud has reached a tipping point and the characteristics of IT investment are shifting. Moving from a situation where each organisation keeps a tight hold on their own data, IT executives are actively researching and investigating ways and platforms to integrate data with digital business partners, an experience which can only be fully realised within a cloud environment. But, an enterprise cannot rewrite all of its apps for the cloud or take all of its data to the cloud. Making it simple to migrate any existing enterprise data to the cloud to create efficient workflows with partners, yet keep other data if not needed for cloud operations on private servers, is a massive benefit to large corporations. The speed in which this can be done is what makes moving to a hybrid cloud such an attractive option.

Innovation

Companies recognise the world is being rewritten in code, as IBM Design general manager Phil Gilbert says, and cloud is the environment in which the new reality can be delivered.

Hybrid cloud is being used to make IT portfolio economics work and deliver faster app innovation. For example, DevOps can rapidly create and deploy a new app, microservice or AOI (Add On Instruction) across hybrid cloud that can be scaled up or down. Continuous innovation means being able to access data and analytics to extract deeper insights more quickly than ever before, allowing businesses to get closer to their customers and make smarter decisions in real-time.

Ultimately, when looking for the right cloud solution there is no one size fits all approach. Every hosting solution is unique, and every customer has requirements that revolve not only around technology, but also around support, financial and business objectives. The debate has moved on. It’s not really a matter of either/or — it’s both. A hybrid cloud provider