Get ready to witness a major generational shift in the world of cloud computing. A new generation of CIOs and CEOs are in charge, and this generation has grown up using cloud-based tools, which will lead to faster and greater cloud adoption for enterprise organizations. How will this affect the way the cloud looks, acts, and feels?
Modular Software
The ability to scale will also impact hardware and software. With the huge stores of hardware available in the cloud, individual software applications will continue to grow and expand to leverage the availability of hardware at scale. As a result, software development processes will focus on modular software that offers components that allow for modifications without shutting down the program.
You can expect to see a shift in the way people look at software development. Not only will the software be based in the cloud, but it will also integrate with multiple clouds and on-site applications. Different parts of applications will float around in abstract space in and out of service providers to simplify the concept.
Software Becomes Social
Software will start to look and act like some of our current social media applications. Program needs will likely begin developing automatic, fleeting associations with different bits of hardware and software. For example, a cloud-based infrastructure might be engineered so that a database might “like” or be “attracted to” a server or storage array. Another way of thinking about social software is that the infrastructure and software will adapt and mold around a task rather than the task adapting to the infrastructure or software requirements and demands. The need for provisioning will disappear because it will happen automatically.
Low-power processors and cheaper clouds
Lower power ARM chips with 64-bit capability will start flowing into the market in about 12 months. This will drive greater workload efficiencies and lower the cost of cloud computing. Cloud providers like AWS will benefit from lower electric bills, and those savings may get passed on to customers as the market continues to become more and more competitive.
Super Interconnects
The increasing number of high-end processors and the growth of massively distributed applications will bring about a new generation of super-fast interconnects into the data center estimated to run in the low hundreds of gigabits.
Interconnect technology will be central to allow information to be passed between data centers at faster rates and lower costs. It will enable developers to build more complex, larger, automated applications at lower costs.
Data Center Ecosystems
Cloud data centers will look and behave like living organisms. Abstract software and commodified hardware will combine to make them function much more like an ecosystem. The data center will transform into a biological system capable of automating many tasks like patching and updating equipment.
Quantum Computing
Many consider quantum computing the holy grail for the biggest players in the computing world. Some believe quantum computing could be just around the corner. IBM is already offering quantum computing as a service to select customers who are willing to test the system, so large-scale production is likely to be closer than many analysts have predicted.
The Stratification of the Cloud
2020 saw the development of specialized clouds in addition to the basic cloud types of infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and software-as-a-service. It is likely we will see middle virtualization tools and dynamic BPO services. Infrastructure capabilities will determine cloud differentiation. The differences in capability will define the categorization of the specialized clouds such as utility clouds and medical clouds.
