The COVID-19 Pandemic Changed the World — What’s Next for Cloud?
COVID-19 changed everything and set the stage for cloud growth in 2021. What does the future hold? Find out.
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AWS will continue to outpace its competitors as, globally, enterprises choose the behemoth cloud platform “by nearly two times,” according to Omdia in its report, “2021 ICT Enterprise Insights in Cloud Computing.”
That amounts to 21%, according to Roy Illsley, chief analyst within the IT ecosystem and operation group at Omdia.
Google Cloud Platform will follow in terms of adoption, trailed by Microsoft Azure. Interestingly, among most analyst observations, Microsoft has led over GCP throughout 2020, but that could change in the coming year.
COVID-19 pushed many an organization into the cloud sooner than planned. In 2021, enterprises, SMBs and other entities will take stock of those transitions and adjust them, despite apparent satisfaction with current vendors.
In a recent report, SPR found that a large percentage of IT decision-makers intend to switch or add public cloud vendors in 2021. That’s despite saying they’re satisfied now with their providers.
Of those respondents (63%), almost three-quarters (69%) said they are going to make big changes. Some indicated they are “somewhat likely” to change or add cloud providers. More than a third (39%) ticked the “extremely likely” box, according to SPR, a Chicago-based digital consultancy, and Microsoft and Amazon Web Services partner, in its report, “Building a Resilient Cloud.”
Given the way the question was worded, the IT experts responding to SPR could be looking at using multiple clouds, rather than dumping one environment for another. Relying on different platforms lets organizations take advantage of different strengths and capabilities. There’s a lot to be said for “multicloud” adoption.
Indeed, throughout 2021 and into 2022, hybrid cloud will represent “the most popular” workloads destination, says Omdia’s Illsley. This will require enterprises to choose a multicloud or single-cloud supplier, he says.
“The enterprise must consider the agility, flexibility, simplicity, cost and reason for adopting cloud when making this key decision,” Illsley says.
In 2021, then, channel partners can expect to act as key consultants as organizations rethink any COVID-19-forced decisions.
“Pandemic-fueled projects that companies took on this year to facilitate a newly remote workforce … will begin to come under scrutiny, as many of these strategies have negatively impacted many businesses’ finances” says George Burns III, senior consultant, cloud operations at SPR.
Organizations will need hybrid multicloud architectures for rapid transitions and maximum agility, says Christian Alvarez, senior vice president of worldwide channel sales for Nutanix. Channel partners need to stand at the ready.
“Proliferation of ‘everything-as-a-service’ models will require channel partners to reinvent themselves in this new reality and adopt new economic business terms, to offer flexible consumption and subscription options for the customers of today and tomorrow,” Alvarez says.
Whether organizations go hybrid or multicloud, they must prioritize management of those environments, says Avishai Sharlin, division president of Amdocs Technology at Amdocs.
“These technologies will offer the capacity needed to provide businesses with speed, control and security, as they prepare themselves to better work and operate with the cloud,” Sharlin says.
Even as many within the channel tout a multicloud approach, other experts disagree. And that indicates a split trend coming to life in 2021. Sure, multicloud has its advantages – flexibility, reliability, cost-performance optimization – but it has drawbacks, too. In sum, multicloud “shouldn’t be an industry best practice.”
That’s the word from Patrick Hubbard, head geek at SolarWinds.
“According to a 2020 IDG survey, 55% of organizations use two or more public clouds, but 79% struggle to achieve synergy across their multiple platforms,” Hubbard says. “Now and in the future, we’ll see a growing number of companies rethink multicloud or consolidate around a single cloud provider.”
ServerCentral Turing Group’s Tom Kiblin agrees. Companies will strive to be cloud-agnostic, he says, but most will land on one vendor.
“The realization of the complexities that multicloud brings, coupled with the fact that you lose many of the benefits of public cloud when going entirely agnostic, will drive a continued trend toward a single or a minimal number of vendors,” says Kiblin, vice president of managed services at SCTG, a Chicago-based MSP and cloud consultancy. “Deciding which workloads go where and optimizing will be crucial for MSPs as they help their clients realize cloud ROI.”
Pushed by COVID-19, organizations in 2020 had to make cloud their primary method for delivering technology to employees. Many of them opted for public cloud. But that could change in 2021 as organizations move from “cloud-first” to “cloud smart,” Deepak Patil, senior vice president and general manager of Dell Technologies Cloud, tells Channel Futures.
“While ‘cloud-first’ mandates have existed for years, the rush to digitally transform in 2020 led some companies to quickly move workloads to public clouds that may be better suited elsewhere,” Patil says.
Spreading workloads across those public clouds created complexity and inefficiency, he notes. That’s because each cloud comes with its own management tools, security protocols and service-level agreements. But, similar to the earlier point about cloud-switching, 2021 may stand out as the year organizations take their cloud sprawl into account and, with the help of channel partners, rejigger their architectures.
“When your clouds are aligned to your business, business outcomes – not compatibility limitations – drive workload placement,” Patil says. “This is the shift to a ‘cloud-smart’ approach, and channel partners will be on the front lines of this transition.”
Regardless of the terminology (“cloud-first,” “cloud-smart,” etc.), Eran Gil, CEO of AllCloud, sees more organizations becoming cloud-native over the coming year.
“Organizations that initially migrated to the cloud using only select cloud-native services are quickly following up, and ultimately transforming or modernizing their organizations, to become fully cloud-native,” Gil tells Channel Futures. “The pace at which this transformation is taking place has sped up and it will continue to accelerate.”
Clara Angotti, president of Next Pathway, predicts the same trend – albeit with a slightly different spin on the words.
“Companies will evolve from a ‘cloud-first’ strategy to a ‘cloud-only’ strategy, ensuring that operational efficiencies are realized along with better access to information and more meaningful insights to key data,” she says.
Ultimately, says Google Cloud’s Pip White, all this will culminate in a more “open” cloud. Organizations will want to avoid vendor lock-in and foster innovation, she says.
“There will be a greater desire by companies to not bring the problems of the on-prem world into the cloud and by not being ‘open,’ businesses will not want to repeat past mistakes,” says White, managing director U.K. and Ireland at Google Cloud.
Organizations will rely on SaaS more than ever in 2021, “due to the sheer growth in remote work,” says SCTG’s Kiblin.
That, he adds, will lead to “skyrocketing” SaaS costs.
“MSPs will add value by helping organizations optimize SaaS investments,” Kiblin says.
At the same time, more channel partners will adapt their own business models to accommodate customers’ shifts in applications consumption. Partners will continue “SaaSifying” their own organizations, instead of operating on a license basis, AllCloud’s Gil tells Channel Futures.
Hedy Belttary, senior vice president of sales for enterprise content management software maker Laserfiche, may have put it best: “COVID-19 disrupted all aspects of our lives, and for the channel it was no exception,” she says.
But the shift to remote work, and the ensuing challenges, will keep presenting new opportunities, too.
“Cloud platforms, specifically, have been and will continue to be, rapidly implemented,” Belttary says. “There’s already been a 100% year-over-year increase in deployment and it’s expected to continue into 2021. As companies continue to assess how to embrace remote work while ensuring they have strong business continuity plans in place, cloud platforms will be at the top of the list. As companies navigate this new normal, there will also be an uptick in new customers for the channel to go after and determine how they can help them excel during this time of uncertainty.”
“The disruption caused by the recent pandemic will accelerate the adoption of IT innovation at an unprecedented rate,” says Nutanix’s Alvarez. “This new normal will redefine how we do everything – from where we work to telemedicine, from education to e-trading and how data is securely accessed from anywhere at any time.”
The new normal further will mean reliance on new and quickly growing tools: machine learning, artificial intelligence, unparalleled computing power and 5G, in particular, Alvarez says. Google Cloud’s White sees AI/ML as most critical to every business strategy.
“To emerge successfully from COVID-19, the organizations that will succeed are those who not only put an emphasis on a great user experience, but also predict changing user habits and course-correct, fast. Technologies like AI and ML will be crucial to extracting meaningful insights from data sets,” White says.
As they use new tools, organizations will bring that technology to the places where cloud computing is happening: the much-ballyhooed “edge.”
“Consider edges as a new center of gravity,” Dell’s Patil tells Channel Futures.
Demand will only increase as organizations use more and more connected devices and sensors, and as 5G and private wireless connectivity become the norm, he adds. On top of that, the edge will house cloud-native apps for a variety of industries.
“Edge represents a great opportunity, but organizations are struggling to unlock it,” Patil says. “They increasingly are turning to their partners to find success, creating new revenue streams for partners that can take on all aspects of supporting customers at the edge.
However organizations craft their IT environments, analysts, insiders and industry observers concur: Cloud will remain the primary technology foundation throughout 2021 and beyond. Thus, from cloud implementation to management, the opportunities for channel partners look endless.
However organizations craft their IT environments, analysts, insiders and industry observers concur: Cloud will remain the primary technology foundation throughout 2021 and beyond. Thus, from cloud implementation to management, the opportunities for channel partners look endless.
It’s no secret that COVID-19 forced organizations around the world to adopt cloud more quickly, in many cases, than planned. The technology has proven its value as a key enabler of remote work.
What varies is whether businesses opt for one vendor’s public cloud or use more than one provider; or, whether they combine public and private options. That basic approach doesn’t really stand to change in 2021. But a lot otherwise will, giving channel partners even more opportunity to adapt in a changing world.
See our slideshow above for the trends likely to shape the world of cloud during and post COVID-19 in 2021.
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