The cloud computing industry is on the cusp of a major transformation, driven by artificial intelligence (AI), multicloud adoption, and industry-specific cloud solutions. These trends are shaping a more complex cloud landscape, but they also offer new opportunities for businesses to innovate and grow.
According to a report by Forrester Research, the AI boom is creating chaos as every cloud provider promotes new services. This abundance of options is challenging enterprises to develop coherent AI strategies. However, embedded AI is also making operations smarter, with technologies like observability, predictive analytics, conversational interfaces, and automation. Both cloud vendors and enterprises are infusing AI across monitoring, management, and support functions.
WebAssembly (WASM) is emerging as the future of cloud-native applications. WASM is a low-level bytecode that can be executed on any platform, including cloud servers, edge devices, and web browsers. This makes it ideal for developing portable and scalable applications.
With the release of a new server environment standard, WASM is now positioned as a universal application platform. This means that developers can build WASM applications once and deploy them anywhere, without having to worry about underlying hardware or operating system differences.
Also, governments around the world are increasingly enacting digital sovereignty regulations that restrict where data can be stored and processed. This is complicating cloud strategies for enterprises, which must now re-evaluate their supply chain reliance and ensure that their cloud providers comply with all applicable regulations.
In addition, as more workloads shift to the cloud, hardware vendors are pivoting to subscription models to offset declining product sales. This is a win-win for both vendors and customers, as it allows vendors to generate recurring revenue and customers to avoid upfront capital costs.
Cloud cost optimization, also known as FinOps, is seeing renewed interest as businesses seek to rein in their cloud spending. FinOps is a discipline that combines financial management with cloud computing to help businesses optimize their cloud costs.
Multicloud networking also remains an underserved issue, but the convergence of multicloud with zero trust edge (ZTE) architectures offers new hope. ZTE is a security-focused networking approach that can help businesses connect their data centers, clouds, and remote locations securely.
The cloud security ecosystem is advancing to meet the needs of cloud-native enterprises. Cloud vendors and security providers are offering new and innovative solutions to protect data, applications, and workloads in the cloud. Industry-specific clouds are gaining ground as businesses seek specialized solutions to address their unique vertical problems. These clouds are typically led by global systems integrators (GSIs) and offer a range of features and services tailored to specific industries.
Managed service providers (MSPs) are shifting their focus to advisory-led transformations as businesses move to the cloud. MSPs are now helping businesses to develop and implement cloud strategies, as well as to manage their cloud environments once they are in place.
The cloud computing industry is undergoing a major transformation, driven by AI, multicloud, and industry-specific cloud solutions. These trends are creating a more complex cloud landscape, but they also offer new opportunities for businesses to innovate and grow.
The sources for this piece include an article in DataCenterKnowledge.
