CloudBolt 2020 Predictions: Liftoff for Hybrid Cloud

Enterprise cloud management leader predicts the emergence of new models for IT infrastructure management and a more critical role for IT operations

North Bethesda, MD – January 16, 2020 – CloudBolt Software, the leading cloud management platform provider for the enterprise, today released its predictions for cloud management in 2020 and beyond. With hybrid cloud becoming the enterprise IT infrastructure of choice – according to 451 Research, nearly 70% of enterprise workloads will be in public and private cloud environments in 2020 – cloud and infrastructure management will require increasingly flexible, compliant and secure approaches in 2020. 

“We’ve seen a significant shift in expectations for cloud-based solutions as the hybrid model becomes the preferred structure for organizations in an increasing array of segments,” said Brian Kelly, chief executive officer of CloudBolt. “The major public cloud providers recognize this as well, as demonstrated by their new offerings. The freedom afforded by these new options is exciting but can feel paralyzing as well. The good news in 2020 and going forward is that smart organizations can find solutions that fit their business needs far easier than ever before.”

In this context, Kelly predicts these five trends in a hybrid and multi-cloud world:

• Hybrid cloud goes from sizzle to steak. Given the emerging reality that hybrid cloud is here for the long haul, the Big Three doubled down on their investments in 2019. Google launched its own hybrid cloud platform in Anthos, powered by Kubernetes. Microsoft’s Azure Arc, which focuses on deployment of Azure services across multi-cloud platforms, was announced at Microsoft Ignite. And finally, Amazon ended the year with its long-awaited GA of AWS Outposts, enabling enterprises to bring AWS and associated capabilities on premises and into an AWS-designed infrastructure. If hybrid cloud got its wings in 2019, look for 2020 to be the year when more hybrid cloud workloads move into production with greater enterprise adoption of technologies like Kubernetes. 
• IT becomes the cool kid again. As hybrid cloud accelerates in 2020, it will continue to drive a world of chaos and complexity. Open access to public cloud infrastructure and an influx of tools like infrastructure-as-code – that create developer agility – will impose increasing operational pressure on IT. As a result, enterprises will increase their investments in areas like cross-cloud visibility, governance (i.e., making sure the right people get access to what they need), and cost control (i.e., managing workloads to their target locations). Through solutions like cloud management platforms, this will enable IT to better rein in the complexity and become the “it” department again – the cool kids on the block in 2020. 
• Self-service serves it up for developers. Expect enterprise IT to delight their developer teams by accelerating the rollout of self-service IT – everything from compute, networking, storage, to multi-tier application stacks. In 2020, we’ll see a shift from cloud-native self-service – that is, simply ordering resources through an AWS portal – to IT-sanctioned self-service where pre-configured blueprints (with cost and governance guardrails in place) will enable automated resource provisioning. Self-service IT will become the norm in 2020 because this approach guarantees control, visibility and agility, making business teams more productive and more compliant, without the hassle.
• Extensibility highlights the importance of choice. As hybrid cloud takes off, best-of-breed technologies will emerge up and down the stack – for instance, Kubernetes for container orchestration, Terraform and Ansible for infrastructure-as-code, and more. Enterprise choice will reign supreme as IT will adopt solutions that allow them to operate and scale hybrid cloud, their way. We’ll see steady growth in demand for cloud management extensibility, which means codeless and pluggable models to help enterprises integrate existing tools and processes into their cloud management frameworks. Progressive IT teams will rely on cloud management capabilities with this extensibility to enable their homegrown DevOps workflows. Indeed, IT truly can’t get much cooler than delivering this level of personalization to the organization itself. 
• Serverless and mesh ride the rocketship. Just months ago, Google announced the addition of service mesh and serverless capabilities to Anthos, while AWS recently expanded AWS Lambda to connected devices. 2020 will be an even bigger year for both serverless and service mesh, as enterprises look to modernize their applications and provide greater IT agility. Beyond separating software from the hardware it runs on, we’ll see enterprises embrace serverless for its flexibility. The ability to dynamically provision cloud resources and manage capacity, versus managing microservices sprawl and needing to provision physical servers, will be a key driver of business value.

About CloudBolt

CloudBolt is the leading cloud management platform for the enterprise. Deployed in minutes, CloudBolt helps IT unify orchestration and automate provisioning of their hybrid cloud resources—quickly, cost-effectively, and securely—while providing developers with anywhere, anytime access to those resources through a self-service catalog. Today, CloudBolt is deployed in the world’s largest enterprises, across all industries including financial services, government, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, technology services, and more. For more information, visit cbgcdev.wpengine.com or follow us on Twitter @CloudBoltSW.