Every year new technological advancements and innovations shake up and influence both business and society as a whole. With an ever-increasing demand for super-fast, on-demand solutions, it’s no surprise companies are investing huge amounts of money to stay ahead of the curve and be the first to profit from the ‘next big thing’.
Our daily lives are now so integrated and dependent on the technologies of previous years, it’s exciting to look forward at the coming year and predict which technologies we think are next in line to bear the weight of consumerism, business and everything in between.
From the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G and increased automation, we’ve rounded up a list of the top technology and cloud trends to look out for in 2020.
Containerisation involves grouping an application with all of its related configuration files, libraries and other dependences required for it to run efficiently and without errors across different computing environments. The fight to become the most popular ecosystem in this field was once an interesting battle, however Kubernetes has now emerged as the clear dominant force in the containerisation market.
The growing adoption of containers for use in software development, and Kubernetes market dominance, is only expected to increase in 2020. The application container market, previously valued at $495 million in 2015, is expected to reach $2.7 billion this year. The knock on of this rapid industry growth will also introduce increased focus and opportunity for accompanying services, such as container deployment security.
We’ve already seen 5G start to be introduced in the UK. Currently 5G networks can be found across 17 UK towns and cities, however their effectiveness is still up for debate as the supporting infrastructure plays catch up. In 2020 we expect this coverage to become more comprehensive, although it could take several years before it properly achieves the levels of connectivity it promises.
When 5G does reach its full potential, it will bring significant changes for the connected digital world, undoubtedly making huge waves across business and society. With super-fast connectivity and low latency, 5G will launch new technologies and devices into the foreground.
It wasn’t so long ago that the idea of artificial intelligence was reserved for science fiction and pop culture. But with huge leaps forward in connectivity, automation and smart devices, this once unrealistic vision has developed into genuine deployments. As technology around artificial intelligence advances, we will see a prolific increase in streamlined, automised processes, removing the possibilities of human error.
Through cloud computing and Big Data, AI is able to analyse and learn from human knowledge and behaviour like never before. This has fuelled big advancements in the industry and the capabilities of its technology. Its decision-making abilities and ways in which it can assist us are constantly evolving and progressing, and we believe this will only increase in 2020.
In part, the concept of edge computing can be traced to the growth and demand for artificial intelligence and machine learning. These solutions and their technologies rely on real-time data processing to enable them to function both safely and efficiently. Take driverless cars for example. For this promise to become a reality, a fully autonomous vehicle would have to make near instantaneous decisions from the data it was collecting for it to be considered safe.
Therefore, the point at which this data is processed needs to be closer to the source; a data centre in the middle of nowhere hundreds of miles away just isn’t going to provide the required latency speeds. This will surge the growth of mini data centres at the ‘edge’ of networks, enabling the suitable real-time data-processing speeds required by new technologies. So, tying in with our previous trend prediction, 2020 also looks set to be the year edge computing is integrated into cloud services.
Last decade, the talk was all about cloud adoption and when we would make the move. Fast forward to today, and most of us have. Now comes the next trend: utilising and deploying the different sub-categories of the cloud to fulfil different operations and strategies. Using different cloud infrastructure can optimise efficiency, minimise costs and also give users the freedom to innovate and tailor cloud platforms for specific uses.
In 2020, the deployment of multi-cloud environments will only increase, as businesses are now fully comfortable with cloud solutions, and naturally look to take advantage of the many benefits the different cloud infrastructures can offer. So, cloud eco-systems will likely become much more complex, and to accommodate this demand, cloud vendors will likely invest in supporting the accompanying services such as faster deployments and multi-cloud integration.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this post. If you have any questions about Secura’s services, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
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Matthew is Secura's content specialist, producing gripping, emotionally complex, edge of your seat, cloud hosting articles and videos.
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