In this edition of our forecast series, we look at the evolving nature of the cloud, including architecture, cost management and, essentially, the underlying layers of infrastructure. We asked our analysts Dana Hernandez, Ivan McPhee, John CollinsWhit Walters and William McKnight for your thoughts.
John: We're seeing a maturity in architectural thinking, not just in cloud computing, but also in technology delivery. Keep in mind that what we call the cloud still only takes up 25% of the total space—the other three-quarters are on-premises or hosted in private data centers. It all has to work together as a single imaginary platform, or at least the more accurately we can do it, the more effective we can be.
While the key word may be “hybrid,” I expect to see a shift from hybrid environments by accident to hybrid by design—active decision-making based on performance, cost, and indeed governance areas such as sovereignty. Cost management will continue to drive this trend, as evidenced by FinOps.
Dana: FinOps is evolving and many companies are considering running on-premises or moving workloads back from the cloud. In FinOpsX, companies looked at a blend of on-premises and cloud costs. Oracle has now joined the big three – Microsoft, Google and AWS – and it will be interesting to see who else joins.
John: Another example is repatriation, moving workloads from the cloud back to on-premises.
William: Yes, repatriation is accelerating, but cloud service providers could respond by 2025, likely with more competitive pricing and technological advances that provide greater flexibility and security. We are still moving heavily into the cloud, and repatriation may take several years to slow down.
Whit: The response from suppliers to repatriation has been interesting. For example, Oracle with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is inferior to competitors in its pricing model, but there is skepticism – customers fear that Oracle may subsequently increase costs due to licensing issues.
John: We're also seeing legacy cloud providers moving toward hybrid models, although they probably wouldn't say so out loud. For example, AWS Outposts on-premises cloud offering can now work with on-premises storage from NetApp, and it's likely that this type of partnership will accelerate. I argue that the cloud should be viewed primarily as an architectural construct based on dynamic provisioning and elastic scaling, and secondarily based on who the provider is, recognizing that hosting companies can better provide resiliency. Organizations need to put architecture first.
Ivan: We'll also see more cloud-based tools to manage these workloads. For example, on the SASE/SSE side, companies like Cato Networks are seeing success because people don't want to install physical devices on the network. We're also seeing this trend in NDR from companies like Lumu Technologies, where security solutions are cloud-based rather than on-premises.
Cloud-based solutions such as Cato Networks and Lumu Technologies offer greater pricing flexibility than hardware-based solutions. They will have more ability to adjust prices to drive adoption and growth than traditional on-premises solutions. Some providers are exploring value-based pricing, taking into account factors such as the value of the client's business, for inclusion in strategic accounts. This could be an exciting shift as we move into the future.
Fast 2025 Predictions: Cloud Architectures, Cost Management, and Hybrid Design first appeared on Gigaom.
