There are many reasons companies are growing their cloud footprint: digital transformation, expanding into new business segments, and looking for new ways to optimize costs and improve employee productivity.
Due to the proliferation of data (driven by IoT and digital transformation), the old model of “dumping data” is gone. We are at tipping point where costs to keep data in house are only increasing. Many companies are looking at how they can monetize their data and are looking to the cloud – in many cases a multi-cloud approach – to stay competitive and meet their evolving business needs.
In 2018, we foresee the direction of cloud computing (whether public or private) to continue towards a ubiquitous cloud environment. The direction is to have clouds where you can move applications/workloads around at will. This is a powerful leap in cloud integration as it puts the customer in the driver’s seat.
Here are a list of best practices to consider in 2018 as you continue your cloud journey:
- Hybrid-cloud environments: Many companies are diversifying their cloud strategy to optimize agility, control costs and improve performance of business critical applications. Therefore establishing an easy way to migrate between private and public along with multi-cloud environments are essential to see to it that data can be accessed and shared in real-time.
- Edge Computing: Edge Computing will continue to increase with the rise of highly distributed applications in the enterprise. This will require a balanced approach – edge will meet the needs when speed is critical and cloud when storage is at play.
- Analytics and AI: Utilize analytics and artificial intelligence to gather insights into your data. These are powerful tools that can help to provide valuable visibility into where your data is sitting, how often it’s being accessed and how to optimize your cost structure.
- Cybersecurity: Cybersecurity must be a top priority and it’s essential for cloud and security to have an integrated approach to help protect your corporate data. It’s important to review your cybersecurity posture when moving to the cloud to see to it that you have measures in place in the event of a breach. Also consider how machine learning and AI can provide near real-time insights to thwart cyber-attacks.
By: David Ohrn, Assistant Vice President – Product Management for Cloud Solutions, AT&T
