Edge & IoT
Edge Computing is here and is going to be coming faster and harder as we move into 2020, the requirement for businesses to get processing functions to the specific location where it is needed at the edge of a company network in locations such as traditionally could be called Remote Offices but realistically this could now be a windfarm and IoT devices living on each wind turbine.
This craze and adoption will have to come with some serious investment around network architecture and how this is dealt with. 5G will contribute massively here also.
What is Edge computing and why it matters
Kubernetes
The world of Kubernetes is already well and truly here, it managed to pull 12,000 attendees to KubeCon in late 2019. It would be an easy win for me to just choose Kubernetes for the choice of 2020.
“Kubernetes has become the standard for container orchestration, with all major technology giants supporting the project via the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).”
My prediction as well as what Leah has picked out in here article linked below is, I predict there is going to be some form of simplified deployment of Kubernetes really arrive in 2020. There are tools there today but few of them. I expect to see this gap shorten further in 2020 to make Kubernetes that anyone could deploy a secure cluster.
Container Security
I have already mentioned Kubernetes being the leader in container orchestration, but security wise it gets a B-, there are a number of APIs that are exposed if not correctly deployed and leaves doors open for unwelcome breaches.
2020 will see a focus around container security. A really good article on this and the areas is posted below. Data point number 1 that Chris below highlights is the most concerning that needs to be a solid aim for 2020.
Five trends shaping the future of container security
Open Source
Find me an enterprise data centre that doesn’t use open source on some level?
As the article below alludes to Open Source is everywhere these days, cloud, containers, big data, IoT, Edge computing and probably tonnes more.
Open Source automation will be top of my list for 2020, Terraform consumed a lot of my time as did the other huge collection of other products that HashiCorp have in their portfolio, these guys will continue to rock and make life easier.
Also keep one eye open and focused on NVIDIA, look at what they are doing in the open source space in 2020.
I wonder if we will see a rise in the Linux desktop in 2020, hmmm maybe.
Open Source in 2020: The future looks bright
The year of the cloud – the public one
To my final thought and prediction for 2020. All of the above will also play a huge part in the continued adoption of public cloud services. Security will and has to be the biggest focus from all vendors to ensure the adoption goes well and doesn’t have people retreating because of bad experiences.
Cross cloud management players will rise to the surface in 2020, they will have to also focus on the security aspects but the hyperscaler’s will have to have that focus on their own specific offerings first. This cannot just be a focus on identity and access management.
From a mainstream infrastructure point of view VMware took a very smart move in 2019 when they purchased Carbon Black. VMware will play a huge part in 2020. Taking their familiar customers on a journey into the unknown but with known technology and interfaces they are familiar with.
It is also going to be interesting to see where the other public cloud providers go in 2020, Microsoft Azure and AWS are by far at least in my world the prominent players with a Google Cloud Platform coming in a solid 3rd moving up the ranks it seems towards the end of 2019. But then we also have IBM, Oracle, Alibaba. What are they going to bring to the party in 2020 my bet is IBM who have a very good offering today but a focus has to be around OpenShift.
My focus for 2020
In the data management space as our customers and prospects take that journey to the public cloud or other SaaS based models. It’s up to us to be able to strategically provide a way to protect and backup their data.
Public Cloud Education
I have already mentioned that Microsoft Azure, AWS and GCP are from what I see and who I speak to the most common targets for customers, personally my education in 2019 has been focused on the first 2 mainly but all three will be a focus on in 2020.
Infrastructure As Code
I have been dabbling in this area for a bit now, by no way am I anywhere near a pro. But having the understanding and ability to use IAC to automate a process or build is the way our customers is also going, as technologists in our group we need to have that understanding and this is where most of our side-line projects will start in 2020.
Kubernetes
This has to be top of the list for me, I started a #SummerProject in 2019 that was focusing on the Public Cloud offerings, Cloud Native workloads and Kubernetes & Containers. It should not have just been a summer project there are so many angles and ways you can do so many things today and not all will win, 2020 will be a big focus on this with the first aspiration to get to Amsterdam at the end of March to the European version of KubeCon.
SaaS Backup
Why wouldn’t our customers remove the stress of having to manage their infrastructure and application stacks and hand that over to someone else that will provide that uptime and availability of service.
2019 was a big year for Veeam in the backup for Microsoft Office 365, fastest growing product ever at Veeam and continues to be of major interest especially if you look at the number of people going there on a monthly basis.
2020 will see more SaaS functions and its one of our jobs to keep a close eye there to see if there is a share responsibility model to think about when it comes to protecting data in those SaaS offerings.
With that, hope that was interesting or useful to people. 2019 has been a very busy year and I don’t expect too much slow down for 2020.