In 2021, finding innovative ways to accelerate time to value from cloud investments will be more critical than ever. Enterprises need to pick and choose those key cloud services most relevant to supporting app modernization in order to accelerate digitization and combat the effects of a global pandemic and economic fall-out.  GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, predicts leading technologies and initiatives that will help guide enterprises and telcos during this challenging year.

Charlotte Dunlap, Principal Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “In a pandemic that is prompting accelerated digitization, having integrated monitoring and observability cloud services are crucial to application lifecycle management for providing insight to app performance, efficiencies, and governance/security. Alongside the need to fast-track business transformations comes the risk of software bugs, security breaches, and performance bottlenecks.”

GlobalData predicts observability solutions, including application performance monitoring (APM) systems, will emerge as a core component of developer tools and hybrid cloud solutions.

Dunlap continues: “Those same application platforms will quickly evolve into consolidated solutions in 2021 to include low-code platforms, intelligent automation, RPA, and collaboration. This will ensure necessary ease and agility in the app development/deployment process among a broader group of non-coding employees as part of a DevOps model.”

GlobalData also predicts an expansion of multi-cloud deployments including management and edge computing support among hyperscalers and IT solution providers. This is driven by the enterprises’ need to reduce expenses associated with managing workloads across disparate clouds.

Amy DeCarlo, Principal Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “In 2020, hyperscalers added management tools that extended visibility and control into third-party clouds, but the real action will come from managed cloud services providers promising to help organizations move to a more unified system of managing all of their workloads. In 2021, those development efforts will pay dividends.

“As 5G becomes more widely available, hyperscalers are in a prime position to drive emerging edge efforts by developing networks of hardware and software vendors and telecom providers to develop and bring to market edge computing solutions. There will be more compelling use cases offered by edge partner ecosystems enabled via 5G.”

Growing recognition of the importance of cloud security will be another major factor in cloud priorities in 2021. Newly implemented remote work models underscore enterprise dependency on cloud and the critical need to secure data that often is processed and stored in a multi-tenant on-demand environment.

DeCarlo adds: “Enterprises are ratcheting up security measures to safeguard cloud workloads, pressuring cloud providers to extend capabilities in multi-factor authentication, access management, and incident response.”