2021 will see the enterprises trust on the cloud

Many CIOs believe that cloud infrastructure will undergo drastic changes in 2021. The enterprise IT needs to be ready to face the changes as many employees leave the on-premise workplace. This growth accelerates with the work from home to continue till the mid of this year, it will further boost the migration away from geographically focused IT services to cloud-driven solutions that can be accessed from any location that has an internet connection. Tech pundits say that devices, networks, and applications will need to be rethought and re-implemented.

2020 initiated the deployment of fundamental changes that impacted nearly every quarter in the business world. As the impact continues into 2021, cloud computing will also evolve to harmonize in the new reality. When we talk about the Cloud infrastructure, it refers to the hardware and software components - such as servers, storage, a network, virtualization software, services and management tools - that support the computing requirements of a cloud computing model. Cloud infrastructure also includes an abstraction layer that virtualizes and logically presents resources and services to users through application program interfaces and API-enabled command-line or graphical interfaces.

The most important factor in cloud computing, the virtualized resources are hosted by a service provider or IT department and are delivered to users over a network or the internet. These resources include virtual machines and components, such as servers, memory, network switches, firewalls, load balancers and storage.

Major public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, offer services based on shared, multi-tenant servers. This model requires massive compute capacity to handle both unpredictable changes in user demand and to optimally balance demand across fewer servers. As a result, cloud infrastructure typically consists of high-density systems with shared power.

The Cloud infrastructure is present in each of the three main cloud computing deployment models: private cloud, public cloud and hybrid cloud. In a private cloud, an organization typically owns the cloud infrastructure components and houses them within its own data center. In a public cloud model, the cloud infrastructure components are owned by a third-party public cloud provider. Hybrid Multi-cloud is the way forward to address the accelerated need for digitalization as it provides the best of breed for scalability, flexibility and end user-experience.

This year’s COVID-19 pandemic accelerated plans for cloud migration for many companies and prompted those without firm plans to quickly come up with them. The year 2021 and beyond will see enterprises continue expanding their cloud adoption, with one major difference: the complexity and diversity of workloads will be increasing significantly, along with numerous considerations, including security and compliance. Proprietary public cloud is then not enough. The new era is open, hybrid and multi-cloud, providing enterprises the flexibility of the right cloud for the right workload, with future-proof choice mitigating vendor lock-in.

Deepak Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA