CLOUD COMPUTING...Key Trends

The trends over the last several years have been around the adoption of cloud, the boom in building new cloud services, such as high-performance storage, supercomputers on demand, and new ways of storing and processing data. But for the next few years, we’ll move in new directions, and you’ll likely hear the details at Re:Invent.

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But why wait until then? Here's what I believe are the key trends for the next few years that AWS Re:Invent will provide more detail on.

The first new direction you can expect is the focus on management of cloud services. As enterprises adapt cloud services, they quickly find that the number and types of services grow out of their control.

You'll see a push to creating abstraction, brokering, and monitoring technology. Chances are that you’ll have two or three of these products in your cloud stack next year.

Second, there'll be more emphasis on the security thing. So far, cloud-based systems have been relatively safe. Ironically, this is partly due to healthy paranoia from IT organizations concerned about security in general and about the security of what they don't control in particular. Cloud providers always seemed to put extra focus on security.

However, there is still much to do. Chances are you’ll see more security offerings announced or released at Re:Invent. These will mostly focus on proactive monitoring to spot patterns of attacks, as well as on preemptive responses. There will also be more focus on identity-based security, which is becoming the standard in the cloud, as well as on advanced encryption.

Whether you go to AWS Re:Invent or not, look for such ideas and products there to keep on the right track.