Cloud Computing Trends to Watch in 2021

In 2020 most of the world shut down, but we had to find ways to continue surviving. Among other things distribution chains needed to be kept operational so that we all had food and other essential goods on our tables.

Businesses ’ technology needs have been consistently increasing over the past decades as consumers move from brick-and-mortar experiences to their online counterparts. This trend has only accelerated as Covid-19 solidified the need for solid IT architecture. Without a solid digital strategy, businesses in today’s world will be overtaken by their tech-savvy counterparts. That being said, 2021 will include even more changes, so to stay relevant a business needs to look ahead and know what cloud computing trends to watch for in 2021.

Efficiency and Security Will Improve

Moore’s law mapped our trend for ever-increasing technological advancements, and there’s no reason to think 2021 will be behind 2020 technologically.  As new improvements are made we’re sure to see more efficient hosting options that can be provided to clients at reduced costs. Along with these improvements will come increased security against things that currently plague the virtual world like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Security is an ever-changing field online, and as black hat hackers find new vulnerabilities businesses will need to adapt and improve their security protocols to match the malicious users with DDoS solutions.

Gaming will increasingly be cloud dependent

Gaming, in general, is a rapidly growing industry, and with a large population at home all day the demand is not going away any time soon. While expensive consoles like Xbox or Playstation have not become irrelevant, it’s highly likely the demand for these systems will decline as cheaper alternatives become available and users can download/play any games they want online.  The age of cloud gaming is upon us and it marks an explosion of creativity and accessibility to gamers around the world.

Hybrid Solutions Will Grow

It’s not a simple task to choose between a public, private, or hybrid cloud environment. Each environment offers advantages and disadvantages involving performance, efficiency, and security. But as technologies are refined and more customers enter the market, hybrid cloud solutions will prove useful for organizations with many needs. There will be no one-size-fits-all solution, but rather leveraging pieces of each will allow consumers to use the cloud efficiently.

From a provider’s standpoint, any service that you aren’t providing that a business needs results in lost business. So the more options that are made available to clients the higher likelihood of success a hosting provider will have.  The ability to serve up both bare-metal servers as well as virtual environments will be crucial as different businesses will want to partake in different plans.

Disaster Recovery Services Will Become More Relevant

As more and more businesses migrate from brick and mortar to online, it is becoming increasingly expensive to endure downtime for a website. Every minute something isn’t working is a minute of lost revenues.  When this can begin costing thousands of dollars businesses are going to give more attention to their disaster recovery plans. Having a well-executed disaster recovery plan allows a business to recover quickly when its best-laid plans go awry. The last thing you want as a business is to have your site go down or to lose important user data, disaster recovery plans can help resolve both of these possible scenarios.

Daily Work Will Happen Virtually

With a larger workforce working from home, there is already a shift of employees from traditional desktops to virtual workstations. Allowing employees to work in virtual environments can make security protocols and access to data much easier to manage. Businesses will be able to take advantage of hourly subscriptions for virtual environment resources rather than purchasing expensive hardware and updates for employees.

The bottom line is a business exists to make money, and any costs that can be eliminated are beneficial. Moving workers to virtual environments will be cheaper for a number of reasons, the biggest being new computers don’t need to be purchased to keep users in relevant operating systems and that network management can be taken care of from the comfort of home.

Conclusion – Cloud Computing Trends to Watch in 2021

The future is not written in stone, but we can look at past trends and hypothesize what 2021 will look like. Demand for hosting is only going to increase as more of the world moves online, not just for businesses, but for gaming and personal ventures as well. That demand will be met with improved hosting options and affordable services, and while malicious attacks will become more intelligent, their security counterparts will grow to match them.