It is that time of the year when vendors become prognosticators and list out what they think will be important occurrences in the coming year – albeit skewed to what they are selling.
Below are five such predictions from interconnection and data centre vendor Equinix.
Distributed infrastructure and edge computing will accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption
Businesses are embracing edge computing and hybrid multi-cloud architectures, shifting their compute strategies from centralised data centres back to a distributed infrastructure model, with an emphasis on the edge. The observation is that businesses want to make real-time decision making where the action is happening – at the store front, in the factory, at the warehouse, everywhere except at headquarters.
Naturally, Equinix sees the arrival of 5G as helping accelerate value creation from edge devices and Internet of Things.
The analyst report, IDC – Rethinking Datacenter and Traditional Edge IT with Interconnection, suggests businesses must modernize IT to become virtualized, containerized and software-defined to support the edge. And they should also consider new data centre partners that can bolster edge build-out and prioritize infrastructure optimization and application communication costs.
In the third annual Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Equinix alludes to a future where enterprises will look to extend cloud computing to the edge to solve for challenges introduced by the highly distributed nature of modern digital business applications
As enterprises do so, they will solve the puzzles of low latency and bandwidth savings, identify the best approach to multi-cloud delivery, and stay aligned to evolving local regulatory requirements.
AI and IoT will drive new interconnection and data processing requirements at the edge
The connectivity vendor also predicts that enterprises will accelerate the adoption of AI and machine learning (ML) for a broader set of use cases, requiring increasingly complex and more real-time-sensitive processing of large data sets originating from multiple sources (sensors, IoT, wearables, etc.).
About 75% of enterprise AI/analytics applications will use 10 external data sources on average.
In this scenario, businesses will continue to leverage public cloud service providers (CSPs), and look for ways to use an optimal set of AI/ML capabilities from multiple CSPs, creating a distributed, hybrid architecture for their AI/ML data processing.
The rise in cybersecurity threats will require new data management capabilities
With the increase in cybersecurity attacks and data privacy and protection regulations, most companies are now moving toward accessing cloud services over private networks and storing their encryption keys in a cloud-based Hardware Security Module (HSM) at a location that is separate from where their data resides.
This HSM-as-a-Service model allows them to increase the level of control over their data, to strengthen resiliency of operations, and to support of a hybrid technology architecture.
New data processing capabilities such as multiparty secure computation, fully homomorphic encryption (operating on encrypted data) and secure enclaves (where even cloud operators cannot peer into the code being executed by a cloud consumer) will move toward mainstream and will allow enterprises to run their computation in a secure manner.
Data regulation will influence enterprise IT strategies
The activation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation has precipitated governments to issue their own version of data sovereignty and privacy laws that prevent the movement of their citizens’ personal data outside the country’s boundaries.
These new rules will drive further complexity in protecting personal data as global trends toward stricter or new data privacy regulations continue to gain momentum, making it more difficult for global companies distributed across multiple markets to navigate.
HSMs will be an integral part of a data security architecture and strategy for encrypting PII and providing an exceptionally high level of security for safeguarding data.
Digital transformation will provide a foundation for a more sustainable world
In 2020, sustainability will likely be an initiative for world-class organizations as stakeholders increasingly look to digital businesses to lead and innovate in areas of environmental responsibility and sustainability.
The vendor predicts that digital and technology innovations will provide companies with the opportunity to overcome barriers, such as the geographic dispersion of supply chains to the complexity of materials and deconstructing products.
Justin Dustzadeh, chief technology officer, Equinix, said the pace of digital transformation continues to accelerate, with cloud-native distributed infrastructure and hybrid multi-cloud deployments becoming the de facto architecture of choice.
“The ability to securely manage and process data at the edge, while having direct, secure and low-latency connectivity to partners and cloud ecosystems, is ushering new opportunities for organizations to create greater value to users and customers, and benefit society in new ways,” he added.
