The Future of Cloud Computing: 8 Trends to Watch in 2024

The future of cloud computing in 2024 holds a lot of exciting possibilities. With the rapid advancement of technology and the increasing demand for digital transformation, cloud computing is expected to continue its growth and evolution.

Here are eight potential developments that could shape the future of cloud computing in 2024 and beyond.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. Top Cloud Computing Trends in 2024
3. The Bottom Line
4. FAQs:
5. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. Top Cloud Computing Trends in 2024
3. The Bottom Line
Show Full Guide
4. FAQs:
5. References

Top Cloud Computing Trends in 2024

1. Ongoing Migration of Enterprise Data to the Cloud

“A key component of where the future is headed with cloud computing is the ongoing migration of enterprise data to the cloud but with the added complexities of even more data sources thanks to the proliferation of AI initiatives,” Sharad Varshney, CEO of OvalEdge, a data governance consultancy and end-to-end data catalog solutions provider, said to Techopedia.

“This necessitates the continuous preparation and optimization of data for use in both native-cloud and hybrid-cloud applications,” he said. “This optimization is essential to fully leverage the cloud’s potential for innovation, insights, and cost savings.”

Cloud data management introduces new imperatives, including enhancing performance, ensuring data scalability, controlling storage costs, maintaining availability, and integrating many kinds of data while keeping up with evolving data security standards, according to Varshney.

“These priorities will require innovative and targeted strategies for success and will surely be a significant part of any data professional’s day-to-day agenda,” he added.

2. Increase in Hybrid Multi-Cloud Solutions

“The future of cloud computing will be heavily influenced by regulatory, market, and governmental precedents to adopt multi-cloud approaches to business strategies,” said Jason Carolan, chief innovation officer at Flexential, a hybrid IT infrastructure provider.

“The trend toward hybrid multi-cloud solutions will accelerate in 2024, driven by regulatory pressures and the desire to avoid vendor lock-in as seen in the UK and EU markets,” Carolan said. “Regulatory investigations will prompt more transparency and fairness in cloud market pricing, encouraging multi-cloud adoption.”

According to Carolan, the hosted private cloud will also likely gain popularity as a means to avoid vendor lock-in and retain access to managed services as skilled labor issues continue.

“Colocation will continue to see adoption as a solution that addresses these problems, especially as companies with large-scale infrastructure needs seek to rein in their costs,” he said

Data privacy and security concerns related to AI applications will further push companies to adopt multi-cloud environments because of the better control and flexibility they offer.

“In 2024, government multi-cloud roadmaps will serve as blueprints for businesses, emphasizing the importance of efficiency, security, and flexibility,” Carolan said. “The federal government’s multi-cloud push is sure to set a precedent that will continue to influence private sector strategies to shift from ‘cloud-first’ to ‘cloud-smart.'”

The focus will be on ensuring seamless integration and management across different cloud environments and supporting scaling needs for dynamic apps and seasonal demands.

3. Consistency Is the Name of the Game

“Over the last five years, many customers have adopted cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings,” said Srikumar Ramanathan, chief solutions officer at Mphasis, an IT services and consulting company.

“They have overcome some of the early adoption and teething challenges associated with security, business model adaptation, changes to support and operating models, licensing, and end-user adoption,” he said. “This has consequently been extremely disruptive to older IT models and even traditional industry constituents that have been forced to change their business models to reflect this.”

However, current cloud and SaaS adoption has left many customers with even more new challenges, including creating an integrated IT operations, security, and tooling model that effectively spans traditional on-premises/distributed deployments and cloud/SaaS footprints, according to Ramanathan.

“We believe that in the next two to three years, customers will focus their energies on reconciling these challenges by leveraging evolving AI and automation to drive the consistency to make their cloud, SaaS, and on-premises/distributed deployments appear seamless to their users,” he said.

As the consistency and pervasiveness of the cloud increases, it will transition from an IT “target” to a “facilitator” of key business initiatives.

“This would allow lines of business to shift their thinking to focus on the definition of key capabilities and constraints from worrying about the specific technologies that it would take to manifest these ideas.

“The goal would be to seamlessly source and integrate a variety of market options in a way that guarantees stable, cost-effective, intelligent operations, and integrated comprehensive reporting,” Ramanathan said.

“Furthermore, these vertical capabilities would seamlessly integrate into a unified data platform approach where any user would be able to clearly identify all their data assets and associated governance with data operations being handled transparently,” he added.

4. AI Will Dominate the Cloud Computing Market

“The next wave of cloud computing will be dominated by AI, which will be used to improve customer experiences, employee productivity, and operational processes,” Michael Curry, president of data modernization at Rocket Software, said to Techopedia.

“This AI will need to be fueled by a more complete view of trusted data, which will need to be seamlessly integrated into the cloud from back-end transactional systems.

“For many companies, this type of data resides on mainframes and will continue to be on mainframes for years to come because the mainframe remains the most scalable and reliable way to run these transactions.

“In the next few years, mission-critical businesses will opt for an agile hybrid cloud approach to data analysis and application development, implementing technology that enables accessibility and visualization across cloud and mainframe environments,” Curry said.

It will be necessary for IT teams to implement technology that allows them to visualize the source of data – and how the data relates to each other – in the cloud. Not only is this critical for a resilient data ecosystem, but it’s also critical for the security and risk management of data not being held on-premises.

“This will become more attainable as emerging technology allows for the replication of mainframe data to the cloud without disrupting existing systems, overcoming challenges related to query slowdowns, security issues, and maintaining transactional system performance,” Curry added.

“The future of AI-driven cloud computing is now,” agreed Drew Firment, chief cloud strategist at Pluralsight, a technology workforce development company.

Organizations are already using AI to streamline cloud computing operations with an increasing emphasis on security detection.

“As cloud providers continue to leverage AI to improve efficiency, the longer-term focus will quickly shift to leveraging managed services to build consumer-facing applications that harness AI to unlock the full potential of cloud computing,” he said.

In addition, AI is shifting the C-suite conversations away from the tactical implementation of cloud computing as IT infrastructure services and toward using cloud computing to enable strategic business outcomes with AI-driven use cases.

“Enterprises are looking to transform from simply consuming cloud services to creating customer value with AI playing the leading role,” Firment said. “In response, cloud providers are feverishly abstracting their underlying cloud services into managed services that better enable enterprises to leverage the underlying capabilities of AI and machine learning.”

5. Generative AI Accelerates Cloud Adoption

“The cloud is the great enabler of innovation, but many people might be surprised with how few organizations are actually utilizing its vast applications,” said Kyle Tuberson, chief technology officer at consultancy ICF.

“Cloud adoption is expected to rise to more than 70% by 2027,” he said. “And I predict this massive jump in cloud adoption will be due to generative AI.”

Generative AI will accelerate the adoption of cloud platforms because the cloud provides organizations with a faster path to unlocking the power of generative AI, according to Tuberson. This technology can help transform businesses from improving customer experiences to driving innovation in product development and optimizing backend processes.

“But building this technology requires immense computational power and resources, something that is out of reach for the majority of organizations.

 

“Instead, these companies can use cloud platforms to leverage generative AI without the need for extensive in-house infrastructure and investment,” he added.

6. Platform Engineering Will Gain Significant Momentum

Organizations are reaching a mature phase of cloud adoption.

“We have moved beyond the race to get workloads to the cloud, and now, it is critically important to maximize its value,” said Eric Drobisewski, senior enterprise architect at Liberty Mutual Insurance.

According to Drobisewski, this includes advancing the end-to-end platform experience, rationalizing technology choice in clouds, and reining in the number of overlapping cloud primitives that teams have autonomously deployed.

“Embracing the practice of platform engineering will allow large organizations to shift focus from large distributed teams of engineers that are creating cloud resources to support the needs of their specific applications to a common platform that absorbs the cognitive load of infrastructure engineering and enables engineers to focus on delivering business value,” he said.

7. Cloud as The Underlying Infrastructure for Net-Gen Apps

In 2024 and beyond, cloud computing will embrace its role as the underlying infrastructure for building innovative applications to serve businesses and consumers.

Randy Armknecht, managing director, global cloud advisory at consulting firm Protiviti, said to Techopedia:

“Two aspects of this are in play. First, is the physical proliferation of the cloud (distributed cloud or edge computing). As cloud compute expands and reduces the physical distance between end users and the compute power, the user experience can maintain low latency despite ever-growing amounts of data and complexity of compute.

“Second, is the logical proliferation of innovative and cutting-edge technologies being available within the cloud as the path of least resistance. Whether it’s taking advantage of the rapid growth of AI models and application programming interfaces, embracing the emergence of quantum computing, or taking on the next new thing, the cloud is how innovation is delivered.”

“Having your business compute and storage located within the same cloud ecosystem provides a clear path to exploration and adoption of these technologies,” Armknecht added.

8. Edge Computing Trend to Continue

Edge computing will continue to develop.

“Much like the part of the water cycle with which it shares a name, cloud computing is in constant flux,” said Alex Reid, product architect at 11:11 Systems, a managed infrastructure solutions provider. “Change is the only constant in how companies deliver infrastructure.”

Leading up to 2020, there was a change toward hyperscaler adoption. However, over the last few years, many businesses have reacted to that trend by bringing their infrastructure practices back on premises in the form of edge deployments.

The edge computing trend, which will likely continue, has yet to reach its summit in terms of sophistication, according to Reid.

“The field is wide open for hardware and software vendors to optimize, streamline, and productize. As next-gen network solutions, such as SD-WAN gain wider adoption, a distributed network of edge compute installs becomes an achievable reality,” Reid said.

The Bottom Line

The future of cloud computing is bright. Overall, cloud computing in 2024 is expected to be more advanced, secure, and integrated with other technologies. It will also play a crucial role in the digital transformation of businesses and organizations, providing them with the tools and resources to stay competitive in a constantly evolving technological landscape.

FAQs: