2019 Predictions with Infrastructure Implications

Advances in networking, cloud, and computing have the potential to improve operations, lower costs, and help organizations meet their business goals in 2019. Here is a peek at some of the changes to expect in the new year.

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Companies head (back to) the private cloud

In 2016, Dropbox announced it was moving 600 petabytes of data from AWS to its own data center, and the trend continued with many other companies “born in the cloud” taking the same steps. At the root of the migration was security, coupled with performance and availability issues, and the desire for more control.

Ironically, we expect to see these same concerns drive enterprises to move applications and data from the public cloud back to the private cloud in 2019. Data shows that private cloud is growing at a rate two times that of public cloud. An IDC report found that half of the organizations surveyed expected to move their public cloud applications to a private cloud or non-cloud environment in the next two years. As organizations who moved to the public cloud grow in maturity, many will realize the cost savings or agility benefits they anticipated were not easy to unlock. We expect to see these organizations adopt to new frameworks involving software-defined networking in a private cloud environment or on-prem.

 A surge in serverless everything

The rise in serverless computing has been steadily building over the last few years. Data from Q417 showed adoption increased seven-fold and the RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud report found serverless computing is the fastest-growing type of cloud service with a growth rate of 75 percent. As we see more interest in this computing approach, it will be important for organizations to understand the effects it has on their application availability and performance.

Serverless architecture is beneficial because it removes the burden of resource provisioning and lets the development team focus solely on writing and deploying code. Yet, enterprises using this approach to build applications aren’t totally free from potential traffic management issues. Behind the scenes, the cloud platform is running on a server, so there could still be traffic latency problems. Businesses using a serverless approach in 2019 will need new ways to apply this pay-as-you-go computing model while maintaining application performance.  

Microservice-first application development will reign

We expect to see enterprises and startups alike build all new applications and services as microservices in 2019. Introduced in 2011, microservices has grown in popularity these past few years due to the increasingly distributed nature of infrastructure, the adoption of DevOps, and the rise in PaaS tools which make the approach more accessible. The resulting flexibility organizations gain to make changes and adapt the technology is critical. When it's time to scale a product or service, they can easily swap out key infrastructure, such as a database. The IT industry has seen startups embrace a microservices-first approach already. In 2019, we expect enterprises to follow suit, even in cases where the apps in question will be sold within a larger platform or service.

Media is driven to the edge

We expect to see gaming companies embrace multi-cloud, multi-CDN and edge computing strategies as they look to limit costs to deliver dynamic content to users quickly. As these companies invest in creating and promoting compelling and timely content for their fans, they will need the support of edge computing facilities to deliver the always-on, lag-free gaming experience their users expect. These companies will look to invest in co-location services in order to deliver higher performance in their local markets, creating new needs from a DNS perspective. Automation and real-time performance monitoring will be key to companies looking to get the most out of their investment in these providers.

e-Commerce infrastructure diversifies

Having multiple providers for application infrastructure used to be an exception not the rule in the retail space, but that is starting to shift as consumers demand instant access to services and products on a global scale. Recent Amazon research showed that the company would lose $1.6 billion if its site slowed by even one second. eCommerce companies looking to limit their own loss will have no other option than to pursue multi-cloud and multi-CDN.

For example, as the APAC region grows in importance to luxury retailers, these organizations will adopt multi-cloud and multi-CDN to optimize the digital shopping experience for consumers. The larger players will be surpassed by regional CDN providers who can provide better performance than their global or national counterparts.