Published on the 23/06/2016 | Written by Newsdesk

By 2020, a corporate “no-cloud” policy will be as rare as a “no-internet” policy is today, says technology analyst Gartner…

Cloud-first, and even cloud-only, is replacing the defensive no-cloud stance that dominated many large providers in recent years, says the global research firm. No great surprise really when you consider the general acceptance of cloud computing, however, the analyst does suggest that hybrid cloud will be the most common usage type, which means that the scary (for enterprises) public cloud will have to become part of the overall strategy.

Gartner’s prediction was based on the results of its “Market Insight: Cloud Computing’s Drive to Digital Business Creates Opportunities for Providers” report.

“Aside from the fact that many organisations with a no-cloud policy actually have some under-the-radar or unavoidable cloud usage, we believe that this position will become increasingly untenable,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice president at Gartner. “Cloud will increasingly be the default option for software deployment. The same is true for custom software, which increasingly is designed for some variation of public or private cloud.”

The analysis shows that today most provider of technology innovation are cloud-centric, with the stated intent of retrofitting the technology to on-premises. Although not everything will be cloud-based, the extreme of having nothing cloud-based will largely disappear. This means technology providers will increasingly be able to assume that their customers will be able to consume cloud capabilities.

Gartner made a number of further predictions, including:

By 2019, more than 30 percent of the 100 largest vendors’ new software investments will have shifted from cloud-first to cloud-only.

By 2020, more compute power will have been sold by IaaS and PaaS cloud providers than sold and deployed into enterprise data centres.

Cloud-first in software design has become well-established and now planning is gradually being augmented or replaced by cloud-only, says Gartner. This also applies to private and hybrid cloud scenarios.

“More leading-edge IT capabilities will be available only in the cloud, forcing reluctant organisations closer to cloud adoption. While some applications and data will remain locked in older technologies, more new solutions will be cloud-based, thus further increasing demand for integration infrastructure,” said Yefim V. Natis, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

“Rigid organisations cannot produce agile IT solutions. As delivery shifts more to the cloud, most IT organisations will have to reorganise to reflect the business realities of cloud computing: continuous innovation and change, pervasive integration, competing with cloud providers for some initiatives, and crucial prevalence of influence over control in IT’s relationship with lines of business. While historically the greatest competitor to external service providers has been internal IT, with spend shifts, structural reorganisations and the business realities mentioned above, cloud providers will be in the position to gain the upper hand.”

With regards to IaaS and PaaS, both markets are predicted to grow significantly over the next few years. By 2020, more compute power will have been sold by IaaS and PaaS cloud providers than sold and deployed into enterprise data centres.

The IaaS market has been growing more than 40 percent in revenue per year since 2011, and it is projected to continue to grow more than 25 percent per year through 2019.

By 2019, the majority of virtual machines (VMs) will be delivered by IaaS providers. By 2020, the revenue for compute IaaS and PaaS will exceed $55 billion — and likely pass the revenue for servers.

“With the growth of both bimodal computing and cloud provider offerings, software-defined enterprise data centres have become less centrally important than building a strong multiprovider management capability,” explains Thomas J. Bittman, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

“Unless very small, most enterprises will continue to have an on-premises (or hosted) data centre capability. But with most compute power moving to IaaS providers, enterprises and vendors need to focus on managing and leveraging the hybrid combination of on-premises, off-premises, cloud and noncloud architectures, with a focus on managing cloud-delivered capacity efficiently and effectively.”

Additional information is available to Gartner clients in the report “Market Insight: Cloud Computing’s Drive to Digital Business Creates Opportunities for Providers.”