Application development has evolved over the years – it started with developers writing applications on mainframe computers which, a few decades later gave way to decentralized and use of 3-tier architectures (web tier, app tier and data base tier). The latest trend is to write applications into cloud native architectures. In the last few years, we have seen that the cloud native architectures are written on top of platform services provided by a single cloud provider, but we at StackPath believe that is about to change. Which leads to our predictions for 2022:
#1: Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud will see more adoption
While “hybrid cloud” refers to two or more clouds, it is usually only two clouds: a private cloud running in an enterprise’s on-premises data center and a public cloud. Enterprises found it too complex to leverage multiple cloud providers for the same application so, in the last few years, they started demanding hybrid cloud to run some applications in their private on-premises data centers and other applications in a cloud platform provided by a single cloud provider. In past years, it was also common for enterprises to use one cloud provider for one set of applications (e.g., O365 from Microsoft Azure) and another cloud provider for another set of applications (e.g., big data analytics on Google Cloud or AWS). Enterprises had very high expectations on uptime provided by cloud providers, but they were not fully met. In 2022, we believe enterprises will take business continuity more seriously and will start using multiple cloud providers for the same application.
#2: Applications will be pushed to the edge and drive further adoption of devsecops
In the last few years, we saw good progress in Kubernetes development and adoption. In 2022, we will see more developers build applications using microservices architecture leveraging Kubernetes technology and toolchain. We will also start seeing early adopters build true multi-cloud applications where a single application is broken into micro-services and each microservice is deployed in the best cloud platform based on platform requirements. Some of these microservices will be deployed in the edge cloud to take advantage of proximity to the end user and data. For managing and operating distributed applications, these early adopters will use devsecops and further mature devsecops tools and process.
#3: Distributed data management, data governance, data privacy, and data analytics will see increased adoption and drive the emergence of edge AI
There are too many sources of data and too much data. It is a daunting task to gain the right knowledge from data. This year, we will see early adopters build distributed data analytics leveraging edge cloud and edge AI where they can make decisions and take actions closer to where the data is being produced. For example, the training can happen in centralized hyper cloud public data centers but the data preparation, data inference and action can be pushed to edge cloud. Some applications (like web application firewalls) already do this where the training is done in some central location and the rules are deployed at the edges. We will see increased adoption of this architecture by more applications. We will also see improvements in machine learning operations (MLOps) tools and processes to continuously measure the performance of the data modeling algorithms and retrain as needed.
#4: An increase in remote teleworking will drive different security and network architectures
In this era of COVID, most companies are adjusting to hybrid model where employees work certain days in a month from remote locations (e.g., their home) and come to their campus on other days. We have already seen wide adoption of AWS identity and access management (IAM), client-to-cloud solutions, zero trust network access (ZTNA), and secure access service edge (SASE) in the last couple of years. We will continue to see increased adoption of this model. We will start seeing that companies that build these services (e.g., SASE, ZTNA) and start leveraging edge cloud to enforce client-to-cloud policies for load balancing traffic, security, etc.
#5: New waves of applications will emerge and accelerate innovations in distributed state management, quality of service, high performance compute, storage, and networks
In the last few years, we have seen many companies starting to build interactive and augmented experiences using metaverse, AR/VR, etc. We have also seen accelerated developments in blockchain and NFT technologies and increased research and development in the areas of autonomous vehicles, smart cars, smart factories, smart buildings, smart cities – basically smart everything. We believe that some of these technologies will transition past the development stage and come together in 2022 and be deployed on top of a distributed edge cloud using devsecops tools and processes. For example, an application like metaverse may use blockchain technologies for distributed state management and NFTs for products. These distributed blockchain technologies will be deployed on edge cloud that provides high performance GPU, CPU, NVM Express over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) storage, and the like.
To summarize, we predict 2022 will be a great time for the tech industry. Multiple innovations that are being developed independently will be coming together which will bring improved experience to end users and will provide great opportunities to enterprises to bring highly differentiated solutions to market.
