The future is always difficult to predict and the coronavirus era has made this even more challenging. There are, however, certain trends that appear more likely, especially within the Information Technology wheel. Looking into next year and making some 2021 predictions, is Franz Aman, CMO of relational database company MariaDB. He outlines three key trends for Digital Journal readers.
COVID’s impact on IT
According Aman: “This year has challenged every company in the world one way or the other. Companies that had already migrated to the cloud had an easier time transitioning and competing in the pandemic economy. COVID’s impact has sped that trend up significantly, with 40 percent of IT leaders in a recent survey admitting they are accelerating their move to the cloud in order to keep up with changing times.”
He adds: “I expect this acceleration to continue in 2021 because the cloud’s intrinsic benefits – such as a more flexible investment model, reduced infrastructure and personnel costs and its easily scalable nature – have never been more powerful. While we will all be thrilled to put 2020 behind us, many IT challenges will remain, and the cloud’s role in overcoming them will only continue to grow.”
Multi-cloud moves to the forefront
Looking at new forms of cloud computing, Aman predicts: “While we expect to see an accelerated use of cloud databases as more applications move to the cloud, we also expect to see a dramatic shift toward multi-cloud support becoming a requirement in 2021. The key is giving companies the ability to source cloud services from more than one big player to gain leverage and insulation from the large-scale outages we have seen.”
Database consolidation
There will probably be fewer databases going forwards, says Aman: “360. That’s the number of database systems out in the wild. And while choice is good and finding the right tool for the job is smart, it also adds major complexity. As companies move to modernize in the cloud, they will seek simplification, which will lead to massive consolidation in the database market. Database vendors that offer multi-functional capabilities will win, rather than a multitude of niche databases that need to be stitched together and require different ways of accessing data.”
