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3 Cloud Predictions Data Analytics Professionals Should Pay Attention to in 2022

These three cloud-related trends in 2022 are worth keeping an eye on.

• By David Friend
• January 3, 2022

With 2021 behind us, it’s safe to say we have left one revolutionary year in the cloud and are entering another. After 2020’s mass move to remote and hybrid work spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the cloud adoption boom continue throughout 2021 because many businesses were in critical need of enhanced data access to maintain collaboration and productivity amid a distributed workforce. As many organizations continue to navigate this new normal of remote and hybrid work heading into 2022, businesses are looking to adopt cloud solutions that enable data analytics teams to quickly and easily pull valuable data to maintain business continuity and help garner actionable, timely insights, regardless of location.

For Further Reading: 4 Principles for a Successful Multicloud Strategy with Multicloud Data Services Top 5 Cloud Security Threats You Need To Understand Ransomware Increasingly Targeting SMBs and Impacting Individuals, Say Experts

This new year brings additional factors we must keep in mind for the cloud, including increased ransomware attacks and evolving industries -- such as surveillance -- that are impacting the cloud market. The way I see it, we’re in for an exciting ride over the next 12 months or more. Let’s dive into how I believe these trends will unfold this year.

Trend #1: More personalized, flexible, and diversified cloud solutions

This year we will continue to see hyperscalers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google dominate the cloud market. However, their excessive costs , driven by surprise egress fees and vendor lock-in, will continue to deter organizations looking for quick, easy, and inexpensive access to their data. This leaves more room for niche cloud vendors offering best-of-breed services.

As a result, we will see the cloud market continue to diversify toward a hybrid and multicloud-centric industry with more personalized, flexible, and cost-effective cloud storage options. This will give organizations the ability to mix and match their best-of-breed solutions to meet each of their unique requirements without the threat of depleting their IT budgets. Further, vendors that offer higher-speed on-premises storage will see especially high growth due to the increased demand from high-speed applications. This storage-as-a-service model will become prevalent over the next year.

Trend #2: The cloud becomes a secure solution to ransomware

The old concern that the cloud is somehow not as secure as on-premises storage or private infrastructure is starting to fade. This evolving understanding has come at a time when ransomware attacks have hit a record high and have shown no indication of decreasing any time soon. When it comes to ransomware and security, the biggest threat by far remains human error, such as the careless handling of credentials, falling for phishing exploits, and so forth. What many organizations have come to realize is that because of this, cyber criminals will always find a way to get in, and it’s best to leverage cloud storage and backup to securely mitigate the effects of ransomware attacks rather than waste time and money on intrusion prevention and detection technology.

With this increased migration to the cloud for data protection comes several storage features that we will begin to see more organizations leverage. The first is taking a “3-2-1” backup approach: keeping three copies of data with two on different media formats, one of which is off site. This prevents hackers from locking and encrypting every data copy and helps avoid damaging downtime.

The second is object-level immutability -- the ability to prevent data from being tampered with or deleted by anyone, including a systems administrator. Although this capability is nothing new to the cloud world, it is emerging as an important layer of protection that organizations would be remiss to ignore during these high risk times. As cyber criminals become more intelligent and persistent, these cloud storage features will become even more critical.

Trend #3: Smart city development drives surveillance cloud adoption

The surveillance industry is the world's largest consumer of storage. Over the years, innovations in the industry (such as new developments in artificial intelligence) and the migration to higher resolutions and frame rates have driven rapid expansion in surveillance data volumes and thus cloud adoption. Now, as smart cities begin to expand and flourish, even more surveillance cameras and connected devices will be in play, ultimately producing more data ready for analysis with the goal of enabling a safer and more efficient community.

To achieve this, smart cities will need to adopt low-cost, flexible, and sustainable cloud storage solutions to be able to store this vital data at the edge for easy access or risk the data losing its value. With this, more surveillance organizations will begin adopting hybrid cloud options in 2022.

A Final Word

At the end of the day, lower costs and convenience are driving continued migration to the cloud, and factors such as distributed workforces, heightened security risks, and growing smart cities are only expediting cloud adoption. It’s amazing to think that about a decade ago, all existing data was on premises. Looking ahead ten years, I’m certain almost all data will be stored in the cloud. We are well on our way to this reality, and 2022 will be another vital step in this direction.