Our Predictions for Cloud Technology in 2022: The 4 Big Trends we hope to see Next Year

Here in the UK, we will no doubt continue to empower our ecosystems with the flexibility, agility and innovation that has arrived with remote working. In 2022, as the focus shifts from merely attempting to survive in a changing world to thriving in it, we believe these are the top trends that will shape our professional organisations, culture and relationships.

As the year draws to a close, we’re looking ahead, learning from our experiences in 2021 and developing our own product pipelines in line with the ever changing global climate. Client needs and their success requirements are still heavily dictated by pandemic repercussions and tech is adapting and accelerating to accommodate. As we move into a new year, the need for sustainability, ever-increasing data volumes, and increasing user adoption and accessibility with out of the box solutions will continue to be important drivers of digital transformation.

Virtual Reality and the Metaverse

It’s now almost two years since we were thrust into a virtualised version of the workspace and remote working became our norm. The pandemic may have been an emergency trigger for change but it has resulted in long-term/ permanent trends. As it turns out, people love the flexibility of logging into their place of work from anywhere in the world and have made it clear they won’t be going back to a five day week in the office. With this in mind, surely we can expect to see virtual provisions continuing to improve, VR office experiences, digital commutes to work and virtual round tables are all things we expect to see in the coming year.

We will also become increasingly familiar with the concept of a “metaverse” — unchanging digital worlds that exist in parallel with the physical world we live in. Inside these metaverses — such as the one proposed recently by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — we will carry out many of the functions we’re used to doing in the real world, including working, playing, and socializing. As the rate of digitization increases, these metaverses will model and simulate the real world with growing accuracy, allowing us to have more immersive, convincing, and ultimately valuable experiences within the digital realm.

Out of the box Solutions

In recent years an entire industry has emerged which aims to put the skills and tools necessary for tech-led innovation in the hands of the ‘public’, regardless of their expertise or experience. Let’s take AppSource as an example- thousands of ‘off the shelf’ solutions aiming to digitalise your business processes without hours of custom consultancy. In particular, hybrid solutions that enable IT leaders to empower their remote teams have sky rocketed- we believe we are reaching the point where online collaboration, productivity and governance is so good we’re achieving a ‘best of both worlds’ scenario.

A jump in the release of self-service and “do-it-yourself” solutions has also been financially driven. Not every company needs to hire a specific team of inhouse developers to build their own ecosystem when they can piggyback on the products released for the Microsoft 365 stack that they’re already using, it’s as simple as ‘plug in and play’. In 2022 we will continue to see companies deploying out of the box solutions that leverage the existing infrastructure of giants like Microsoft.

Zero Trust Governance

Technology in our day to day lives has continued to take on an increasingly prominent role in our professional lives. The traditional security that used to be in place is quite simply no longer adequate for growing data stores and complex remote teams.

As the President and general manager of One Identity, Bhagwat Swaroop, says: “Most organisations recognise that they will be best served by prioritizing identity security and taking steps to ensure bad actors are limited once they gain access. Zero Trust is fast becoming an enterprise imperative because it eliminates vulnerable permissions and excessive access by delivering a continuum of different rights across the organization to ultimately limit attack surfaces if they are breached.”

With this statement in mind, Konsolute hope to see zero trust security becoming a trend in 2022, particularly in industries that naturally handle sensitive data.

Planet First

As COP26 attempted to spread the word to wider audiences that Sustainability and Net Zero are more than just buzzwords, it seems plenty of organisations are recognising the part they can play. In fact, more than half of customers said they would buy a lower-quality product if the company were more focused on sustainability. Eighty-four percent of cloud solution buyers considered the company’s stance on sustainability when it came to purchasing and implementing a product.

Putting the planet first is also great for company margins- using less power by switching to cloud storage or relying on green energy sources eliminates many of those emissions and it’s cost effective. Using cloud storage server farms that power their facilities with solar, wind or other green energy options can lower energy usage even further.

Summing up

So that’s it, if our predictions are right, we’re set for an exciting year in tech where we continue to empower our workforces with virtualisation, greener cloud provision, tighter governance and ready to go solutions. Have you got something you’d like to add to the conversation? Comment on our socials or give us a call we love talking to fellow cloud enthusiasts.