What Cloud Computing means in 2022

The pressure to accelerate enterprise-wide cloud adoption to fuel digital transformation or risk falling behind the competition is triggering the rate of cloud adoption to reach new heights. 

Pandemic-imposed disruptions in the past two years have compelled CIOs to overcome any unwillingness to move mission-critical workloads to the cloud. 

According to Gartner, the worldwide public cloud services end-user spending will reach $482 billion in 2022. Although a majority of organizations today have some kind of cloud presence, having adopted cloud in one form or another, not everyone can maximize the vast opportunities the cloud offers – because they are not fully aware of the latest trends and/or are unable to keep up with evolving innovations.  

Cloud Computing in 2022 

If you want to embark and sustain the deployment of the Cloud to build disruptive business models and revolutionize the overall customer experience, you need to be able to align the latest cloud capabilities with your unique business needs and requirements. 

Let’s look at what cloud computing means in 2022 and what capabilities will drive additional cloud spending in the coming year: 

1. Desktop-as-a-Service: The pandemic has resulted in a comprehensive recalibration of cloud strategies, with collaboration and mobility capabilities increasingly moving to the cloud to enable the Future of Work. With employees continuing to work remotely using a range of devices, in 2022, cloud computing will not just comprise remote desktops and applications; Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) will increasingly be adopted to set up secure remote workplaces for organizations and empower a distributed workforce. By providing a secure and scalable solution to deploy, monitor, and manage end-user devices, DaaS will enable organizations to lower their capital expenditures while also minimizing and reducing attack vectors through regular monitoring of every device attempting to connect to corporate networks.  
2. Containerization: As organizations look to build new applications and refactor existing ones to keep up with the pace of disruptive change, Cloud containerization will help overcome the problem of sluggish and error-prone pipelines. In 2022, developers will not just use the Cloud to build applications the traditional way, but they will also increasingly adopt containers to make their app infrastructure more agile, allowing software to run more reliably – especially while moving from one computing environment to another. By packaging applications and all their dependencies into portable containers, organizations will be able to eliminate issues caused by differences in operating system distributions while integrating new features and changes more quickly. 
3. Multi-cloud: Although many organizations continue to vouch for ‘one-stop-shop’ cloud services, depending on just one cloud provider to meet all their computing needs, in 2022, businesses will increasingly adopt multi-cloud strategies to run their business. Instead of putting all eggs in one basket, organizations will cherry-pick cloud resources and services from different providers and more accurately satisfy their business requirements – without succumbing to the burden of vendor lock-in. By utilizing a combination of private, public, and hybrid cloud services, multi-cloud will enable organizations to take advantage of economies of scale and achieve greater efficiencies by adopting best-in-class services at competitive prices. 
4. Edge computing: The number of IoT devices connecting to enterprise infrastructure is growing. It is expected to reach 15 billion by 2029! Hyperscale cloud providers are increasingly looking to distribute cloud capabilities closer to the edge. In 2022, edge computing will allow organizations to analyze the data collected by these devices on the edge and make business-critical decisions in real-time. By addressing lower latency problems, edge computing will help process growing amounts of data on the edge and enable better business resilience. Edge computing will also help in segmenting and isolating vulnerable devices quickly, reducing the time taken to discover breaches, and protecting the enterprise against attacks. 
5. Carbon-intelligent clouds: Climate change mitigation continues to be a growing concern for CIOs across the world, which is why the coming year will also see widespread interest in the adoption of carbon-intelligent clouds. By instituting carbon-intelligent clouds, organizations will be able to focus on their ESG goals and more easily support green initiatives, reduce their carbon footprint, and build a sustainable future. These clouds will move workloads from one data center to another – based on the availability of renewable energy – thus generating the lowest possible CO2 emissions while constantly optimizing energy usage. 

As organizations scout to revamp their business models as a response to the ongoing crisis, cloud-based applications that enable agility and resilience will completely change the business landscape. In 2022, DaaS, containerization, multi-cloud, edge computing, and carbon-intelligent clouds will become mainstream, further supporting the ongoing shift to the Cloud. By serving as a bridge between different technologies that CIOs want to leverage, in the coming year, Cloud will enable organizations to address complex and emerging use cases and magnify their digital transformation efforts. 

The article has been written by Anurag Sinha, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Wissen Technology