EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
AMR ALASHAAL , REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT – MIDDLE EAST AT A10 NETWORKS
e ’ ve become an application-centric
W society . The cloud has played a huge role as we move away from strictly on-premises data centres to a hybrid cloud and multi-cloud approach . And , of course , the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on how we are building , delivering and consuming our applications . Below are some trends that data centre managers should keep an eye on :
• With more employees working from home due to the pandemic , organisations will continue to see growing demand for cloud application delivery . For some , the pandemic is accelerating their plans to use public clouds and private clouds , while others will adjust their original plans to meet the growing demand .
• Migration to the cloud will continue to grow and over 90 % of enterprises will have adopted a hybrid cloud strategy by the end of 2021 .
• 83 % of enterprise workloads were expected to be in the cloud in 2020 . That number will grow to over 90 % in 2021 . This will drastically increase secure application delivery and load balancing needs .
• With the growth in the number and use of essential business apps for online work and shopping , organisations will spend more budget on web application security to prevent cyberattacks directed at vulnerable applications .
• Due to significant investment in data centre hardware , more organisations than expected will take a hybrid cloud approach instead of ‘ cloud only ’, for application delivery .
The future of modern application environments will incorporate multiple clouds as well as on-premises systems . Companies increasingly need application traffic management capabilities that simplify deployments across these mixed or even all-cloud environments and provide centralised traffic inspection , visibility , analytics and integrated services .
The need for secure application delivery solutions to maximise application availability , performance , security and customer experiences is a critical business requirement that spans onpremises systems and data centres as well as public , private and hybrid clouds . Some companies will need hardware appliance solutions that fit into their existing architectures and IT processes . Others are moving more rapidly to cloud-ready software solutions that can operate on virtual machines or bare metal servers and support new technologies like Kubernetes and other container solutions to improve portability , scalability and consistency across distributed environments . In today ’ s transitional , hybrid world , many companies will require both .
The speed and degree to which they move to new technology models and infrastructures like the cloud and 5G is a complex business decision that will vary from company to company . Wherever a company is in its journey towards infrastructure modernisation , including cloud , multi-cloud and hybrid cloud , technology providers need to be there with solutions that will allow for optimal outcomes in protecting against evolving cyberthreats and ensuring that application traffic is managed for optimal performance , uptime and cost-efficiency .
ORGANISATIONS WILL CONTINUE TO SEE GROWING DEMAND FOR CLOUD APPLICATION DELIVERY .
30 www . intelligentdatacentres . com