Cloud computing: Growth and predictions

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By Alex Dover

The rise in cloud computing has seen new technologies developed in order to keep up with competing markets and demanding customers. As new players enter the scene this is only set to increase. With Forrester Research predicting a six-fold increase in cloud computing by 2020, it’s no wonder that even large companies are deciding to make the move from hosting on-site to the cloud.

Rising spending

In 2016, spending on public cloud Infrastructure as a Service hardware and software is forecast to reach $38 Billion, growing to $173 Billion by 2026.

With IaaS combined with the many features Windows Azure offers the opportunities for enterprise IT, as well as small and medium businesses, to employ cloud as a delivery platform, as well as with its media and phone app possibilities, are exciting.

Crossing the boundary

What attracts many to Azure is its progressive attitude towards crossing the ‘boundary’ between Microsoft and Linux. Principal Architect Kamala Subramaniam showed that when building its Azure Cloud Switch series, the development team turned to Linux in order to build the switch from scratch.

  “It is a cross-platform modular operating system for datacentre networking built on Linux. ACS allows us to debug, fix, and test software bugs much faster. It also allows us the flexibility to scale down the software and develop features that are required for our datacentre and our networking needs.”

With Azure, Microsoft has shown that it is progressive with its attitudes towards technology. The ACS team were focused on delivering the best product, and they knew fully well that they’d need Linux to do that.

Want to learn more about Microsoft Azure? Learn about how MVP Iris Classon approached the move to Azure in her session 'To the cloud! From on-prem to multi-tenancy' at WinOps Conference 2016 - more details on the WinOps site www.winops.org.

Register for WinOps Conference 2016, where the creator of Powershell Jeffrey Snover is the keynote speaker.

 

AlAlex Dover ex Dover and Oliver Palethorpe work for Prism Digital, an IT recruitment consultancy that aims to be genuinely different from the rest.