The world of cloud computing is in a state of flux. Not long ago during the late 90s, the cloud was considered an emerging technology, known only to IT specialists. Today it is a part of everyday life – Majority of today’s businesses use the cloud in one form or another, and this number only looks set to grow. Whether you are one of the few that hasn’t embraced the technology, or you are keen to keep up with the times, it is important to stay up-to-date with the latest trends for cloud computing solutions. Cloud computing is changing businesses in many ways. Whether it is the way they store their data or how they protect their secure information, cloud computing is benefitting all businesses in every sector.
So, with the future approaching and IT looking to make important decisions on utilizing budgets, we take a look at some key trends in the next five to ten years that look to shape the future of cloud computing solutions. These could have a profound effect — not only on organizations’ computer systems and websites but also on running their whole operation across different industries.
1. Improve Healthcare with Future Cloud Computing
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 shed light on how technology could improve operations in the healthcare field. Those previously hesitant to move forward with cloud computing in healthcare may be more open to it now, as the pandemic emphasized the benefits and assuaged some fears about privacy, implementation, and adoption. The pandemic showed how technology has the ability to make healthcare more efficient and predictive, connecting people by allowing patients and clinicians flexibility over seeking and giving care from less traditional locations.
Innovations in Healthcare
Health systems able to harness their data and technology when COVID-19 hit were in the best shape to move to remote work and care, at least partially, and to continue offering patients the services they needed. The ability to work remotely and see many patients remotely is one of the silver linings of this health crisis. Those most prepared with technology could also use their systems to innovate during the pandemic for:
- Contact tracing and disease surveillance
- Using data to predict staffing and patient capacity needs
- Remote patient monitoring
- Scaling up the dynamic demand with pop-up hospitals using service desk technology
- Implementing or tweaking voice assistants or chatbots powered by artificial intelligence to help patients find the right doctors and needed information – for COVID-19 and for other healthcare issues
- Developing deep learning algorithms to rapidly assess raw medical images, to screen, predict or diagnose disease – COVID-19 and others. By identifying conditions at their earliest onset or prioritizing concerning radiologic findings, the technology can potentially save precious hours of specialists’ time, reducing costs, and enabling targeted investments.
These are examples of how cloud computing in healthcare can help health systems innovate, both in an emergent situation and over the long term
Opportunities for greater technology use in healthcare
With a rising aging population, innovations like these play a key role in improving future healthcare. The global population is estimated to reach 8 billion people before 2025, and the number of people over age 80 is set to triple in the next 30 years. The U.S. alone is looking at a physician shortage, partly due to increased care needs in the aging population, and partly due to a physician cohort that is retiring faster than it is graduating. By 2033, the U.S. will have an anticipated physician shortage of 54,100 to 139,000 physicians, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Fewer doctors, greater healthcare needs, and the rising cost of healthcare are all problems that need to be addressed.
Many healthcare providers and administrators are now realizing the urgent need to prioritize changes in how healthcare is delivered, by adopting technology to improve care, management, and efficiency. Opportunities to improve healthcare expand on innovations already in the market.
Ensuring a patient-centric approach: Personalized medicine is a great example of the patient-centric approach. Researchers conducting clinical trials are trying to separate out which treatments work best for which subsets of patients. Data analysis and cloud computing in healthcare help parse and make sense of the vast amounts of data these trials generate. In oncology, clinical teams with various specialists work together to ensure a coordinated treatment plan. Again, they are consulting complicated treatment guidelines for a personalized approach, while running genetic tests to better pinpoint the most promising treatments for that individual. The patient is also part of the discussion, a shift in the “doctor knows best” approach of past generations.
Changing from treatment to prevention: For each $1 invested in improving health, there is an estimated economic return of $2 to $4, according to a recent McKinsey report. By focusing on and supporting wellness, and using data to predict and prevent illness, clinicians can proactively deliver connected, personalized or precision care. Research shows that more than 80% of health plans are incorporating social determinants of health into their member programs, and that’s because it pays off in lower healthcare utilization. Clinicians and payers focusing exclusively on medical care, and not the greater factors contributing to a person’s health, are missing the prevention opportunity and will always be in a position of trying to catch up. Putting financial and technology efforts into this up-front prevention tactic can pay dividends on the back end.
Monitoring patient data remotely: Chronic and mental health diseases accounts for 90% the $3.5 trillion in U.S. healthcare costs annually. Technology, however, can assist clinicians in these efforts, by tracking patient data on a real-time, or nearly real-time basis. This allows physicians to be alerted more quickly to troubling data, whether that’s a pulse oximeter reading for a COVID-19 patient recovering at home or a problematic heart rhythm. Technology can enable physicians to advise patients remotely, and provide automated health recommendations based on biometric data from wearable devices.
Further Reading – The Future of Cloud Computing in Healthcare
2. Cloud Video Games
Cloud gaming is a revolutionary technology that allows users to stream and play their favorite games directly from the cloud instead of a gaming device or specific hardware. Cloud gaming brings fantastic gaming experiences to a large audience. It allows gamers with device or hardware limitations to enjoy the same titles through a cloud environment with low latency.
Today, most video games are purchased as physical media or downloaded into a device such as a smartphone, PC or gaming console. When the game is played, quality and performance are controlled and optimized for that device.
With cloud gaming, content execution is moved from the consumer’s device into the cloud. Players stream games just like they stream videos on Netflix as compressed video frames – only that the videos respond to user input. When a user presses a button for a character to jump, the input is sent to a remote server that informs the game what you have done. It then sends a new video frame of the character jumping. This happens very quickly, in a fraction of a second, and looks just the same as a game that was downloaded onto a device.
Cloud gaming has been hailed as the future of the gaming industry, and here are some of the benefits it’s expected to bring.
Compatibility – Through the highly scalable platform, high profile video games can even be played on lower-end devices. The limitation that was brought about by processing power, graphics capacity, and memory storage has been removed through the cloud platform, providing users with a fantastic gaming experience.
Lowered costs – Another obvious advantage of this gaming technology is lowered costs. Cloud gaming eliminates the need for upgrading to the latest gaming system. Once you acquire the game hardware, you’re set for life. You will not have to buy the latest consoles every few years to enjoy better game functionality since the GPU is held remotely. When the provider upgrades their system, consumers can use the new gaming platform instantaneously.
Users also don’t have to pay for individual titles. They pay a subscription fee to enjoy a ton of games at a lower cost. Reducing the cost of gaming will attract more lower-income consumers, thus increasing the number of players.
Stop games from getting pirated – Secure cloud servers will also bring an end to piracy. This is because the service provider maintains game content, and this prevents the game from being manipulated. Publishers now have more reasons to adopt this gaming technology that guarantees them more income by making it difficult to pirate video games.
No device limitations – Most non-mobile video games are chained to specific consoles and PCs (often Windows). They cannot run on other devices, thus they can only be enjoyed by the portion of the population that has access to these devices\. Cloud gaming services allow games to be more platform-independent. PCs and tablets running Linux, iOS, Android, and Chrome OS operating systems can play games that previously could only run on Windows devices.
Video game marketing will be enhanced since game devs will be able to target more people, resulting in higher revenues. Work a video game marketing agency to attract more players for your game.
A vast sea of games all at the audience fingertips – Cloud platforms ensure users can access multiple games from one location for their entertainment. Gamers get a delightful experience by being able to choose from a wide variety of titles, while developers earn more money since more people can access their games.
Microsoft xCloud, for example, provides access to more than 150 games through its Ultimate tier subscription. The offering includes blockbuster titles delivered to users in an on-demand, Netflix-style format.
Is Cloud Gaming the Future Of The Video Gaming Industry? – Click Here for further reading
3. The Number of Cloud-Based Corporations Will Continue to Grow
Cloud computing is the centerpiece of the world’s technical response to the COVID-19 crisis in 2019. Indeed, the leading public cloud providers were standout business successes in this most unusual of years. As businesses everywhere managed to keep the lights on by having personnel work from their homes, all of the principal cloud providers substantially grew their revenues and continued to deliver innovations at a blistering pace.
Cloud computing will be central to the post pandemic new normal
In the sad and fraught year when covid-19 emerged, cloud services were a godsend for keeping the economy and our lives from grinding to a halt.
In 2021 and in the foreseeable future, everybody will continue to rely thoroughly on clouds (as well as on streaming, remote collaboration, smart sensors, and other cloud-reliant digital technologies) to emerge from a pandemic that is still grinding down on us remorselessly. Enterprise technology professionals will adjust their cloud strategies with one eye on COVID-19 trends and the other on their digital transformation initiatives. The tech vendors who stand to gain the most are those such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft that provide full, cloud-to-edge ecosystems that enable seamless new normal lifestyles.
Public clouds will grow even more dominant
In the past year, public clouds rode the pandemic to faster growth. According to experts,, enterprise cloud spending, both public and private, increased 34.4 percent from a year previous, while non-cloud IT spending declined by eight percent.
In 2021 leading public cloud platforms—especially Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform—will cement their dominance in the cloud market and expand their sway across many sectors of the global economy. AWS will retain its leading market share, though Microsoft, Google, and Alibaba will continue to close the gap. Revenue growth will remain explosive through mid-decade, according to Deloitte’s projections, never dipping below 30 percent annually. Global cloud spending will grow seven times faster than overall IT spending through this period. Experts forecasts that worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will nearly double, to around $500 billion, by 2023.
Platform as a service will grow in public cloud revenue share. In the recent rapid shift to work-from-home arrangements, SaaS providers such as Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce provided an essential platform for continuing business as usual in spite of the disruptions.
As remote work remains a mainstream approach, SaaS providers of all sorts will be poised for runaway growth. However, PaaS-based application services will grow even faster, driven by enterprise customers’ increasing emphasis on cloud-native, containerized, and serverless cloud platforms.
One of the biggest PaaS growth segments in 2021 and beyond will be multi cloud serverless offerings from Vendia, Microsoft, Red Hat, and others. These solutions and associated low-code platforms will be essential ingredients in more enterprises’ application modernization, digital transformation, and business continuity strategies.
4. Building Digital-First Infrastructure for Smart Cities
By 2050, the world’s population is set to reach approximately 10 billion people, with the largest number being concentrated in urban centres. This will increase the need for advanced digital solutions to manage the population.
Cloud will provide the digital infrastructure of tomorrow’s cities, where an estimated 6 billion of the world’s population will live by 2045. Smart elevators and parking lots, driverless cars and drone taxis, trains and subways, farms and power plants — all will be safer and better managed, thanks to the cloud’s ability to store and analyze data.
The cloud will also be transformative for companies, especially small and mid-sized businesses, as data analytics, artificial intelligence and other capabilities become available as services. Because each industry has different needs, Huawei, a global tech company where I head up the communications team, is working on what we call the Industry Cloud: thousands of distinct, separate clouds, all working in concert across a digital ecosystem of different industry verticals.
For example:
- A commercial aviation cloud will help airlines manage ground operations such as maintenance, fueling, baggage handling, and cabin cleaning, thereby increasing efficiency and helping flights take off on time.
- A utilities cloud will automatically repair faults in the power grid to ensure that homes and businesses get the electricity they need.
- A banking cloud will let financial institutions scan thousands of transactions per second to prevent fraud.
Regardless of industry or size, all companies need digital infrastructure to support their business operations. But cloud will change ICT from a support system into a production system. For example, OpenDesk, a London-based company, uploads furniture designs to the cloud and lets customers download the designs and manufacture the furniture locally. This lowers shipping and inventory costs, while reducing the company’s carbon footprint.
Further reading – Cloud Computing Is Crucial To The Future Of Our Societies
CONCLUSION
Cloud computing is a phenomenon that can be traced back to 1999. For more than two decades, adapting to the latest trends of cloud computing has been crucial for organizations. Fast forward 20 years later, cloud computing is gaining pace. Moreover, it has become one of the most promising and advanced ways of data storage. Cloud computing is highly appreciated for its mobility, reduced risks, and availability.
Cloud computing can open a whole new world of jobs, services, platforms, applications, and much more. There are thousands of possibilities beginning to form as the future of cloud computing starts to really take off.
It’s predicted that in the near future cloud computing will make a big jump leading to businesses flourishing, expansion of data storage capacities and high rate of security. With this speed of growth of the cloud, it would be hard to imagine running a business outside of the cloud as it won’t make fiscal sense. Once again, the drive to be more cost-effective and efficient has driven the world of technology to a cloud breakthrough.
References
- Improve Healthcare with Future Cloud Computing – https://www.mavenwave.com/blog/the-future-of-cloud-computing-in-healthcare-looking-to-2021-and-beyond/
- Cloud Gaming is The Future Of The Video Gaming Industry – https://www.gamemarketinggenie.com/blog/cloud-gaming-the-future-of-gaming-industry
- The Number of Cloud-Based Corporations Will Continue to Grow – https://www.infoworld.com/article/3601731/7-predictions-for-cloud-computing-in-2021.html
- Building Digital-First Infrastructure for Smart Cities – https://www.forbes.com/sites/joytan
