2015 Cloud Computing Recap: What has changed in the biggest vendors offerings?
2015 was an extremely busy year for cloud computing. More and more businesses migrated and cloud rapidly became one of the biggest contributors to the IT complexity. The competition between vendors for infrastructure as a service continued ferociously, with Microsoft and IBM cutting back some of AWS’ market dominance.
According to a research released by Trustmarque more than four in five CIOs are struggling to identify and implement cloud services most suitable for their business. Boundaries towards adoption are: the complexity of existing IT infrastructure, the interdependencies between different IT environments, or the difficulty to integrate different cloud services. But CTOs admit that modernizing or rearchitecting some applications will slow their journey to the cloud.
Although selecting and implementing the right cloud services is a challenge, let’s discuss what cloud computing iconic vendors brought into their offerings in 2015:
- Cloud Services drives the Internet Of Things expansion
The connection to the cloud allows companies to hook up with Internet-connected devices and build applications based on them. The Internet of Things market was still dominated by AWS IoT this year. Until now, working with devices, networks, security, and data collection for IoT applications has been difficult. But the big brother of cloud, Amazon Web Services, has added Amazon IoT, a new service companies can leverage. This new managed cloud service provides the infrastructure that allows connected cars, factory floors, aircraft engines, sensor grids to easily and securely interact with cloud services and with other devices, all at world-scale. The connection to the cloud is fast and lightweight, making it a great fit for devices that have limited memory, processing power, or battery life.
Read more on the article I wrote on Amazon IoT components and how to get started with it: AWS IoT will dominate the Internet of Things market.
- More storage, security and savings from Microsoft Office 365
Increased storage, security and cost-saving measures were made available to enhance the already-robust Office 365. On premises or off, Microsoft came with a hybrid cloud solution. Microsoft Azure is a growing collection of integrated cloud services – analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage, and web – for moving faster, achieving more, and saving money.
Read more on this article I wrote earlier this year on why Microsoft Office 365 was named the most popular cloud service for businesses overall in 2015: Office 365 – the most popular cloud app in 2015.
- Video became a component of a complete cloud offering at IBM
IBM’s cloud computing largest strategy this year focused on video. Companies are increasingly looking at videos to connect with partners and customers by sharing training courses, how-to videos, customer care videos and webcasts. IBM has just announced acquiring Clearleap to improve cloud users’ access to videos, by integrating with Clearleap video library delivery platform. Clearleap platform securely delivers large video libraries to multi-screen devices and conventional televisions. With its integration into IBM’s cloud platform, enterprises will likely get a fast and easy way for growing, monetising and managing user video experiences.
- Cloud accelerates mobile app development
The cloud is already a game changer for app developers and customers globally. As mobile technology grows faster and faster everyday, apps have become an integral part of the digital ecosystem. This is why the evolving cloud technology plays a vital role in the app development revolution, making app developers more focused towards the ability of integrating and synchronizing apps developed for multiple devices. The cloud approach is helping developers to build functionality that can easily be used on different mobile devices with similar data and features.
Read more about my opinion on how developers can leverage the cloud on How is the cloud enabling mobile app development.
Although this article is just a short overview of cloud computing innovation in 2015 (and there were quite a few new updates this year), for most CIOs, selecting and implementing the right cloud services still remains a challenge. This is why staying up-to-date with the latest trends in cloud computing has become more a necessity than a choice for all modern CIOs, don’t you think?
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