Globally, strong cloud adoption trends are well established, with the industry gradually maturing into increasingly defined sectors and specialisms. Take the public cloud, for example, where research from Gartner predicts that the market will grow by over 20% this year to nearly $700 billion – more than twice the rate for the IT industry as a whole. As Gartner goes on to explain, “cloud has become essentially indispensable” and is set to become a trillion-dollar industry by 2027.

But what is it about cloud computing that has created such a compelling proposition across today’s digitally-centric organisations? Whether they choose an ‘all in’ approach with one partner or a hybrid strategy where some functions are migrated to the cloud and others remain on-premises, it’s this inherent flexibility that gives businesses more scope to manage IT provision and expenditure much more effectively than was possible in the pre-cloud era.

Despite these genuinely transformative advantages, Gartner argues that, currently, most organisations use the cloud as a technology disruptor or capability enabler. Typically, adoption is happening in the context of wider digital transformation strategies and to drive benefits that only the cloud can deliver. In the next 3-4 years, however, this process will accelerate and “by 2028, most organisations will fully transform into cloud-based entities capable of sensing and responding to business and market conditions.”

The M&E cloud microcosm

Take the media and entertainment (M&E) industry, for example, which has become one of the most enthusiastic adopters of cloud technologies and can be seen as a bellwether for other markets. According to industry research carried out by Forrester last year, for example, over half (52%) of M&E organisations reported having more than 60% of their workloads in the cloud.

As is the case for industry sectors across the board, this heavy investment in cloud infrastructure and services is also driving increased performance and reliability expectations. Three-quarters of respondents to the same Forrester research said their organisation’s users expect zero downtime, rebuffering or playback errors.

At the same time, data volumes are exploding, and the ability to scale storage infrastructure has become critical for organisations that are in the business of creating high-resolution content. From capture and post-production to viewer streaming, the M&E sector has demanding storage requirements where cloud services play a fundamental role.

Given these various challenges, some M&E organisations are also taking the opportunity to reevaluate their cloud supplier relationships. In particular, rising costs in the form of TCO, data retention and egress charges contribute to targeted repatriation strategies where certain workloads are moved away from hyperscalers to other providers or even back to on-premises execution venues as part of a hybrid approach.

Wherever organisations are on their cloud journey, the M&E industry is one to watch. Organisations including Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon are pushing the boundaries of digital content streaming, with cloud technologies enabling real-time scalability for millions of concurrent users.

The industry is also a good example of how cloud-based collaboration can be made to work for geographically distributed teams focused on large and complex projects. This trend is accelerating the move to fully virtual production environments and demonstrates that online collaboration can be much more ambitious and effective than the narrow use of video-based meetings seen in many organisations.

Looking ahead

So, what do these various issues say about the future of cloud adoption? There are a number of trends to follow. The first is that despite the massive size of the existing cloud market, there remains substantial scope for future growth. According to research published by IDC, spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments last year, including dedicated and shared IT environments, overtook that of non-cloud spending with a 46% market share. Add to this the growing popularity of SaaS technologies among SMEs, and it’s likely that cloud adoption will continue to surge across the board.

Many organisations are also now opting for multi-cloud strategies to avoid vendor lock-in and reduce risks. By spreading workloads across multiple cloud platforms, it becomes possible to optimise flexibility and resilience to guard against service outages or cost increases. This offers further evidence that cloud users are becoming more sophisticated in their choice and implementation of cloud services, as well as their willingness to change.

It almost goes without saying that AI will have an increasingly important influence on the development of cloud technologies. AI-optimised cloud services are already integrating capabilities such as predictive analytics and machine learning into their solutions portfolios while the technology is also being used to manage cloud infrastructure more effectively.

That’s just the tip of the cloud and AI iceberg, and we can expect to see service providers continue to roll out a wide range of new and enhanced products, particularly those that focus on areas such as cybersecurity and automation. Suffice it to say that less than 20 years after the launch of the first commercial cloud, it’s a story that will continue to evolve, driven by a highly innovative culture and customers who increasingly know what they do and don’t want.

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