With 99 episodes in the can, the Cloud Pod podcast has become my weekly go-to for up-to-date cloud news and analysis. With equal parts intelligence, humor, and honesty these cloud veterans help me sound smart at industry cocktail parties, (that, unfortunately, don’t exist).
I’ve taken my sluice pan through their river of content and wanted to share some gold nuggets. For their last episode of 2020 the crew made predictions for 2021. Here’s what these Cloud Nostradomususes saw in their crystal balls.
Encryption as We Know it will Die
Jonathan jokes that it is not time to barter sausage and eggs for compute time nor store cash in mattresses, but he urges the need to start developing an alternative solution to encryption technologies in the cloud. With the advances in Quantum computing, “all it’s going to take is for one powerful entity, whether it’s a nation-state or Google to create a computer powerful enough to factorize the primes in those keys.”
The Cloud Pod Team in general thinks 2021 may be a bit early to break out the bagpipes for encryption as we know it. And there is not a need to panic just yet. Plus, Quantum computing engineers are developing this next level quantum data security called, called post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and Quantum key distribution (QKD). For those interested in gaining a deeper understanding I found this article from ZDNet, A CIO’s Guide to Quantum Computing to be enlightening.
Poorly Run Migrations Make Cloud Cost Too High
While security and lack of technical know-how used to be the blockers for organizations moving to the cloud, Peter predicts that companies will slow their cloud adoption due to inexperience, rushed or hasty lift-and-shift experiences. Peter posits that cloud infrastructure coded the wrong way can be much more expensive than it needs to be for organizations. “There’s a lot of companies just getting their feet wet in this space and they will be forced to move quicker than they are ready, and will not have the internal capabilities to make sure they monitor and manage their cloud spend appropriately and they are going to get burned by high cost,” shares Peter.
The Cloud Pod team recommends a shift from managed migration to instead managed transformation. To make the move easier, minimize sprawl and orphaned resources we of course recommend a cloud sherpa like Foghorn!
Verticalization of the Cloud
Justin believes that cloud platforms will continue to expand specialized off-the-shelf solutions that are vertically focused. Justin believes that as we have seen with Azure Health, the cloud will continue to create application and infrastructure solution bundles for specific solutions in specific industries like FinTech, healthcare, retail, … The Cloud Pod team believes this is deeper than just a marketing ploy already, and vertical-specific cloud solutions are expanding and here to stay!
Remote Workforce is Here to Stay
Ryan sees the global workforce in 2021 and beyond to continue to be work from home. He believes that companies will be creating an ecosystem that can scale more effectively in this decentralized reality. He predicts that 2021 will see a growing movement to alternative solutions that use ML/ AI and the internet to take the place of VPNs which can be a constraint and a performance bottleneck for some companies as they scale.
As always the entire episode is full of witty banter and of-the-moment cloud insights. Have a listen in its entirety: 2020 Overstays its Welcome (timecode for predictions is 27:00-38:08). Beyond predictions, the crew also share their favorite cloud announcements of 2020. To never miss an episode subscribe to the Cloud Pod.
