As 2017 draws to a close, the trends and innovations that will shape the technology industry over the coming weeks, months and years were brought into sharper focus over the course of the last twelve months. Cloud computing has gone mainstream for many enterprises, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing how both industrial and consumer-oriented companies do business.
Looking to the new year however, which trends will come to define our industry in 2018 and beyond?
Shift towards micro-services
Organisations across the board are increasingly turning to investment in the micro-services framework as a starting point for any newly designed application. A greater desire for heightened security is also likely to be both exhibited and more widely implemented in such services.
However, questions regarding the trustworthiness of these services have been raised by security groups. How can effective cryptography be delivered? What more can be done to protect this information? Those concerns previously raised about servers are now being asked of the micro-services framework. Notably, how enterprises can ensure that these frameworks are as secure as possible.
The evolution of cloud
With cloud providers increasingly required by enterprises and buyers to rely on protection through security capabilities, we can certainly expect to see the continued evolution of cloud.
The success of this evolution will be predicated on control. Effective cryptography, the right keys and identity, combined with further investment in enterprises will make cloud become more closely integrated with the enterprise world.
Users are calling for the on-prem experience to be as unified as possible, particularly as things are spun out to the cloud as they are harmonised. Collective appetite for this enterprization will definitely be a hot topic on the digital transformation agenda.
Resurrection of established tech
Constant and consistent developments in PKI; encryption by default, key management processes, underlying blockchain technology and the value of the IoT are also unlikely to shy away from the limelight.
Despite some of these technologies already being well-trodden, others sit on the edge of solving certain problems with mind-sets shifting as they become more centrally enshrined in the thinking of organisations.
Though efforts have been focused on redefining traditional business operations through digital transformation in 2017, well-established technologies will undoubtedly remain front and centre as we enter 2018.