Looking Ahead 2021: Cloud’s reign to continue

Even before the events of 2020, cloud had already established its value for many businesses by providing improved agility, scalability, and cost efficiencies across industries. In 2020, the technology helped add a layer of resilience to many organisations by making the sudden shifts in working habits less disruptive. This has sealed cloud’s place as an essential piece of enterprise tech. In the next five years, the cloud computing industry is expected to grow from $371.4 billion in 2020 to $832.1 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 17.5%. In 2021 specifically, businesses will focus more on managing their cloud costs better and look to unify their different cloud environments. Cloud providers will need to focus on enhancing and integrating security, compliance, and privacy into their offerings. Cloud will also grow in popularity as the ideal execution venue for technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain, and edge computing.