In 2019, SaaS providers will double down on investments, hybrid cloud will emerge as the dominant solution, and Windows will have its hands full during the war for desktops. It’s all the tech news that we predict will be trending in 2019.
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As the number of cloud services and solutions continue to rise, we’re going to see subscription-based-software-as-a-Service such as Oracle and Salesforce.com, double-down on their investments in all types of business applications for the enterprise. SaaS applications will grow at an 18 per cent compound-annual-growth-rate by 2020, according to Bain and Company, but I think that number will end up being higher as SaaS companies try to blunt the momentum of platform and infrastructure-as-a-service giants, like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, which also continue to see rapid growth. I’m guessing SaaS providers will expand into more vertical industry markets next year, and deliver customers applications with a bevy of AI-assisted capabilities.
Migrating entire workloads to the cloud has proved more challenging than expected, which is why hybrid cloud solutions will play an enormous role in 2019. We’re seeing evidence of this already. AWS began introducing on-premises offerings in 2018, and Google is banking on its recent hire, ex-Oracle cloud chief Thomas Kurian, to bring a hybrid-cloud mentality across the company. Hybrid cloud solutions are what helped Microsoft solidify itself as the runner up to AWS in the cloud market, and it’s also what’s kept IBM in the game as well. IBM is likely to make more noise in 2019 when it comes to hybrid cloud, thanks to the acquisition of Red Hat in October.
And lastly, 2019 will be the year of migrations. With Windows 7 end-of-life slated for Jan. 14, 2020, it will be interesting to see how many people simply switch over to Windows 10. Or will they embrace Google Chromebooks and AWS Workspaces? Windows recently stated more than half of all commercial Windows devices are now running Windows 10, and Office 365 Commercial subscribers hit the 155 million mark in October, but if you think about how Amazon is already dominating the landscape when it comes to hosting companies’ data, applications, networking and even security, it’s easy to imagine companies handing over the keys to their desktops as well. I don’t think Chromebooks are going to take much of the pie, but if the reports are true and the Snapdragon 845 chipset powers Chromebooks starting mid-2019, they might make more of a splash than anticipated.
That’s what will be trending in 2019. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC podcast network.