2019 Cloud & Software Predictions: More purchasing will be driven by intelligence rather than deployment

In 2019 customers will care less about deployment, vendors will buy more, and both sides will become more intelligent

As 2018 comes to a close, it is good to look back at some of the long-standing questions that have been settled during the year:

• Not all workloads will move to cloud; in fact, some will move back to on-premises delivery methods.
• There will be no single cloud that rules all others, even if Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains the IaaS front-runner.
• Wholesale migrations of legacy workloads will not occur quickly or easily.
• The IT department will play an important role in cloud adoption moving forward.
• Cloud needs to deliver short-term, immediate value for customers to consider adoption. The days of yearslong implementations are over.

The market is far from mature, however, as 2019 promises even more changes. Cloud remains a generic term for many customers, but they know just how many options are now available. A growing choice of delivery methods, combined with a much-improved management tool set, will drive pervasive hybrid adoption. These options allow customers to focus more on the solution, regardless of the specific cloud delivery method, that best fits their use case. Greater customer adoption is also creating more urgency among cloud providers, which will force more acquisition investments and riskier purchases as leaders scramble to best position themselves to claim share of the growing market. Lastly, the overarching trends around analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will become increasingly pervasive. Combined, these developments should redefine the cloud market yet again during 2019.