Innovations keep on pouring in cloud computing. Fueled by an ever-expanding market, the cloud is witnessing significant growth and adoption rates continue flourishing. Forecasts and research clearly hint at a paradigm shift for enterprise cloud in 2019. Gartner estimates that the worldwide public cloud market is expected to grow 17.3 % reaching around $206.2 billion in 2019. At the forefront of cloud adoption stands enterprises, big or small, as they embark on digital transformation journeys.

With it sprang a complete reversal, from the cloud as a server platform to being the very heart of enterprise IT systems integrating a host of capabilities. In fact, LogicMonitor in one of their surveys identifies digital transformation as the key factor driving public cloud engagement. Moreover, the survey also forecasts that 41 percent of all enterprise workloads will run on public cloud platforms by 2020.

When combined as public, private and hybrid cloud platforms, nearly 83 percent of enterprises will rely on the cloud by the end of this decade. Currently, the adoption and usage of enterprise cloud computing are soaring. Insights from the IDG 2018 Cloud Computing Survey indicates that cloud investments are accelerating with 73 % organizations already shifting their mission-critical workloads and computing infrastructure entirely into the public cloud. About 17 % of companies plan on migrating fully to public cloud platforms by the end of the year.

So, what does enterprise cloud computing hold for 2019? Will organizations shift entirely into the cloud or will its usage be dispersed across various delivery models. Let's put things into perspective by examining the forecasts and studies to determine whether the cloud will emerge to disrupt enterprise computing altogether in 2019.

Hybrid and Multi Cloud Solutions will Dominate the Enterprise

Hybrid cloud solutions have quickly gained traction among enterprises looking to migrate into the cloud. Making a full transition into the cloud has proved difficult and challenging for companies. With a hybrid cloud, a company can migrate their resources into the platform easily, risk-free and at lesser costs. It packs the benefits of both public and private cloud, which allows seamless interoperability between different platforms.

Enterprises are not relying solely on a single cloud platform but are utilizing a mix of both private and public cloud as well as the services of multi-vendor cloud environments like AWS and Google Cloud. According to the 2018 State of the Cloud Survey by RightScale, multi-cloud is the preferred strategy with 81 % of enterprises adopting a multi-cloud strategy for running their operations.

Companies that adopted a multi-cloud strategy gained further growth compared to hybrid cloud solutions. With the continued shift of workloads into the cloud, a multi-cloud environment comprising of a blend of on-premise computing and different vendors will become the norm for most enterprises in 2019.

Cloud Solutions and Services – SaaS, IaaS and BPaaS will Flourish

Studies done by market research firms and technology behemoths are hinting at an outflow of cloud solutions and services like SaaS, IaaS and PaaS in 2019. Here are some key takeaways from the worldwide public cloud service revenue forecast made by Gartner.

•  IaaS is the fastest growing segment with a projected growth of 27.6 % to attain $39.5 billion.

•  SaaS is the largest segment of the cloud with a 17.8 % growth to reach $85.1 billion.

•  BPaaS or business process as a service will achieve about 7.9 % or $50.3 billion revenue growth.

KPMG in their Journey to the Cloud report projects that the investments in PaaS will grow to 56 percent in 2019. These reports and forecasts clearly indicate a positive growth of cloud solutions and services that will redefine enterprise cloud computing in 2019.

GDPR will Usher in more Emphasis on Cloud Security

According to LogicMonitor, security is the biggest challenge faced by organizations that rely on public cloud platforms today. With the advent of new security measures like GDPR, organizations will have to shift their existing processes and wrap tight security measures around them to protect them from vulnerabilities. As more and more companies migrate their workloads and crucial data into the cloud, having a secure platform that shields from any unauthorized access have become the need of the hour.

The cloud is not without its own limitations concerning security. A single breach into a cloud data center can compromise sensitive data of countless organizations that use them causing enormous losses. Although mainstream cloud vendors do incorporate enterprise-grade security protocols into their cloud platforms, it is up to CIO's to determine whether they truly comply with the guidelines mentioned in GDPR before deploying it in their organization.

Developments in Quantum Computing Edges it Closer to Reality

The race for developing a full-fledged quantum computer is catching up fast. Technology heavyweights like IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Google have already invested considerable time and energy in the process with some remarkable developments coming out recently. IBM has taken the lead in quantum computing when it released a 20-qubit version in 2017. Alibaba in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences has edged close behind IBM with an 11-qubit quantum computing version.

And with such rapid developments in the field, we may expect quantum computing to really take a momentous leap in 2019. Quantum computing is proposed as the next big thing that will change computing and set to create a radical breakthrough in areas like drug delivery, weather forecasting, financial modeling, encryption etc.

The potential for quantum computing in the cloud is where its possibilities exist for enterprises. If cloud providers can integrate the capabilities of quantum computing into the cloud, it paves the way for a viable solution that solves complex challenges and builds models that effectively optimize process and operations.

Wrapping it Up

Never before have enterprises been able to procure the computing power they need and at their convenience as with cloud computing. That is one key reason why the cloud was such a disruptive technology when it got first introduced. Businesses were able to store data and even subject them to processing to generate value within these platforms. Now, the cloud is much more than a server platform as it comes inbuilt with an array of capabilities like machine learning, data analytics, IoT compatibility, and database services.

Each year, enterprise cloud is edging closer to being the ideal computing platform. As for the trends and forecasts that we have covered above, they clearly hint at the cloud becoming more powerful yet increasingly accessible in 2019. There is a huge market space for the cloud, which created a healthy competition space for different cloud vendors who offer a mix of services intended for the enterprise.

These foretold trends signal that CIOs and business owners should embrace these new changes by wrapping their existing modes and provisioning resources to truly derive the value that they are looking for.