The OpsRamp Monitor: Cloud, DevOps and AI Predictions for 2020

Cloud predictions: more hybrid, less edge.

Check out this excellent, thorough synopsis by cloud guru Bernard Golden about what to expect in cloud computing in 2020: VMWare gets big kudos as a top cloud vendor and hybrid cloud wins over multi-cloud: "The biggest problem for most IT organizations is getting to the cloud, not moving applications around the cloud." Golden also throws some cold water on edge computing mania: "There’s no doubt that IoT is and will be a huge phenomenon; it’s just that proponents of the distributed computing/5G solutions will find IoT use cases requiring such powerful technology to be the exception rather than the rule."

Developers get organized?

TechTarget’s software development trends for 2020 calls for a simplification of tools: “Enterprises realize that they will be hybrid cloud users, and that every major application will likely have components running both locally and in a multi-tenant public cloud. It's not efficient to have different deployment models that drive different development models, plus tools to manage these models, for every application. For that reason, application teams increasingly focus on a containerized model -- typically based on Kubernetes management -- for development and deployment. That shift creates, for the first time, a unified view of how applications run both in the data center and the cloud.”

The authors also emphasized application observability: “Through application observability tools, testers can also learn about trends, such as what fails often and the biggest problems, and how to fix them. With that kind of data, you can distinguish one-time, minor failures versus deficiencies that dramatically affect the customer base.”

For software history buffs:

The last decade in software development, written by Uber engineer Gergely Orosz, is an exhaustive yet easily scannable overview of changes in development languages, tools, methodologies, and careers. We loved this observation: “In 2010, the industry was filled with "brilliant jerks" and 10x engineers - guys who were supposedly great coders, but had zero social skills. If you could not work with one of these people, the blame was on you. With more mature engineering management, managers (and teams) now realize how toxic these people are. Better companies don't hire people with toxic attitude. See also the No Asshole Rule book.”

Tech tools are going mainstream:

Just like how teens are now watching and listening to ‘80’s music and shows, regular businesspeople are finding the cool factor in what’s been popular with techies for a while, as suggested by the editors at Andreesen Horowitz’s site in an article about overlooked enterprise tech trends: “Sales teams use Postman, an API development platform, to demo product APIs, and product and marketing teams are creating content and wireframes in Figma, a collaboration tool originally made for designers.”

Yeah, yeah, AI’s still king.

In CIO Dive’s 5 data trends for 2020, author Roberto Torres discussed acquisition madness in the AI market, reporting that Apple, Google, Microsoft and others bought 635 AI startups in the past decade. He toned down that factoid with the analysis that privacy is becoming increasingly important for AI strategies, as consumers begin demanding a better understanding of how their data is being used to fuel AI systems.“The concept of explainable AI — platforms transparent enough so that a human expert can identify how conclusions are made — will gain relevance in the coming year.”

Next Steps:

Read our coverage of the Top ITOps news of 2019.
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