Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 25 | Page 45

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// FEATURE: 2020 TECHNOLOGY FORECAST organisations migrate IT infrastructures to the cloud. IT start-ups and scale-ups nowadays start in the cloud from day one, but are also pushing the colocation market. This expansion is being driven to a large extent by cloud service providers who still require a space to host their systems – after all, even virtual servers need a home. Businesses that subscribe to cloud and hosting services involving a colocation environment are inadvertently using colocation more, even if they might not be aware of it. We see this as a key contributing factor to the overall development of the global colocation market, particularly in the short and medium term.” Surya Varanasi, CTO of StorCentric, parent company of Nexsan “Businesses have been moving to the cloud for primary and archive/DR storage for a long time. In 2020, on-premises storage, whether for active or standby, will see a comeback – especially as customers are hit with cloud-use bills that are dramatically higher than originally anticipated. www.intelligentcio.com IN 2020, BUSINESSES OFFERING EDGE SOLUTIONS SHOULD WORRY LESS ABOUT MARKETING AND FOCUS ON WHAT EDGE COMPUTING ACTUALLY IS. “In 2020, to be successful and provide value to the business, enterprise IT will need to be able to straddle the worlds of the cloud and on-premises storage. Software solutions that enable swift mobility between these two domains will become increasingly critical. “Only via this bi-model model will IT be able to achieve the highest performance, scalability and capabilities, as well as the safest retention, at the most cost-effective price.” Lindsay Notwell, SVP, 5G Strategy and Global Carrier Operations at Cradlepoint “2020 will see 5G rollouts accelerate globally, but super-fast (>1Gbps) speeds will, for the most part, be limited to Millimeter Wave (mmWave) deployments, which will have limited reach and will primarily be restricted to urban cores and specific venues, such as sporting stadiums. “The good news for enterprises is that Gigabit-Class LTE is fairly ubiquitous and provides broad reach and very respectable speeds, often reaching into the hundreds of megabits per second, which satisfies most use case requirements. “This allows companies to trial next- generation, disruptive applications, yet still gain the benefits that wireless (cellular) WAN delivers, providing freedom of time and place.” n INTELLIGENTCIO 45