Emerging trends in cloud computing: AI, multicloud and edge computing take center stage

CLOUD

The booming cloud computing market is increasingly becoming use-case specific, with products targeted at specific industries and their respective operations.

A few emerging trends are driving this move toward specialization, including the emergence of artificial intelligence for automation, the popularity of hybrid multicloud and edge computing.

“From a market perspective, if you look at where the clients are focusing on, it’s hybrid and multicloud,” said Prabhakar Appana (pictured, right), senior vice president and global head of the AWS Business Unit at HCL Technologies Ltd. “The hybrid and multicloud is definitely a big trend. That’s one aspect of it. The second is towards people pushing more on hyperautomation AI and ML-related aspects, that’s another important trend. The third is edge computing.”

Appana and Colin Fisher (left), senior director of worldwide partner ecosystem at Red Hat Inc. spoke with theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier and Rob Strechay at Red Hat Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed current cloud industry trends and challenges, and how HCL and Red Hat are tackling those challenges. (* Disclosure below.)

Dissecting the joint undertaking

As an end-to-end stack management solutions provider, HCLTech helps companies align their infrastructure and applications with today’s cutting-edge cloud standards in the areas of computing power, security and flexibility — among others.

Delicate industries such as healthcare, financial services and manufacturing are especially in need of hybrid infrastructures, and HCLTech is delivering on that front through its collaboration with Red Hat and Amazon Web Services Inc., according to Appana.

“When a client look looks at the combination of a hyperscaler cloud provider and an OpenShift, it definitely goes beyond Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS,” Appana explained. “It’s about the strategy that you’re going to put in place for each of those clients as to what will work and what won’t. If you look at the AI/ML aspects of it, there is a combination of OpenShift, ROSA and the elements that we use … Similarly, there’s also the security, compliance and data governance aspects of it.”

As hyperscalers have more reach and power, taking an existing platform ecosystem, such as Red Hat OpenShift, and layering value on top is key market differentiation, Fisher added.

“I think the important part here is how did hyperscalers leverage ecosystems,” Fisher stated. “It is important for Red Hat as a hyperscaler partner, but also HCL and many other partners … to leverage those platforms and footprints because not everybody is in the market for plumbing their own infrastructure … But then it’s about how you add the value on top. If you are a partner today and you are just reselling the platforms, truthfully, that’s a pretty tough existence.”

As much as cloud companies want to one-up each other, the shift to multicloud means that more organizations will stitch together tools from different solution providers. As a result, the role of system integrators has become imperative, according to Appana.

“Where the system integrator role starts and expands is in terms of identifying the gap that the client has — be it an industry, a solution or a framework — and build on top of that, bringing the right partners together and provide a holistic solution,” Appana said. “That’s the strategy that you need to put in place from an organizational success standpoint.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit:

(* Disclosure: HCL Technologies Ltd. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither HCLTech nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE