By: Lavanya Subbarayalu and Anup Karade

Businesses worldwide continue to increase their usage of cloud computing to support the delivery of digital services. According to Gartner’s predictions, global spending on cloud services is expected to reach over USD 482 Bn in 2022, up from USD 313 Bn in 2020¹. Businesses are leveraging cloud services to modernize and innovate their IT infrastructure to accommodate the new hybrid working, optimize operations, support business continuity, enhance security, and be extra-prepared.

Microsoft Azure is among the most popular and widely adopted cloud-computing providers. With each passing year, significant technology innovation is happening in Azure, helping its customers to stay updated and upgraded to stay ahead of the competitors. So, let’s check the top technology trends from Azure that we must look out for in 2022.

1. Hybrid and Multi-cloud are at Its Peak
   The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the usage of hybrid and multi-cloud. However, managing multiple clouds and on-premises environments has intrinsic complexity and risks. Azure hybrid capabilities uniquely address challenges with Azure managed services and products like Azure ARC and Azure Stack HCI/Edge. The Azure Stack HCI and Azure Arc extend Azure capabilities to the client environment to run anywhere —from the data center to edge locations, remote offices, and disconnected environments on hybrid, familiar hyper-converged Azure infrastructure. Furthermore, capabilities for managed services for Azure Red Hat OpenShift allow highly available OpenShift clusters on-demand, with automated operations.
2. Rise of Event-driven Serverless Containers
   Cloud-native and serverless architecture enables new development patterns for greater agility, efficiency, and flexibility. According to Gartner, SaaS is expected to grow to USD 145,377 Bn in 2022, while PaaS is expected to reach USD 71.5 Bn in 2022². Most enterprises continue to use more PaaS-based services and serverless apps with event-driven microservices architectures. Microsoft Azure and its ecosystem offer an extensive range of container and serverless computing services. It includes Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), AKS virtual nodes, Kubernetes-based Event-Driven Autoscaling (KEDA)e, Azure Functions, Azure Container Apps, and Azure App Services to build and run applications at scale, reducing the IT overhead of provisioning and managing the underlying infrastructure.
3. Rapid Adoption of AI at Edge
   Edge computing makes it possible to build intelligent applications that span the cloud and the periphery of the network, enabling a set of connected systems and devices that gather and analyze data close to the source of generated data and the user. The size of the global edge computing market will reach USD 61.14 Bn by 2028 at a compounded annual growth rate of 38.4 percent³. Azure AI services like Azure Cognitive Services bring a trained AI model to the edge while integrating it with your applications for low-latency intelligence. It analyzes information close to the system where the data resides with container support to deliver real-time insights.
4. Zero-trust Cloud Security to Find Prominence
   Cloud security is the need of the hour for every industry. IT functions embrace a Zero-trust security model to protect increasingly distributed and complex enterprise networks from modern cyber threats and attacks. This model is based on the principle of trust and continuous verification. It means managing and granting access to corporate assets based on the repetitive verification of identities, devices, and services. Enterprises that adopt modern cyber security mesh architectures can reduce the financial impact of security incidents by an average of 90 percent⁴. Microsoft has also planned to spend USD 20 Bn on cybersecurity over the next five years with “Microsoft Defender Cloud” powered by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and upgraded security systems. Microsoft continues to build more services like Azure Confidential Computing, and Azure Chaos Studio to bring in zero-trust cloud security and compliance standards.
5. Hyper Automation and XOps to Drive Digital Transformation
   Automation technologies have entered several aspects of work activities. Hyper automation and Intelligent automation combine Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as cognitive services. Machine learning is a vital enabler in automating end-to-end complex business processes to accelerate digital transformation. McKinsey predicted that robots, automation, 3D printing, and more would generate around 79.4 zettabytes of data per year⁵. The next evolution of data operations enables AI and Machine Learning (ML) workflows across the enterprise. This is termed as XOps, and it allows operationalizing processes and automation from the beginning rather than as an afterthought. Automating XOps such as DevOps, SecOps, AIOps, DataOps, MLOps, and holistic end-to-end automation platforms becomes critical to driving standardization, governance, and control across the organization.
6. End-to-End Platforms on AI, ML, and Data Analytics to Become Mainstream
   Businesses have faced disruptions in AI, machine learning, and data analytics as the space evolves in real-time. The global artificial intelligence market size is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.2% from 2021 to 2028, as per the Grand View Research report⁶. The next phase is establishing end-to-end platforms on AI, ML, and data analytics and making them mainstream drivers for the organizational process. It had already set its grip in areas like AIOps, data monetization and analytics, hyper-automation, IoT, cyber security, edge devices, decision intelligence, augmented analytics, simulations, and many more. Azure’s cloud services support end-to-end data analytics with Azure Synapse and machine learning capabilities with platforms like Azure ML Studio and Azure Databricks. It offers cognitive and Applied AI services, containers, and Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) to help bring automation and enhanced digital experience to processes across your business.
7. IoT Platform and Services Continue to Mature
   IoT is another technology trend that is continuing to evolve. It provides automation enhancements in various sectors, including predictive maintenance in manufacturing, speeding up healthcare services, improving customer experiences, and many more. MarketsandMarkets forecast the IoT cloud platform global market size to reach USD 11.5 Bn by 2025, at an annualized Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.6 percent⁷. The Azure IoT platform includes Azure IOT Hub, Azure Digital Twins, and Azure IoT Central, providing the building blocks to develop and deploy complex IoT scenarios. You can build an intelligent environment on Azure to connect, monitor, automate, model, and control your IoT devices and applications.
8. Industry-focused Vertical Solutions to Accelerate Innovation
   Another trend that has emerged in recent years is vertical industry solutions. Industry vertical cloud solutions are collections of services, tools, and applications optimized for industry-specific use cases. Microsoft’s tailored industry cloud solutions bring in industry-specific components and standards, cross-cloud connectors, workflows, and Azure cloud services. Microsoft Industry vertical solutions in various industries like healthcare bring conversational and artificial intelligence capabilities for the healthcare team to improve patient care, Manufacturing gets predictive maintenance and simulators with IoT applications, and solution on Financial Services enables modernized banking and detect fraud. Other vertical solutions in Azure include the Retail, Energy, Media, and Non-profit industries.
9. Businesses to Become Agile with Low-Code, No-Code, and Cross-Collaboration Platforms
   Low and no-code platforms let developers and non-developers collaboratively develop applications through the visual interface instead of traditional programming. Adoption of this platform is on the rise as the need for remote development during the pandemic has boosted its usage. MarketsandMarkets reports that the global low-code development platform market size is projected to grow to USD 45.5 Bn by 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 28.1 percent⁸. Microsoft’s Power Platform packages its low code/no-code tools as part of a business applications framework, and it spans Office 365, Azure, Dynamics, and standalone application Power Platform. It uses a drag-drop visual style interface to build out an app initially. The power platform further merges with the popular, collaborative Teams and Dynamics platform to create the right environment for building valuable apps where workers collaborate. Developers can add Azure services like Analysis Services, Cognitive Services, and Azure IoT Edge to these apps and make them more unique.
10. Circular Cloud Data Centers to Drive Cloud Sustainability
    We all view sustainability and response to climate change as one of the most significant challenges. It is important to understand and measure an organization’s environmental impact within various data centers. Microsoft is committed and harnessing the power of technology to help everyone, everywhere, build a more sustainable future. In this context, Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability is an extensible cloud service to help track, record, report, and lower an organization’s environmental impact through automated data collection and actionable insights. It can help analyze and provide insights to reduce carbon emissions with circular data centers with sustainability calculators and emission dashboards.

Conclusion
Technologies are evolving and emerging to help businesses meet the new demands of people, processes, and growth. This blog has highlighted some of the latest trends from cloud leader Azure that help you stay current and require close attention to adapt to new technology realities.

If you would like to chat with an expert on how Azure can help your business stay competitive, drop us a note at cloud.communications@ltimindtree.com

Reference
¹ Gartner Says Four Trends Are Shaping the Future of Public Cloud
² Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud End-User Spending to Grow 23% in 2021
³ Edge Computing Market Worth $61.14 Bn By 2028 | CAGR: 38.4%
⁴ The Top 8 Cybersecurity Predictions for 2021-2022
⁵ The top trends in tech, McKinsey report
⁶ Grand View Research report, 2021
⁷ IoT Cloud Platform Market, MarketsandMarkets Report
⁸ Low-Code Development Platform Market, MarketsandMarkets Report