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

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

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

“From a market perspective, if you look at where the customers focus, it is 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. It is one aspect of it. The ssecond is to people who offend more hyperautomation AI and ML related aspects, that is another important trend. The third is edge computing.”

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

Dissect the joint venture

As a provider of end-to-end stack management solutions, 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 especially need hybrid infrastructure, and HCLTech is delivering on that front through its collaborations with Red Hat and Amazon Web Services Inc., according to Appana.

“When a customer 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 you’re going to put in place for each of those clients about what will work and what won’t. If you look at the AI/ML aspects of it, there’s a combination of OpenShift, ROSA and the elements that we use… Similarly, there’s also the security, compliance and data management aspects of it.”

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

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

As much as cloud companies want to one-up each other, the move to multicloud means that more organizations will aggregate tools from different solution providers. As a result, the role of systems integrators has become essential, according to Appana.

“Where the role of the system integrator begins and expands, in terms of identifying the gap that the customer has – whether it’s an industry, a solution or a framework – and building on top of that, is assembling the right partners and provide a holistic solution,” said Appana. “That’s the strategy you have to put in place from an organizational success standpoint.”

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

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE