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Despite all the momentum cloud computing has enjoyed for the past ten years, around 80 percent of all applications are still running in on-premises IT environments. The trend that managed service providers (MSPs) need to close track is the rate at which applications will be moving to the cloud from here on out.

A new report from Gartner suggests that the rate at which applications will be moving to the public cloud is about to dramatically accelerate. Gartner is predicting that by 2022, a full 75 percent of all databases will be deployed on or have migrated to a cloud platform. Since applications tend to be deployed where the data resides, the Gartner report is essentially saying that most applications will be running in the cloud within the next three years.

Gartner notes that most of the growth the database management system (DBMS) is being driven today by cloud services. According to Gartner, the DBMS market grew 18.4 percent to $46 billion in 2018. Cloud DBMS revenue accounts for 68 percent of that DBMS growth, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) account for 75.5 percent of the total market growth.

Databases draw applications to them

Rather than incur the performance penalties associated with trying to access data across a network, most developers prefer to deploy their applications as close to where their data resides. As more data moves in the cloud, the gravitational forces surrounding that cloud only become stronger.

Cloud service providers are trying to accelerate this transition by providing managed database management services, through which they become the database administrator for organizations deploying databases in the cloud.

At an AWS Summit event in New York City, AWS CTO Werner Vogels told attendees the cloud service provider migrated more than 150,0000 databases to its cloud. Many of those migrations involved moving away from proprietary databases running in an on-premises environment to an open source database running on AWS.

MSPs have their role to play

Most organizations are going to need help with everything from migrating data into the cloud to setting up backup and recovery processes across multiple clouds. MSPs need to position themselves as the proverbial easy button for making the transition to cloud.

The challenge MSPs will face is making sure they stay relevant to their customers once that transition is made. Many of the manual tasks associated with an on-premises IT environment are automated in the cloud. There’s no such thing as a storage administrator for a public cloud. 

The need for IT management doesn’t disappear in the cloud. It’s just all the processes for managing and securing application environments in the cloud are fundamentally different. Where most organizations get into trouble quickly is when they try to lift and shift their existing IT processes along with their data into the cloud. They quickly discover all the nuances associated with a shared responsibility approach to ensuring cybersecurity in the cloud.

Smart MSPs are closely tracking where data is not just today, but also where that data is going to be tomorrow. After all, data will always be king regardless of where it’s located.

Photo: Olaf Holland / Shutterstock


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Mike Vizard

Posted by Mike Vizard

Mike Vizard has covered IT for more than 25 years, and has edited or contributed to a number of tech publications including InfoWorld, eWeek, CRN, Baseline, ComputerWorld, TMCNet, and Digital Review. He currently blogs for IT Business Edge and contributes to CIOinsight, The Channel Insider, Programmableweb and Slashdot. Mike blogs about emerging cloud technology for Smarter MSP.

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