How to Tackle the Cloud Native Trends of 2022

The future is open — but that doesn’t mean it’s less complicated. Probably even more so. The landscape of technology partnerships is evolving almost as fast as the technology itself. Enterprises are pushing top down for their digital transformations but also don’t know where to start. They do know that they expect high availability, but they also are struggling to hire and retain tech talent — avoiding burnout is key.

So what are the cloud native trends we expect to see in 2022? If the last two years have taught us anything, enterprise reliance on the public cloud is only going to grow. Emerging technologies like containerization — backed by widespread Kubernetes adoption and the need to manage it — virtualization and edge computing are quickly becoming mainstream. IT budgets will continue to grow, right alongside that tech talent gap. And nowhere do you need more highly coveted tech expertise than in cybersecurity, needing to protect your more distributed assets across a more complex tech stack.

In this piece we will offer an overview of the cloud native trends of 2022, including how the right open technology delivered by talented managed service providers (MSP) can accelerate the return on your cloud investment.

Multi-cloud Strategy FTW

Yes we are all becoming a bit suspicious of the trend of the multiverse. Besides Spider-man, it’s all a bit precocious. However, the multi-cloud is not. The days of single public cloud deployments are gone. In fact, some estimates are that 93% of enterprises are already moving toward multi-cloud architecture and deployments. 

A multi-cloud strategy is about not being locked into one public cloud provider, but rather leveraging a single overlay heterogeneous architecture over multiple clouds and even on premise via the hybrid cloud model. Multi-cloud strategy allows you to migrate crucial applications across the cloud providers of your choosing, whether due to storage, budgetary and compute needs or compliance requirements. Leveraging a multi-cloud management architecture allows you to do it with the simplicity of a single view across different platforms, cutting costs big time.

While this flexibility of no lock-ins is important, it does add a layer of complexity that, when your multi-cloud strategy isn’t enacted correctly, cancels out all its benefits. One problem is that many organizations don’t actually have a cloud strategy, per se, they have different departments and databases being lifted and shifted pell-mell. They’re scrambling to understand what is where. And they aren’t even getting to proper monitoring and observability, which is crucial to understand not only the where and what, but the why, unlocking those unknown unknowns.

Adding an abstraction layer obfuscates this complexity, allowing everyone to use what works best for them anyway, while the operations team gets full-stack visibility. This multi-cloud abstraction layer also comes with predictive analytics for more proactive maintenance across your infrastructure. So your teams can finally work on driving your organizational goals, not just maintenance.

Cybersecurity is Exploding in 2022

There’s no doubt your compute environments — and your teams — are increasingly distributed. Complexity seems infinite. Which means cybersecurity should be of utmost importance in any cloud migration or modernization strategy. After all, 2021 was a year with significant cyber attacks and it’s likely to get worse in 2022.

Any cloud-native strategy has to factor in multi-cloud security. This starts with the right cloud security framework, which can come from consultants but must be communicated from the executive level on down. A sensible cloud security strategy must include:

• Multi-factor authentication
• Role-based access control
  
• Encryption
  
• Identity and authentication management
  
• Compliance
  
• Incident tracing
  

Fortunately, like all things CI/CD, most of this can be built into your pipeline, automating across multiple clouds. By using a multi-cloud abstraction layer, you can not only enforce security measures and make sure no one has too much access to open back doors to attack vectors. This layer becomes a single pane of glass over your distributed security vulnerabilities. It creates previously unachievable visibility and simplicity into your complex distributed systems. 

MSPs Rise to Help Build & Manage a Secure Multi-cloud Strategy

So how do you tackle all this when you’re struggling to recruit and retain? In comes the managed service provider. An MSP is there for you in your multi-cloud journey. As specialized operations providers, these experienced tech workers come in-house and act as a proxy for your own team, filling that existing talent gap. This flexible workforce partners with enterprises to reduce risk, focus on specific modernization objectives, and to allow you to scale your operations with controlled costs. 

At SUSE, we partner with several top-notch managed service providers to deliver the whole enterprise package — our open, interoperable offerings backed by their proven ops teams. We help MSPs more easily and securely deliver objectives despite the increasing complexity of the cloud and Kubernetes, while they help our enterprises get up and stay up, running faster, while cutting costs. We provide that much needed abstraction layer so they can focus on your enterprise modernizing securely.

SUSE works with MSP innovators in the following industries:

• Automotive
  
• Telecom
  
• Banking and financial services
  
• Healthcare
  
• Manufacturing
  
• Retail
  
• Technology and software
  
• U.S. federal government
  

Are you a managed service provider looking to ease the burden on your talented staff? Are you looking for a technology that allows you to spend less time maintaining client infrastructure and more time innovating? We’re looking for more partners to leverage the SUSE stack in order to offer more cloud native services around Kubernetes, container security, and, of course, SAP applications, implementations and migrations. 

Read some of the success stories out of the MANAGE specialization in the SUSE One Partner Program, or reach out to our team to learn more:

• Servent
  
• CTAC
  
• Techwave
  

The future is open, but complicated. We can see things clearly together.