Top 10 cloud technology predictions from Google

Today, at its Cloud Next event, Google unveiled a range of solutions and updates to its suite of products and services to empower developers and technology decision makers at all levels. The focus is on delivering the most open, scalable and powerful data cloud, but the company isn’t just showcasing its product innovations. It also gave us a glimpse of where we’re headed — its products and others like it.

Here are Google’s top 10 cloud technology predictions for the next three years.

Neuro-inclusive design will stand out

First, Jeanine Banks, VP and GM and head of developer relations at Google Developer X, predicts that neuro-inclusive design strategies will come to the fore. By the end of 2025, developers who will focus on neuro-inclusiveness, building projects in a simple and distraction-free way, will see a fivefold increase in user adoption, she said. To achieve this level of accessibility, Banks said, seven principles were essential: balance, proportion, unity, light, color, space and pattern.

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Curating the Widespread Adoption of Open Source

Eric Brewer, vice president of infrastructure and Google researcher, predicts that curated open source will add a layer of accountability to today’s free or “as-is” open source, which will be adopted by four out of five developers in some capacity. The internet giant already offers curated open source software in its Assured Open Source Software (AOSS) service.

Automated secps workflow

According to Iman Ghanizada, global head of autonomous security operations at Google, by the end of 2025, up to 90 percent of security operations workflows will be automated and managed as code. On Google’s side, this will enable services like community security analytics and chronicle through continuous detection and response.

AI-powered four-day workweek

After Iman, Kamelia Aryafar, senior director of AI engineering at Google Cloud, predicts that artificial intelligence (AI) will be the main driver of the four-day work week. She emphasized that AI innovations, such as Google’s Vertex AI, will automate tasks, allowing teams to complete five days’ work in four days.

Most data will be actionable in real time

By the end of 2025, 90 percent of all data will be available for real-time operations using machine learning, according to Irina Farooq, Google Cloud Analytics product lead. She said that Google is supporting unstructured data on BigQuery and Apache Spark through tools such as Dataplex, which will distribute and automate data management and governance.

No barriers between trading and analysis

Transactional and analytical workloads have been separate database workloads for many years. However, Andi Gutmans, vice president and general manager of Google Database, predicts that by the end of 2025, these barriers will disappear. Google Cloud services like Spanner, Cloud SQL, BigTable and AlloyDB will play a role in making that happen, he said.

Automated cloud infrastructure decisions

Amin Vahdat, vice president and general manager of systems and services infrastructure at Google, predicts that within the next three years, more than half of cloud infrastructure decisions will be automated. The shift, he said, will be based on an organization’s usage model — scale and performance needs.

Sustainability will be a priority

While developers have long focused on building apps and projects that focus on security, reliability and performance, Steren Giannini, Group Product Manager at Google, predicts that will soon change as sustainability takes the top spot . He noted that as many as three-quarters of developers will lead their projects with sustainability as a key development principle. To that end, Google offers a carbon footprint tool to measure the impact of cloud usage on sustainability.

cloudy effect

Richard Seroter, director of product management for DevRel and outbound, believes that more than half of organizations using public clouds will switch their primary cloud provider due to the multi-cloud capabilities available on the market such as Anthos and BigQuery Omni.

Low-code/no-code will take over

In the end, Google’s engineering manager Jana Mandic suggested that low-code and no-code will take over the enterprise within the next three years. The impact of this shift, she predicts, will be that more than half of business applications will be built by users who are not considered professional developers today. Notably, Gartner also predicts that by 2025, low-code/no-code technologies will power over 70% of new applications.

Google Cloud Next will run October 11-13, 2022.