5 Trends Channel Players Should Anticipate

Cloud-to-cloud migrations and more complex IT environments loom.

… new offerings for business users and additional “must-have” features that attempt to lure more seats away from Microsoft’s Office suite. Those new users will join a list of high-profile customers like Airbus, which in March of 2018 said it was moving 130,000 workers from on-premises Office to Google’s cloud productivity suite.

Growth of Azure

We further predict that 2019 will see the continued growth of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service, which will continue to outpace Google and close the lead held by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Azure is significantly better positioned to service enterprise businesses, who weren’t among cloud’s early adopters. Microsoft touts how AWS is five times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server. In addition, Azure offers some significant pricing advantages with savings through existing licenses, and Microsoft is offering some free extended security updates as additional incentive. Today, Microsoft declares more than 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Azure, and we feel more will transition using Azure in the coming year.

In many ways, 2018 was a watershed year for the cloud. According to global analyst IDC, almost half of IT spending was cloud-based in 2018, and by 2020 they predict that “60-70 percent of all software, services and technology spending” will be cloud-based. The trends we see for 2019 reflect the maturity of this sector. That maturity is, in part, why cloud-to-cloud migrations will outpace on-prem-to-cloud migrations in 2019.

Today, many companies are not starting their journey to the cloud — they’re already there. The next year will see these companies refining IT strategies and seeking new investments to help grow their businesses in the new year.

Here’s to your prosperous 2019!

Mark Kirstein is the vice president of products at BitTitan, leading product development and product management teams for the company’s SaaS solutions. Prior to BitTitan, Mark served as the senior director of product management for the mobile enterprise software division of Motorola Solutions, continuing in that capacity following its acquisition by Zebra Technologies in 2014. Mark has more than two decades of experience overseeing product strategy, development, and go-to-market initiatives. Follow @markkirstein or @BitTitan on Twitter.