Price of cloud services predicted to drop in 2021

Cloud services will grow at a rate of 40% as companies will drive to replatform in order to be more nimble, cost-effective, and customer-driven. The movement to the cloud will be seen as a “must-have” for every company.

Direction and price of cloud services

The growth of cloud SaaS offerings will make it easier and cheaper for all companies—large and small— to take advantage of the cloud. Companies will evolve from a “cloud-first” strategy to a “cloud-only” strategy, ensuring that operational efficiencies are realized along with better access to information and more meaningful insights to key data.

Data standards will be essential

Data standards will be designed and used on a global basis across multiple industries, such as Healthcare, Mining, Oil & Gas, Agriculture, and Finance. If the race to find a cure for COVID has taught us anything, is that speed is essential—having shared data standards will expedite R&D across countries to find cures and bring them to market quicker for the greater good.

More attention to data for predicting climate change

There will be increased attention in predicting climate change using data. It’s been well understood that data can predict forest fires and other natural disasters. But with the increased intensity of forest fires across the globe (notably in California) and the number of devastating hurricanes that have occurred this past year in the U.S. Gulf Coast, more attention will be spent on using data for predicting and mitigating natural disasters caused by climate change.

Predictive modeling for containing the disease

We will see predictive modeling of infectious diseases, more sophisticated methods of contract tracing, and the impact of travel and ‘porous’ borders on containing the disease in the years to come. This all requires the convergence and use of vast amounts of data.

Data for good 

There will be more focus on how corporations are using ‘data for good’.  People will value corporations that reinforce ‘stakeholder capitalism’. 

Emphasis on data collection experts

Historically, companies put a lot of value on people who were “Data Scientists”. Going forward, there will be a need to hire people that are experts in data collection. For AI models to work, vast amounts of data are required, and moreover, critical data still resides in silos in many organizations; hence, individuals with skills in data collection will be high in demand.