Zero trust security will prevail in 2021

Zero-trust security (when organizations stop trusting their people and services in an IT environment) will become the prevailing model for organizations in 2021. With more companies moving to distributed architectures, technology teams need a scalable way to make security foolproof while managing a growing number of microservices and greater complexity. Companies should act as though every person and service (whether internal or external) could have malicious intent, and implement zero-trust security protocols to adequately protect their services, applications, and the data that flows through them. Failure to do so will only result in more high-profile data breaches, widespread outages, and heightened concerns from customers.

The End User Era: Architects Rise in IT Purchase Power

Architects play a pivotal role in enabling enterprise digital transformations—and the C-suite has taken notice of their expertise. Architects have become trusted advisors to the executive management team, and they will increasingly guide IT purchase decisions in 2021 and beyond. While executives will remain in charge of the overall global budget, more and more of it is being allocated to the architects in such a way that senior leaders do not have to be involved in every tech decision.

Service Mesh Will Gain Traction Not for What it Adds, But What it Takes Away 

Service mesh is the fabric that connects the distributed infrastructures that companies navigate when modernizing their IT infrastructure and enabling microservices. We anticipate service mesh use will dramatically increase through 2021 not for what it adds, but for the complexity it removes.

A service mesh enables technology teams to replace all of an organization’s ugly, unreliable, and noncompliant code, providing infrastructure freedom and cloud connectivity for teams. It is already a must-have for large organizations, and even SMBs will need a service mesh strategy if they plan to deliver stable and reliable services. Eventually, we expect service mesh to permeate every workload that a team runs, and the technology will get better and easier to use the more it matures.

About Marco Palladinio 

Marco Palladino is an inventor, software developer and Internet entrepreneur based in San Francisco. As the CTO and co-founder of Kong, he is Kong’s co-author, responsible for the design and delivery of the company’s products, while also providing technical thought leadership around APIs and microservices within both Kong and the external software community. Prior to Kong, Marco co-founded Mashape in 2010, which became the largest API marketplace and was acquired by RapidAPI in 2017.