CRN breaks down Forrester’s new report on the 10 most important cloud trends right know, which include Nvidia significantly aiding AI cloud startups, VMware customers migrating to the public cloud and the converging of AI and edge computing.

From VMware migrations to the public cloud and Nvidia helping cloud AI startups win market share, Forrester’s new report sheds light on the 10 most important cloud market trends this year.

“In 2024, adoption and proliferation of cloud-based AI products reached fever pitch,” said the IT market research firm in its 2024 “Top 10 Trends In Cloud” report.

“Business users invested in AI-infused services like Microsoft’s M365 Copilot as productivity-boosting tools, while data scientists, app developers, and AI teams used AI services such as Amazon Web Services’ Bedrock, Google’s Vertex AI, and Microsoft’s Azure AI to simplify development and organize unstructured data,” Forrester said.

[Related: Cloud Market Share In Q2: Microsoft Drops, Google Gains, AWS Remains Leader]

Artificial intelligence and edge computing are converging to drive major changes in the cloud market, creating both opportunities and challenges for cloud customers.

CRN breaks down the 10 biggest trends in Forrester’s new 2024 “Top 10 Trends In Cloud” report that every cloud customer, partner and investor should know about.

No. 10: Cloud Providers Highlight ‘AI Data Readiness’ To Win New Workloads

Enterprise decision-making often relies on localized and on-premises data collection. In scenarios where low latency is required, customers face the question of how to optimize AI workloads in close proximity to underlying data.

Businesses can either make a large GPU and data center investment to analyze data on-premises or use expensive AI cloud services.

In scenarios like security and intellectual property, data and the models often require AI capabilities that can be delivered on-premises. The same is true for use cases that are sensitive to data sovereignty, data transfer costs, or latency where regional cloud availability can affect application performance.

“In many scenarios, the answer isn’t simply to move the data to cloud and centralize, but rather to move the model closer to the data,” Forrester said.

Click through to read the nine other biggest trends in cloud computing in 2024.

No. 9: Serverless Is Trending As WebAssembly Gets Traction

Early momentum around cloud-native development appeared to be losing steam. After years of overselling serverless, cloud providers have finally paid attention to customer backlash and taken a more nuanced approach.

Platform providers are increasingly leveraging WebAssembly under the hood as the systems’ interface and component model matures.

“The technology brings enhanced portability, increased workload density, a strong runtime isolation model for security, and robust language support,” said Forrester.

Emerging use cases in AI and edge computing are driving further adoption.

No. 8: DORA And AI Compliance Put Pressure On Hybrid Cloud Data Infrastructure

Uncertainty over the impact of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) has created disarray in IT budget planning for European banks and other highly regulated EU industries.

The rise of GenAI adds to the confusion by driving users to both public cloud for their AI services and on-premises data centers for latency and egress cost reasons. These factors are prompting customer demand for better hybrid data management options.

“Vendors like Veeam, Zscaler, and Zerto have responded with better data infrastructure services to manage portability, privacy, access, or security needs,” Forrester said.

No. 7: Edge Environments Take Center Stage

Edge computing and IoT capabilities are getting an overhaul as cloud providers rebrand themselves as distributed clouds.

On the other end, traditional content delivery network vendors (CDNs) are expanding their offerings to include intelligent edge environments.

The intersection of GenAI and edge via localized LLMs increases the draw, particularly for remote applications like oil rigs that require real-time analysis.

For example, Akamai Technologies is leveraging its Linode acquisition to fill the gap between the centralized hyperscaler model and the classic CDN with its thousands of points of presence. Fastly and Cloudflare are doing similar moves.

While the big cloud players have their own CDNs, Forrester said, “The edge-to-cloud play flips the script and positions edge providers as equals to the hyperscalers in the hunt for lucrative enterprise edge business.”

No. 6: Cloud Sustainability Influences Vendor Selection, Workload Placement

The increased demand for power-hungry workloads in AI and generative AI (GenAI), along with new environmental regulations that require emissions reporting, have given rise to cloud sustainability programs.

Enterprises are seeking more sustainability-powered cloud data centers and using solutions that enable smarter cloud workload placement to decrease their cloud carbon footprint.

They’re also leveraging workload placement tools that factor in CO2 emissions and using carbon-footprint reporting solutions.

Some organizations are choosing more sustainable architectures—such as containers or WebAssembly—for their smaller footprints versus virtual machines that use a higher number of resources.

No. 5: Cloud Scrambles Sourcing And Services Integration

Decision-making on service consumption is decentralized as cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers push out of the traditional tech stack.

This trend is accelerating in 2024 due to widespread enterprise embracement of multi-cloud environments.

“Enterprises that have built sourcing strategies around traditional infrastructure towers and attempted to combine them using ITIL-based service integration and management concepts will continue to struggle as decentralized sourcing remains the de facto standard,” said Forrester.

DevOps and site reliability engineering approaches will replace conventional shared services with a platform-based, product-centric operating model.

No. 4: FinOps Is Key For Cloud Operations

The elastic and dynamic nature of cloud computing has adjusted the markets’ mindset from cloud first to cloud as necessary.

The increase in cloud usage and management has given rise to cloud operations (CloudOps) thanks to its continuous performance monitoring capabilities, uptime maintenance, and cloud heath management. Data from these activities also inform FinOps decisions for workload placement, resource allocation, capacity optimization, governance-as-code policies, and automation tasks.

“The CloudOps mantra of proactive incident management feeds the same decision-making required in shifting left for FinOps,” said Forrester.

A big trend in 2024 is CloudOps increasingly being integrated into companies’ FinOps strategy.

No. 3: VMware’s New Business Model Drives Migration To Public Cloud Services

Tech leaders are accelerating their VMware estate migration but not through the usual lift-and-shift to VMware services on public cloud.

“Tired of paying the dual license fee to VMware and to the public cloud providers, tech execs are exploring a refactored migration using native cloud services,” said Forrester.

With the low-hanging fruit migrated, the next portion businesses will migrate are applications that are heavily integrated into their on-premises infrastructure.

Some enterprises are leveraging hybrid cloud enablement paths, such as with NetApp and Dell storage APIs, but these companies are also willing to completely decouple from legacy architectures.

No. 2: Vendors Combine Edge And Multi-cloud To Create A Business-Wide Network Fabric

Networking market leaders like Cisco and Palo Alto Networks offer separate solutions for both network and security solutions for the cloud, as well as Zero Trust edge (ZTE) solutions for edge and remote locations.

Meanwhile, F5 and Juniper Networks have made moves to deliver a consistent set of security and networking services for both virtual private cloud (VPC) and remote locations as demands increases.

Customers want a consistent set of controls for VPCs and remote locations to create a single business-wide networking fabric versus multiple solutions that manage discrete segments.

“This market shift has made attractive acquisition targets of multi-cloud network vendors like Aviatrix and Prosimo for ZTE providers such as Cisco Systems and Versa Networks, which could close the gap with their competitors,” said Forrester.

No. 1: Nvidia Helps Alternative Clouds Go Mainstream For AI And Edge

Investment from Nvidia and AI-focused venture capitalist firms has given rise to new GPU-stuffed, AI-oriented clouds. Startups are capturing more market share as traders validate the AI cloud.

For example, AI cloud startup CoreWeave raised $8.6 billion in funding with its biggest draw being a massive amount of Nvidia GPUs to offer in a supply-constrained market. Vultr is another example of a smaller cloud provider squarely in the mix too with early access to new Nvidia chips and premier partner network status.

Even with momentum in the AI cloud startup market, the hyperscale cloud providers like Microsoft, Google and AWS aren’t about to be displaced.

However, Forrester said “the public cloud market is more dynamic than it has been in years.”