Google's top 10 predictions for cloud computing

At its Cloud Next event, Google announced a series of solutions and updates to its suite of products and services to support developers and technology decision makers at all levels. The focus was on providing the most open, scalable and powerful data cloud, but the company didn't just show off its innovative products, it also gave a glimpse of where these and other products are headed.

Here are Google's top 10 predictions for cloud computing over the next three years:

1. Neuroinclusive design will stand out
   First, Jeanine Banks, vice president and general manager and head of Developer relations at Google Developer X Platform, predicts that the neuroinclusive design strategy will stand out. She said developers will take neuroinclusiveness as a starting point and develop in a simple and distraction-free way, leading to a fivefold increase in user adoption by the end of 2025. Banks says seven principles are critical to achieving this level of accessibility: balance, proportion, unity, light, color, space, and pattern.
   
2. The wide use of open source planning
   Eric Brewer, vice president and researcher for infrastructure at Google, predicts that curating open source will add a layer of responsibility to today's free or "as is" open source, and that 80 percent of developers will adopt this open source to some extent. Google has curated open source as part of its guaranteed Open Source Software (AOSS) service.

3. Automate secops workflows
   Iman Ghanizada, Google's global head of autonomous security operations, says that by the end of 2025, up to 90% of secure operations workflows will be automated and managed as code. Google will enable continuous detection and response through services such as community safety analytics and Chronicle.
   
4. A four-day workweek powered by artificial intelligence
   Kamelia Aryafar, senior director of engineering for Google Cloud AI Platform, predicts that AI will be a major driver of the four-day workweek. She highlighted how innovative AI systems, such as Google's Vertex AI, will automate tasks, enabling teams to do five days' work in four days.
   
5. Most data is actionable in real time
   Irina Farooq, Google's head of cloud analytics products, said that by the end of 2025, 90% of data will operate in real time through machine learning. Google is doing this with developments such as Dataplex, which unifies distributed data and automates data management and governance, support for unstructured data on BigQuery, and Apache Spark, she said.
   
6. There is no barrier between transactional and analytical workloads
   For many years, transactional and analytical workloads have been separate database workloads. However, Andi Gutmans, vice president and general manager of Google databases, predicts that these barriers will disappear by the end of 2025. Google Cloud services such as Spanner, CloudSQL, BigTable and AlloyDB will play a role in achieving that goal, he said.
   
7. Automation of cloud infrastructure decisions
   AminVahdat, vice president and general manager of Systems and Services infrastructure at Google, predicts that more than half of cloud computing infrastructure decisions will be automated within the next three years. The shift, he says, will be based on a company's usage patterns - scale and performance requirements.
   
8. Sustainability will be a priority
   Developers have long focused on building applications and projects for security, reliability, and performance, and Steren Giannini, group product manager at Google, predicts that will soon change and sustainability will take the lead. He noted that up to 75 percent of developers will lead their projects with sustainability as their main development principle. To this end, Google offers a carbon footprint tool to measure the sustainability impact of cloud use.
   
9. The influence of cloudy skies
   DevRel and Richard Serter, head of outbound product management, believe that more than half of businesses using public clouds will switch their primary cloud provider as a result of multi-cloud capabilities in markets such as Anthos and BigQuery Omni.
   
10. Low/No Code will dominate
    Finally, Google engineering manager Jana Mandic believes low-code and no-code will dominate in the next three years. She predicts that the impact of this shift will be that more than half of business applications will be built by users who are not professional developers. It is worth noting that Gartner also predicts that low code/no code technologies will account for over 70% of new applications by 2025.