Over the past few years, cloud use has grown astronomically, and the current, exceptional economic climate has only exacerbated this expansion. Instead of looking at methods to capitalize on growth during this time, businesses who have not kept up with investing in cloud-adoption strategies are now struggling to preserve business continuity amid the pandemic's global disruption. The hybrid cloud market as a whole offers a massive $1.2 trillion opportunity, which is both an economy in and of itself and a current growth engine for companies who are ready. It is indisputable that cloud technologies will continue to be essential to digital transformation in 2020 and beyond, according to GTD's concentration on this topic. Cloud technologies are the cornerstone that offers a common platform and streamlines service delivery and support for the implementation and application of cutting-edge technologies like Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), 5G, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Cloud specialists now have a great opportunity to act quickly to develop products and services based on changing needs, either organically or through a variety of partnerships. This is made possible by the combination of advanced technology ecosystems and rapid innovation in cloud technologies.

IT spending are shifting more and more to cloud giants, even as businesses implement more multicloud setups. A new Flexera survey on 2021 IT expenditures indicates that funds are going to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure and its SaaS products. The COVID-19 pandemic has given the top three cloud providers—Amazon's AWS, Microsoft's Azure, and GCP—an additional boost. All of these companies are rapidly introducing new services, developing their own compute stacks to increase cost effectiveness, and passing along part of those savings to their clients in an effort to encourage additional use.

Many mid-sized global IT and cloud solutions companies are choosing to "purchase" rather than "create" in order to increase their AWS, Azure, and GCP capabilities by investing in specialized cloud partners, as a result of the existing high and increasing demand for capabilities across the three cloud ecosystems. .A few recent strategic investments that demonstrate the growing interest in specialized cloud partners are as follows:

• In order to handle the expansion of its enterprise migrations and development business in the region, Accenture extended its AWS team resources in France and obtained access to a specialized AWS partner through the acquisition of Gekko. Additionally, the agreement expanded Accenture's portfolio of Intelligent Cloud & Infrastructure and fortified its alliances with leading cloud and AI providers including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Through the agreement, Accenture improved the strategic goals and capabilities of the Accenture AWS Business Group inside its Accenture Technology offices located in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg.

• In order to strengthen its knowledge of Microsoft Azure and grow its New Microsoft Business Group in the United States by adding development and managed services hubs in major cities, Cognizant acquired 10th Magnitude, a Microsoft Gold Partner. Cognizant's acquisition strategy will benefit from 10th Magnitude's heightened emphasis on application modernization and data intelligence with AI-driven analytics and insights. Maven Wave, a top Google Cloud Premier Partner with eight Cloud Partner Specializations situated in the United States, was purchased by Atos, a global leader in digital transformation. Atos's global position in cloud solutions for apps, data analytics, and machine learning on hybrid and multi-cloud platforms is strengthened by this purchase.

Cloud experts now have exciting prospects to develop their businesses and provide ready-to-market cloud service portfolios to both new and existing clients thanks to increased interest in and opportunities for strategic and focused investment in the cloud industry.

The purchase of Coda Global by Presidio Inc. serves as one such. In this instance, the buyer is a well-known provider of IT solutions in North America that wants to expand its offering in the cloud technology space. They chose Global Coda as their partner because the company helps companies create custom apps, move historic apps, and update their current apps. With experience in cloud migration, cloud-native application development, DevOps, big data enablement, and machine learning with advanced analytics, Presidio will now take advantage of Global Coda's full range of cloud consulting services. Their suite is competitive and reasonably priced for businesses of all sizes thanks to their distinctive DevOptimizedTM methodology. It is evident that many services built on a cloud foundation speed up businesses' digital transformations enabled by the cloud.

The adoption of cloud technologies has been accelerated by a number of additional significant considerations. In addition to growing knowledge of the benefits of cloud technologies, a tendency toward consumerization has made cloud adoption more inexpensive in accordance with business requirements. Innovation and the creation of new technologies and as-a-service offerings within the cloud ecosystem have also been prompted by the growing global cloud market. Many startups offer a "as-a-service" model that is based on the ever-evolving demands of businesses. The abundance of cloud-skilled human resources has made it feasible. When developing a cloud adoption strategy, enterprises should keep these major trends and their underlying factors in mind in order to lead the industry and create a sustainable business model:

Trend 1: Businesses find that the omnicloud model makes more sense for hyperscaling

Companies are abandoning the conventional approach of relying solely on one cloud service, which becomes difficult and complicated to use in evolving business situations. As a result, businesses are willing to use many cloud solutions in order to maximize their benefits. By 2021, according to Gartner, 75% of big and midsize businesses will have used a hybrid or multi-cloud approach. This market trend will cause cloud service providers to collaborate and offer unique cross-platform capabilities in order to implement omnicloud strategy.

Trend 2: As-a-service needs to be smart and solution-focused

In addition to infrastructure services, businesses work with cloud partners who offer the finest cloud solutions for certain organizational needs. They are judged on their ability to solve problems and their knowledge of AI, IoT, and data security. As a result, "as-a-service" models are changing due to automation and AI-powered insight solutions.

As AWS partners with Data & Analytics and Machine Learning capabilities in Migration, DevOps, Financial Services, and Security & Compliance, LTI made an investment in PowerupCloud Technologies. They created CloudEnsure.io, an independent and intelligent cloud governance platform that keeps an eye on an organization's cloud services and instantly identifies, suggests, or implements the necessary repairs for any security and compliance issues. The other enterprise AI platform, Botzer.io, helps businesses to quickly implement AI in areas like image recognition, deep learning use cases, natural language processing, etc.

Trend 3: Containerization's Dominance

Market dynamics for the previously mentioned omnicloud approach are created by containerization via Kubernetes, which coordinates the deployment of apps across multiple cloud platforms and eliminates the disparate cloud barriers through prescriptive platforms, open-source platforms, or native providers. As a result, Kubernetes' consolidation through M&A actions upended the market. Redhat was purchased by IBM in order to integrate Kubernetes with OpenShift. Heptio, who laid the groundwork for the creation of Tanzu intended for Dell Technologies' cross-cloud vision, received a strategic investment from VMware. In order to be M&A-ready for cloud vendors, startups are pursuing these leads and developing container-focused services.

Since digital transformation has been shown to be an essential strategy, businesses will quickly embrace cloud ecosystems. Cloud enterprises will need to be prepared with a variety of technological know-how and clever, focused solutions to meet the new-normal shift in business demand and confirm cloud benefits.