Apparently next year cloud computing will cross a special threshold.

Forrester predicts that more than 50 percent of global enterprises will rely on at least on public cloud platforms to drive digital transformation and delight customers.

This means that cloud will become business critical and is now a mainstream enterprise core technology.

Forrester believes that the cloud is consolidating, so outfits need to start planning now to mitigate lock-in risk.

SaaS vendors are likely to expand to become true platform providers and make it even easier to consume their software.

Cloud platforms outside North America will become more locally focused and target specific regional or industry needs. This is probably because governments are busy spying on each other’s clouds and don’t want data leaving the country.

Forrester said that Kubernetes has won the war for container orchestration dominance so it is probably not a good idea to think of something different.

Private and hybrid cloud spending will rebound after a slowdown, driven by a raft of new on-premises cloud solutions, Forrester predicts.

Cloud management solutions will start to be sold in parts or offered for free as competition heats up.

Forrester adds that Enterprises will shift 10 percent of their traffic from carrier backbones to colocation and cloud service providers.