Cloud Computing Predictions for 2021

We can all be sure of one thing I didn’t predict last year. Maybe this will be lucky number eleven. Last year a lot of my predictions were decade long, but I missed on most of them. Since there was a decade of predictions I thought it would be fun to go back and see any that did happen starting from what I predicted to happen in 2011. 

2011: Predicted that a new social service would emerge. Hello Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. I also predicted the death of the CD drive for software. 

2012: Predicted that meetings would go free. Hello Zoom. I also predicted that the word “blog” would die, and I feel like it mostly has. 

2013: Predicted that Salesforce would buy Hubspot, but they bought ExactTarget later. 

2014: Predicted that streaming services would start to win more and more awards for their content. That pretty much has happened. 

2015: Was a bad year. Didn’t really get anything correct.

2016: Predicted that Apple would release their own original content. Done and done. 

2017: My best prediction yet, that movies would come home, meaning be released at the same time as in theater, happened in 2020. A little off by years, but I also predicted Apple would release a small smart speaker. Hello HomePod Mini. The fun one here is I had Amazon buying Slack which is half credit, right? 

2018: A little ahead of my time in my full autonomous cars in 2019. We will revisit that this year. 

2019: Predicted the death of Cable. Is it dead yet? Probably not. 

Cars Drive Themselves 

This might be doubling down on my own prediction, but it must be done. The vision of autonomous vehicles will come out of beta testing for Tesla owners and into mainstream reality. The wheel of data will pick up speed and by the end of the year, talking about how your car drove you from home to Thanksgiving will be commonplace. The media will catch on and the true vision of the future will begin to sink into society. Computers will drive better and safer than humans, and eventually, humans will be banned from driving. That last part will take a decade, but it will happen. 

Confidence: 10

Work From Home Goes Mainstream

COVID-19 has certainly shown the world that working from home was both doable and difficult but this genie will be hard to put back in the bottle. More than half of the Fortune 500 companies will start to build out better work from home policies, and start downsizing corporate space. It won’t be immediate and culturally it will be difficult, but hey, maybe they can hire someone to help. (shameless plug) 

Confidence: 5

Salesforce Buys Meeting Software

Next up in the Salesforce buying spree is conference software. Slack gets Salesforce the instant communication but without a very good external conferencing software, the office suite package is incomplete. Will it be Zoom or GotoMeeting? Will they try to extend Slack’s screen sharing ability? I do think Salesforce has lost some of its software innovation, so I think they will buy another company that has already built a solid platform. 

Confidence: 7

Apple Releases M2 Chip

Apple shocked the world in 2020 by not only announcing but shipping their own silicon chipset for computers. The writing was on the wall for years, but they do like to keep things close to the chest. Since the M1 chip is in the wild, it makes sense that a fast, second generation M2 chip is in the pipeline. The prediction here is it is announced and ships in the professional line including MacBook Pro. 

Confidence: 8

Do you agree or disagree with any of my predictions? Join me in the Salesforce Trailblazer Community or directly at @JasonMAtwood on the Twitter.