David Smith, VP and Fellow at research firm Gartner, said cloud computing has reached its “tipping point”, as the technology becomes the enabler for new applications and services.

“There are some big differences between the first ten years of cloud, and the way we project the next 10 years are going to be. And it is as simple as people first exploring, and today discovering, and in the future exploiting,” he said in an Operations Transformation Forum 2016 keynote.

“But so many things have changed dramatically. The conventional wisdom and attitude to security in the first ten years was that the cloud is not secure, whereas today we have to battle with the perception that people think the cloud is secure, and don’t have to worry about anything – that is a big change,” he continued.

As the market moves on, there will be “very, very different opportunities”.

“We categorise a lot of the first decade by everybody chasing and trying to become the next Amazon. That hasn’t worked out very well for many companies, not just in telecoms. But the next ten years are going to be more about finding opportunities to coexist and work within the realities of the market,” he continued.

“We will have some very big hyperscale providers, but that doesn’t mean that everything is going to go to hyperscale. That means there are tremendous opportunities to add value in that kind of a world and bring forth the skills and relationships that you have.”