by Amar Pratap Rama Murthy - Chief Architect, Open Source
from: http://www.infosysblogs.com/open-source/2018/03/2018_trends_in_open_sour...

Open Source in years has been evolving from being Free software alternatives to being innovative in many areas. In the recent couple of years Open Source projects are leading the innovation and even defining standards for the future. For example, Cloud engineering and solutions is been led by Open Source projects. Similarly another example Machine Learning and AI is also been led by Open Source projects. My experience working with Open Source technologies, here are the few trends that will define 2018.

Progressive Web Apps
Experience layer from last several years has been critical aspect of digital transformation. Omni channel including Web, Mobile, other channels, have become important as the critical capabilities for successful digital experience delivery.

AngularJS, React, React Mobile, Vue.js and related technologies are becoming more stable and improving. This trend will continue in 2018. More Native based mobile frameworks like React Mobile and similar frameworks will keep increasing to deliver value for the user experience.

Cloud Native Engineering & PAAS
Platform as a Service has taken a good shape and how its been positioned with in the Cloud Strategy for any enterprise. Standards based products like OpenShift, PCF, Kubernetes, Tectonic etc have moved from Container as a Service to Platform as Service. Cloud Native Computing Foundation is driving and bringing the open source innovative projects together to make the cloud strategy and migration easier for adoption.

OpenShift, PCF and other Kubernetes based products are graduating from being Container as Service(CAAS) to Platform as Service (PAAS). One trend that is seen is enterprises are adopting product based implementations like OpenShift, PCF, Tektonic etc. Other trend is enterprises building their own PAAS using the best breed open source projects together. Enterprises are looking for PAAS can give single window for the service catalogue not just on Private cloud but also native services with in the public cloud providers. Multi cloud support as key differentiator will drive the PAAS adoption.

Anything as a Service (XAAS)
Anything as a Service as an acronym that represents any service should be available over internet than on-premises. Earlier years saw SAAS, IAAS are adopted by the big enterprises, Network as a service, Monitoring as Service, Communication as a service, Storage as Service are becoming very popular and will continue to hog limelight.

Given the high speed networks, stable virtualization and container technologies combined together is giving the power for this concept to shape and will increase in adoption in 2018.

Open Source Databases adoption on the raise
Open Source RDBMS adoption will increase in 2018 as its been going on last few years. There are massive parallel processing products on top of the open source RDBMS are seeing a role in the use cases where horizontal scalability is critical.

EDB PostgreSQL, MariaDB keep enhancing the features on the horizontal scaling, cloud migration, support for database as service on a cloud etc. Migration from the proprietary database to Open Source traction will continue in 2018 like seen in last couple of years. Citus, Vitess kind of products are making ways into main stream with support for horizontal scaling, NoSQL kind of capabilities like Map reduce, Replication, Sharding with good cost effectiveness.

NoSQL adoption is at a raise as the cloud migrations and adoption increases. This will continue in 2018. Explosion in data ingestion from different parts of the enterprise and models with multi-structure, unstructured, flexi-structure increasing, NoSQL adoption will continue. Engagement Databases like Couchbase, Aerospike with memory first architecture providing faster access to data to the experience layer is seeing a great traction. MongoDB releasing the ACID capability in its new version this year will fuel in a great differentiator in the market.

Machine Learning and AI
Gartner predicts that Machine learning and AI scope will be increased more in 2018. Several green field areas will see a surge around ML and AI. Technology around the adoption of Machine learning with in enterprises is increasing with platform builds, new user development environment adoption and move from on-prem to a cloud based compute executions for the leaning systems.

New Open Source Intelligent Solutions are set to change the way systems and people will interact with each other. Conversational AI with question and answer paradigm, Chabots will become a medium of interaction. Autonomous vehicles and drones are set to be used more in the business. Glasses technology to become another user experience channel for making things easier for the users.

Real-time Integration and Data Analytics
Modern data analytics platform moving away from old fashioned ETL and integration. Real-time data streaming to modern ELT/ ETL programming models like Nifi with Kafka is becoming main stream and enterprises are ready to adopt.

Confluent with its new avatar as the company behind Kafka will give a great push to this technology. Going beyond messaging into more reactive architecture/design is increasing in the adoption with large enterprises. Nifi with its large file processing especially with Data Integration like ETL style on streams has increased real time data transformation a big possibility. 2018 could be the year for Nifi adoption at large scale.

It will be an exciting year 2018 for Open Source!

Posted by Amar Pratap Rama Murthy - Chief Architect, Open Source on March 28, 2018 7:08 PM | http://www.infosysblogs.com/open-source/2018/03/2018_trends_in_open_sour...