Log4Shell's timing was both terrible and fortunate. It exposed the gap between teams with dependency scanning and those without. Meanwhile, cloud adoption kept growing steadily, and .NET 6 shipped on schedule, showing Microsoft's new product discipline is working. As 2022 begins, the technology landscape is clear enough to make some solid predictions about where the year is heading.
Cloud adoption is no longer a differentiator; it's now table stakes. Organisations still on-premises in 2022 are those with specific regulatory or data sovereignty constraints, not ones that just haven't gotten around to it yet. The cloud discussion in 2022 focuses on cost efficiency, governance at scale, and operational patterns for reliable large-scale deployments. The infrastructure conversation has moved up the stack.
In my experience, cost efficiency in the cloud is not just about using the right services, but also about having the right monitoring and alerting in place. I recall one organisation that saved 30% on their AWS bill by implementing a simple tagging strategy and automating their resource utilisation with AWS CloudWatch and AWS Cost Explorer. However, this required a significant upfront investment in tooling and process changes.
GitHub Copilot was in technical preview in 2021, and the feedback suggests developers find AI-assisted code completion genuinely useful for routine tasks. 2022 will see Copilot's general availability and the first wave of AI-integrated developer tools. What is in technical preview in 2022 will be standard equipment by 2024.
The DORA report and Team Topologies framework gave a name to what high-performing organisations were already doing: treating internal developer platforms as products. 2022 will see 'platform engineering' become a job description keyword, dedicated platform teams emerge in medium-to-large organisations, and the tooling ecosystem mature to support this function. For instance, companies like Netflix and Spotify have already adopted platform engineering practices, using tools like Kubernetes, Helm, and Grafana to manage their internal platforms.
Organisations that have adopted platform engineering practices have seen significant improvements in their deployment frequencies and lead times. For example, a company I worked with was able to increase their deployment frequency from once a week to once a day, while reducing their lead time from 30 days to 5 days. This was achieved through the use of tools like GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, and CircleCI, which enabled them to automate their testing, building, and deployment processes.
The Log4Shell incident highlighted the gap between organisations with automated dependency scanning and vulnerability management and those without. 2022 will see security shift-left practices accelerate, including SAST in CI/CD, SBOM generation, container image scanning, and infrastructure-as-code policy validation moving from best practice to baseline expectation for software delivery pipelines.
As a result, organisations will focus on improving their security posture, with a growing emphasis on automation and integration. This shift will lead to more efficient and secure software delivery pipelines.
The coming year will also see continued growth in cloud-native technologies, with more organisations adopting Kubernetes, serverless computing, and other cloud-native innovations.
With these trends in mind, 2022 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for engineering, cloud, and AI. Organisations that adapt quickly to these changes will be well-positioned for success.