While the headlines in 2022 have been dominated by political and economic uncertainty, it has also been a monumental year for the cloud industry, with end-user spending on cloud services hitting $490.3 billion.
As enterprises are continually looking to cloud computing to transform their business operations going forward, 2023 is expected to be another bumper year for the sector. With this in mind, here are our top four cloud trend predictions for 2023:
1. Increased multi-cloud adoption
As the reliance on data collection and analytics in everyday business operations continues to increase, the majority of business leaders are planning to turn their attention towards a multi-cloud approach as a way of modernizing their infrastructure. As more organisations continue to evolve their operational strategies in 2023, multi-cloud adoption will continue to accelerate and potentially become the new norm.
While this form of cloud computing is still somewhat in its infancy, the majority of enterprise-level organisations are expected to make use of multi-cloud adoption in the coming years. But what is fuelling this move? According to a recent survey, the argument that was cited the most is for IT leaders to increase the flexibility, security and agility of their existing IT operations without compromising on efficiency.
2. Continued cloud acceleration
Whilst it is expected we are about to enter a period of economic downturn, it is predicted that organisations will continue to accelerate cloud adoption. It has been widely reported that companies that had adopted cloud computing options prior to the pandemic fared considerably better due to the ability to quickly pivot and capitalise on new opportunities. It is likely that this will hold true in the coming months of economic uncertainty.
The main driving force behind this cloud acceleration is the rapid adoption of cloud services by SMEs who are looking to diversify their current IT approach. However, as SMEs do not usually have the capacity, both in human resources and financially, to personally manage cloud services, the reliance on third-party providers will continue to grow.
3. Data sovereignty
As data requirements in business operations continue to grow, the issue of data sovereignty poses a range of complex issues for both businesses and cloud providers. In today’s digitally dominated world, the complexities around data and data management are complex, but the vast majority of issues companies face are centred around the ownership of data, and what constitutes appropriate control over where it is stored, processed and shared. In light of these complexities, technology specialists and governments are joining forces to develop solutions suitable for all parties.
Due to issues facing the control and costs of migrating to the public cloud, organisations in 2023 are expected to increasingly consider investing in sovereign cloud infrastructure to guarantee long-term security and compliance. This is further compensated by the pressure of ever-growing geographical data regulations, with this in mind the traditional approach to data storage is no longer suitable. Therefore, businesses in 2023 must move towards more agile data storage solutions that can easily be adjusted to changing requirements.
4. Serverless Computing
Today more than ever, organisations and enterprises are constantly looking for increased efficiency and cost-savings across their IT ecosystems. In this search for efficiency, organisations are increasingly turning their head towards serverless computing.
Despite the name, servers are still required in serverless computing, however, this form of cloud model makes it significantly simpler for businesses to access backend services without worrying about infrastructure management. In serverless computing, cloud service providers will charge users based on their usage and not based on a fixed number of servers or amount of bandwidth.
In 2023, more organisations will be looking to the cloud to increase efficiency, deliver business outcomes and aid enterprises through economic uncertainty.
