Top 10 cloud trends for 2023
Most of the revolutionary technological trends of recent times, like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and FinOps, have been greatly influenced by the widespread adoption of cloud computing. Gartner forecasts the worldwide public cloud end-user spending to reach nearly $600 billion in 2023, up from $490 billion in 2022. Because of its high potential for accessibility, usability, and efficiency, the cloud has led the “one to watch” technology lists of practically every analyst for the past 20 years. In the first generation of cloud computing, apps, storage, and the advent of software as a service were the focus points. IT teams improved their capability in the second iteration and modernized working procedures. What will be the focus of the next generation of clouds? Let’s see the top ten cloud trends for 2023:
1. Rise of multi-cloud:
Spreading workload enhances flexibility was one of the significant reasons for cloud adoption. Now with multi-cloud, we can not only spread the workload across multiple clouds as per convenience but also diversify the potential failure points. It reduces the potential risks associated with vendor lock-in — something organizations are increasingly becoming cautious about. Also, opting for more than one provider has proved to be beneficial in terms of expenditure. With multi-cloud, we can choose a cloud that best suits a particular service instead of hosting the entire product on one cloud. This can be beneficial to tailor services according to what best suits their business approach and specific geography. This will also, in turn, fuel innovation among the cloud service providers as they will have to augment their services to match the competition.
2. Cloud cost optimization:
The use of the cloud is rising exponentially, as are the costs attached. A Gartner study shows that worldwide IT spending will grow 5.1% in 2023. But on the other hand, the recent signs of a slowing economy mean that organizations will resort to practices that will save the cloud costs without compromising their security and performance. Cloud services optimization and cost-effective offerings should be on the up in 2023. Additionally, efficient monitoring has always been the focal point for cost-efficiency, optimized resource management, and security. It won’t be a surprise if we see a rise in innovation related to monitoring techniques, too, especially around cost and usage optimization.
3. More FinOps than ever:
The world’s largest investment banks expect global economic growth to slow further in 2023. Organizations will spend more on the cloud, but they will also closely monitor all cloud-related spending. They will seek to accelerate business value by refining how they consume the cloud. FinOps, a culture developed within enterprises to help them manage and optimize cloud costs by bringing DevOps, IT, and finance teams together to address the cloud costs across the organization collaboratively, will undoubtedly gain traction. It will enable organizations to drive financial accountability while boosting their business value. More investment can be foreseen in partnering with third-party platforms that help with cost optimization and cost management to understand their cloud spending accurately.
4. Data security:
Cloud or no cloud, data security is undoubtedly a no-compromise prospect for all organizations. We’ve seen multiple instances of data breaches posing challenges to organizations. Multi-cloud environments, especially, are complex to manage and secure and risk facing a higher number of security breaches. Intelligent security around housing and transferring data should again be the most talked about the subject with the emergence of new techniques to safeguard the cloud space. Encryption and multi-factor authentication should become a new normal to combat breaches. Review of privacy policies, backups & DR systems will be at the forefront so that data losses can be minimized. A lot of stress will be given to security testing so loopholes can be exposed and patched beforehand. We will see more proactive security strategies than reactive security.
5. Data sovereignty to gain traction:
Recent geopolitical tensions have forced organizations and governments to safeguard their data by housing it within their geographical boundaries. Countries will want to have little foreign control over their data. This means that 2023 will see more stringent rules and sharing laws laid down by governments around data sovereignty and privacy. Along with CCPA, EU, and GDPR, rules on data privacy and laws among countries will be more stringent than ever. We will see updated data encryption rules & policies, and data handling, storing, archiving, and destruction practices. This will result in organizations taking proactive steps to create their data handling & governance laws to ensure smooth integration and sharing across the IT landscape. Regarding open-source data communities, we will see improvements to Logical Replication, where users can set geo-fence subsets and other limits to restrict data to specific locations so that it can’t be replicated and used anywhere else other than where intended.
6. Cloud in sports:
Cloud computing has already entered the world of sports, and its influence heavily impacts organizers, teams, and athletes. Information about an athlete’s diet, training activity, sleep, and game performance can be captured using specialized sensors to enhance their performance. The cloud is also used to improve the viewer experience. For example, Formula1 — the biggest single-seater formula racing event and arguably the most technologically advanced motorsport gets its insights powered by AWS, bringing fans closer to the racetrack and enhancing their experience with real-time analytics. Stadiums and venues, too…read more
