In 2023, enterprises will continue to spend aggressively on cloud technologies and business models to bring innovation and value to their end users. The rate and pace of technology changes that leverage cloud computing are accelerating rapidly, and clients are reaping rewards by leveraging advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, analytics and robotic process automation (RPA).
Companies should prepare for the following three cloud trends:
- Multi-cloud strategies will evolve to poly- and hybrid-cloud strategies.
In 2023, we expect organizations to be very intentional with the placement of their workloads as the cloud providers (especially AWS, Azure, and GCP) continue to differentiate their services. This “poly-cloud” approach will provide applications the best-of-breed services for their use case, whether they need a specialized database, AI/ML service or industry cloud solution. Enterprises also continue to realize that not all workloads belong in the public cloud (largely due to cost, performance and regulatory considerations), and organizations will embrace their on-premise and private cloud footprints in their roadmaps.
- Cost takeout and cloud FinOps will be top priority.
With the potential impending economic recession, enterprises have shifted their 2023 goals to cutting costs and driving efficiencies, and – after the tremendous growth of public cloud adoption over the last two years – cloud costs are one of the biggest targets for cost savings. IT, Finance and FinOps teams will need to visualize their total cost of ownership (TCO) across their entire hybrid cloud footprint (private and public cloud) to find opportunities to optimize and monetize their cloud transformations. The organizations that achieved their cloud FinOps “quick wins” in 2021 and 2022 will now look to re-architect applications to leverage more cost effective, cloud-native services like serverless.
- Cloud will be the catalyst for 2022’s hyped (and unproven) tech trends – Web3, Blockchain, AR/VR and generative AI have taken over Discord, Telegram and Substack discussions in 2022, but a common criticism for these trends is that their applications have not yet been developed. The large cloud providers were not immune to the hype cycles (see Blockchain on AWS, GCP’s Web3 solutions, Azure’s Mixed Reality solutions, etc.). 2023 will see both a growth in these specialized services made available to the market and a slew of startups that will build on top of them.
Cloud computing will continue to be the defining platform on which to unleash existing and future technologies to drive innovation and value. “Cloud” does not equal panacea for all IT challenges, but cloud computing will continue to cure many IT and business challenges.
ISG helps companies see around corners and prepare their IT environments for the future. Contact us to find out how we can help you get ready.
About the authors
Bernie Hoecker
Bernie Hoecker joined ISG in September 2021. His role is to leverage ISG’s core competencies to expand and grow ISG’s presence in the cloud market. His focus is to implement a cohesive cloud strategy across the ISG firm that results in incremental revenue and EBITDA growth. This also includes fostering strong relationships with service providers, hyper-scalers, and additional firms in the cloud ecosystem. While at ISG, Bernie successfully delivered value for large and SMB enterprises with a focus on Cloud Operations and IT Modernization. Bernie has also established key relationships with Hyperscalers/CSPs, Global Services Integrators ,and Service Providers to establish a Cloud Partner ecosystem to serve enterprise clients. He has also engaged with clients to evaluate technology strategies and migrations from legacy environments to the cloud. Bernie’s client portfolio spans multiple industries and engages clients in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
