In many ways, 2022 was a year of growth for the cloud technology space. Unpredictable macroeconomic developments saw many organizations thinking about and preparing for greater wins in the years to come instead of right away.
In 2023, much of this preparation could come to fruition as the growth achieved in 2022 contributes to a stronger economy and rapid advancements, particularly in tech.
Global IT spending is projected to climb by 5.1% to $4.6 trillion in 2023, according to Gartner, driven by a 11.3% increase in investments in cloud applications to $879.62 billion. What does this kind of increased spending and investment mean for organizations? C2C Global, a Google Cloud customer community, has identified five cloud trends to watch in 2023.
Moving forward, custom solutions, rather than one-size-fits-all offerings from individual providers, will increasingly become the norm.
AI and ML tech adoption will rise
Every organization wants to harness the many and varied capabilities of AI and ML technology. Some want to use their data to enhance analytics and build predictive models, and others want to automate repeatable processes.
Currently, many AI and ML models require extensive testing and training before they can be implemented at scale across large organizations hosting petabytes of data or serving wide customer bases. In fact, C2C’s research has found that only 47% of respondents are currently using AI and ML. However, these technologies ranked high among the ones that respondents hope to adopt in the future.
The promise of these technologies is too significant to ignore. As models are refined, and training and testing become more reliable and automatic, organizations will come to rely on these technologies more.
We’ll see more low-code/no-code app development platforms
Partly due to the rush to adopt AI and ML technologies that still require a lot of maintenance to perform reliably at scale, development teams are likely to implement low-code and no-code applications to reap the benefits of these technologies without the burden.
For skilled developers, low-code and no-code options promise a lower barrier to entry for introducing and managing complex models. Significant savings in terms of time and cost, as always, will also be a massive draw.
More organizations will host resources in multicloud environments
Every cloud strategy requires delicate analysis to determine the proper balance of cost, efficiency, performance, scalability and security. For a lot of organizations, sticking with a major cloud provider promises attractive savings that make a lot of practical sense.
However, as cloud technology grows, individual products will be just as attractive to companies prioritizing scaling and transformation.
Moving forward, even for companies using one cloud provider, adopting and implementing new resources from other providers may add value, and custom solutions, rather than one-size-fits-all offerings from individual providers, will increasingly become the norm.
Remote work tools will continue to improve
While remote work emerged during the pandemic as an emergency measure, the tools developed to accommodate it are now available as part of the expanded landscape of hybrid work technology.
As AR and VR technology become more viable, organizations will continue to introduce and adopt new means of building a work environment that suits the needs of a diverse and changing workforce.
Cloud adoption will increase in formerly resistant sectors
Until recently, organizations in the government and financial services used to resist transformation due to the risk and burden of retiring entrenched legacy systems and migrating massive amounts of data.
Lately, though, the advantages of cloud adoption have been harder to ignore, and more organizations in these industries are adapting accordingly. For example, the U.S. Army recently said it would start using Google Workspace for its personnel operations. This expansion into previously less served areas of the cloud market speaks volumes for cloud adoption.