2023 Informed: Cloud predictions

1: More enterprises will move to the cloud

“More and more businesses are moving towards the cloud. By 2025, 60% of infrastructure, security, data, and network offerings will require cloud-based control platforms that enable extensive automation and promise major reductions in ongoing operating costs. So next year will be a key transition period for many businesses. Companies are increasingly likely to look to outside IT providers who can help support this move to the Cloud.

Mark Wiseman, group commercial director, Connectus Group

2: Cloud will continue to support hybrid working

“The benefits of the cloud will only become more attractive in 2023. Faced with economic uncertainty, organisations will value its quick scalability, and their worries about IT skillsets will be mitigated by being able to reduce their on-premises footprint in favour of managed services. And, of course, the cloud enables organisations to better support the modern hybrid workforce, so they’re better able to attract and retain top talent.

Bryan Patton, principal strategic systems consultant, Quest

3: Enterprises will adopt the Zero Trust model

“Cloud adoption erases the traditional perimeter, when everything ‘outside’ is suspect but everything ‘inside’ is assumed to be trustworthy. This change will drive Zero Trust from the realm of hype into widespread practical application. In a Zero Trust model, no user, service or other element gets authenticated once and then given a free pass. Instead, continuous verification is required: Real-time information from multiple sources is used to make access decisions and other system responses.

“Success will build upon success. More mature organisations will adopt Zero Trust, and their success will build confidence in others. Organisations will build, refine and share best practices for implementing a Zero Trust model, providing practical guidance that will drive adoption and improve results.”

Bryan Patton, principal strategic systems consultant, Quest

4: Business may choose alternative IT infrastructure models

“Organisations are being told to be more efficient with power consumption, and it’s not just a sustainability issue. While reducing carbon footprint and going green is commendable and an increased point of consideration for potential customers, companies are feeling the impact of oversized power consumption against their bottom line when it comes to cloud usage.

“The cloud is built for speed and performance, not for economy when it comes to cost and power, leaving companies to consider how tasks they’re currently pushing to cloud might be handled elsewhere more efficiently and economically.”

Wendy Pfeiffer, CIO, Nutanix

“As we move into 2023 and beyond, companies will finally start to plan for true hybrid cloud. And they’ll begin integrating the cloud services and legacy infrastructure teams. However, skill shortages will continue to be a challenge. Employees who have the needed skillset to build serverless and cloud native infrastructures are rare. And if they are lucky enough to find them, they’ll have to pay a lot to convince them to leave their company.”

Prashant Ketkar, CTO at Alludo 

5: Firms will make knowledge management migration a priority

“Since the pandemic, adoption of a software as a service model for business-critical systems has become a major priority for most organisations. Cloud technology has proven its mettle, with number one perceived issue previously preventing firms from adopting the technology – i.e., data security – fading away. Firms that were already in the cloud, or were able to transition to the cloud quickly during the pandemic, experienced far lesser operational issues.

“As a result, with firms now truly adopting a cloud-first and mobile-first IT strategy – and especially for document management in a decentralised working environment – adopting a similar approach for knowledge management will be among the key initiatives for this function in 2023. This is because an on-premises knowledge management system with the document management solution in the cloud will greatly diminish the value of the KM function for the firms.”

Javier García, chief technical officer at Lexsoft Systems