More and more companies are looking to cloud databases to offload an abundance of data and analytics. This upcoming year looks no different as organizations continue to adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Here tech leaders share their predictions for cloud in 2023.
- Cloud has clearly succeeded—but it still has a long way to go: Cloud makes up for roughly 7-8% of total infrastructure consumption worldwide, and it is markedly more efficient than its alternatives—but, its potential vastly outweighs its current status. Cloud has plenty of room to grow, and can reach 10x or greater than where it's sitting now. Look for continued expansion and for that 7-8% number to increase.—Miles Ward, chief technology officer, SADA
- Multi cloud adoption is accelerating as organizations’ data strategies evolve: As more organizations evolve their data strategies in 2023, multi-cloud data infrastructure adoption is accelerating and will become the new norm. Organizations are expected to embrace this trend and ensure their cloud applications are portable regardless of cloud provider. More organizations will transform cloud computing into an undifferentiated commodity and ease application burden. They aim to realize flexibility, security, and agility while simplifying their operations.—Haoyuan Li, founder and CEO of Alluxio
- The appetite for multi-cloud adoption will continue to grow in 2023: In terms of adopting a multi-cloud environment, most enterprise-level organizations are in the ambitious early stages of migration and still have a lot of data that needs to be moved. There are some “born in the cloud” enterprises that are fully integrated and working well, but over the next year, we expect the adoption of multi-cloud services to continue to rise as a majority of business leaders look to modernize their data architecture. Since more organizations have shifted away from a single cloud solution when it comes to implementing their data strategies, we’ll see many business leaders faced with the challenge of deciding which service providers they actually want to mix and match. To help make those important decisions, we expect business leaders to take a “best of breed” strategic approach that looks at individual organizational use cases. Choosing different cloud partners and services to handle different business needs has become a reality today. It does require a comprehensive data security governance approach to address the increasing challenges of a multi-cloud data strategy.—Balaji Ganesan, CEO, and co-founder of Privacera
- Cloud networking comes of age: Today, cloud networking is still in its relative infancy. Next year, we will see significant growth in the cloud networking market. Enterprises have invested more in the cloud, including accelerating multi-cloud deployments. For these businesses to get ROI from these disparate, cloud networks, they have to unify them. In 2023, networking incumbents like Cisco will ramp up their cloud offerings while startups in the space also see rising adoption. We’ll also see several major cloud networking acquisitions along the way. In the end, it’ll be the companies born in the cloud—the ones building solutions from scratch—that come out on top because of their ability to support limitless scalability.—Amir Khan, CEO and founder, Alkira
- The cloud data platform will emerge as the backend for a new set of MarTech tools: MarTech tools will undergo massive disruption in 2023. The Cloud Data Warehouse (CDW) unlocks a new world of data—powered by enterprise data strategies that provide incredibly accurate and complete views of the customer. These new architectures also bring other key benefits across governance, data science, and more. The MarTech category will start to fracture across those who align with this strategy and those who continue to rely on a range of point solutions or older marketing-focused clouds. The latter will find limited success within a dwindling population of enterprises who haven't made progress against their cloud data strategies. Applications that successfully adopt this strategy will need to not just be powered by a Cloud Data Warehouse - but will need to orient to it as the source of truth, with a set of integrated governance capabilities.—Simon Data CEO and co-founder Jason Davis
- Cloud’s impact on data pipelines: With more companies moving to the cloud, the use of data pipelines will accelerate over the next few years. In the past, many companies have managed their data streaming pipelines internally due to security and governance requirements, but now more businesses are looking to utilize the cloud due to its increased security and economic advantages. Entire regions that have traditionally lagged behind on trends occurring in EMEA or AMER regions, are now more enthusiastic about moving to the cloud and are taking on more opportunities to do so.—Danica Fine, senior developer advocate at Confluent
- Cloud will be the great innovation driver in an economic downturn: Companies that had adopted cloud prior to the COVID-19 pandemic fared better than those who hadn’t in terms of their ability to quickly pivot their business models and capitalize on new opportunities and revenue streams. The same will hold true in an economic downturn. Cloud adoption provides the quickest path to innovation and gives companies much more flexibility to run their businesses in hard times.—Kyndryl’s global cloud practice lead, Harish Grama
- Wider adoption of ERPs in the cloud: Two trends are emerging for 2023: increased use of enterprise ERP systems in medium-sized organizations and migration of more ERP systems to the cloud. Enterprises have been slow to move ERP systems to the cloud due to concerns about added cost, complexity and risk of downtime. However, as the use of advanced clustering software and added features in cloud computing have evolved, the cloud is becoming the de facto platform for ERP applications. Cloud-based ERP systems are now making ERP systems accessible and feasible for smaller organizations in a wider range of industries.—Cassius Rhue, VP of customer experience at SIOS Technology
- Continued cloud acceleration: Organizations will continue to accelerate cloud migration, spurring vendors to focus on improving their offerings and delivering comprehensive infrastructure support to compete. Customers are unlikely to switch providers unless the tools are too cumbersome to use or there is a significant increase in pricing. Therefore, competitive pricing and a seamless sign-on process will be important for providers who want to attract new clients. Given customers are increasingly valuing a try-before-you-buy approach, vendors offering 60-90-day trials or community editions of their products will likely fare better than others.—Preeti Lobo, practice director of business integration and automation at Apps Associates