What’s coming for cloud computing in 2023

The days before Thanksgiving, I receive proposals from public relations companies who want to tell me their clients’ forecasts for the next year. I’m still surprised by some of the naivety I still see out there, even after 15 years of cloud computing being a real force in computing. By now, most technology managers should know more.

From my perspective, I don’t think next year will bring tactical changes in technology, like more AI in the cloud or a focus on zero-trust security. It will look more like a strategic trend or a larger solution. Maybe something that’s been a long time coming rather than just throwing tech and money at problems.

If you think back a few years back, some of the writing was on the wall in terms of this emerging pattern, but something changed the way we think. That something was a global pandemic, which meant most companies were rushing to the newfound security of public cloud providers as quickly as they could. Just look at the explosive growth of cloud computing since 2019.

This rapid rise and shift to public cloud providers led to some of the business issues we see today. This includes a lack of return on investment from cloud deployments, primarily caused by inadequate planning, over-complexity, and a lack of discipline in strategic cloud cost management, which means there is no monitoring of finops.

These questions seem to be at the center of our concerns as we approach 2023. This will start a new strategic trend that perhaps should have started several years ago.

The problem that most companies have with cloud computing today is that there are too many cloud services that need to be managed and tracked. Again, this leads to too much complexity, mainly due to the rise of multicloud.

Businesses often move to multicloud on purpose, but far more often, multicloud simply happens when businesses scramble to find and leverage the best cloud services without knowing what to do with those services post-deployment. This leads to too much cost and not enough value return for the business. Old story.

This cloud complexity problem can be solved through the strategic use of technology and better approaches to managing complexity. Most important is to reduce redundancy by using a common technology layer on top of public cloud providers as well as any legacy or edge-based systems.

This layer includes common services, such as single security system, single data management system, finops, single cloud operating system, etc. We’re not trying to solve every problem in every public cloud provider’s “walled garden”; this technology should exist within a common layer, called supercloud or metacloud.

This strategic cloud trend not only solves complexity issues by leveraging common services and a common control plane, it also helps contain cloud costs with a common finops layer that manages cost monitoring, cost governance and cloud cost optimization.

If we are able to solve both the complexity issues and the cost management issues of the cloud, then the ROI should take care of itself. Cloud services and new cloud-based applications that we have been working on for the past three years will be much more optimized and will therefore be able to generate much more value for the company.

I have been talking about some aspects of this in this blog for some time. What’s new?

The change in 2023 will be real planning and execution, not just a discussion of concepts. Most businesses will have to go slower to go faster. Putting in place the strategies, funding, and plans to finally get organized in the cloud means better and more strategic use of cloud computing technology.

If that doesn’t happen, you can expect boardrooms and executive types to lose patience with the cloud-related spend that’s taken place over the last seven to ten years without much. something to prove. It’s time to solve this problem and chart a new strategic path for your business. I suspect this will be a new trend that most didn’t see coming.