What’s next for the Cloud? Industry trends to look out for

With remote and hybrid working now more-or-less mandatory, companies have had to rapidly accelerate their transition to the cloud. Cloud-based applications have become essential for supporting workers and retaining customers, especially during turbulent economic times.

According to Gartner, global spend on cloud computing looks set to grow by over 20%, so it's a sector well worth keeping an eye on. Given that, let’s take a look at some key cloud computing trends for 2023.

Investment in cloud apps will continue to grow

Remote and hybrid work models look set to stay, and they need cloud resources to fuel them. Investment in high quality tools for communication, project management, videoconferencing, file sharing, and more, will be a priority for businesses to promote productive collaboration, at any and all locations.

Cloud will be seen as a sustainable solution

Because cloud service providers aggregate resources across multiple customers, they can achieve economies of scale that small companies cannot. It’s more efficient to run apps and workloads in the cloud, as opposed to running them onsite, and running a large data centre in the cloud creates a smaller carbon footprint than running an on-premises data centre.

Growth of the ‘smart cloud’

AI clouds are now everywhere in our daily lives: Think intelligent assistants like Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant. Cloud-based AI is helping to power new technologies, from self-driving cars to medical diagnostic tools.

And the cloud AI market is expected to grow much further, by over 20% by 2027, as organisations look to increase their operational efficiency and boost innovation. The cloud is the perfect place to get the most out of AI investment. It gives companies access to extra large volumes of data, without the traditional difficulties of having to store data onsite on business servers.

Having access to these huge data sets makes AI in the cloud more agile and reduces the risks of errors. From automating repetitive tasks, to improving decision-making and productivity, smart clouds can also aid integration between DevOps teams.

Increased security concerns

As companies get ever more independent on the cloud, there’s been a sharp rise in security concerns. Searches for the term “cloud computing security” have grown by 120% over the last few years. Cloud breaches are becoming more common, which is why investment into cloud security is now a top priority for many businesses.

With many organisations operating in multiple cloud environments they may need to oversee security across several clouds, making things even more difficult. Inconsistent application security across different platforms could become a big problem for the unprepared.

For the cloud to become even more successful whilst remaining secure, companies need to have employees with the right skills. The current shortage of qualified IT staff is likely to have big repercussions going forward.

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