5 Cloud Trends To Watch In 2023

By Rob Reinauer, IDERA Software

It’s no secret the cloud environment has changed dramatically over the last few years, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic shifted how businesses operate. As we look forward to 2023, there are numerous trends and changes within the cloud space we can expect to see as systems continue to evolve, companies adopt new technologies and the shift to hybrid and remote work becomes permanent for many businesses.

Here are a few of the most prominent trends that are likely to emerge in the cloud space in 2023.

Cloud Adoption Will Continue As Remote Work Is Here To Stay

Many companies are still grappling with the changes brought by the pandemic, including permanently adopting hybrid and remote work. Although some companies have fully returned to in-office operations, it’s estimated that 25% of all North American jobs will be remote by the end of 2022.

Now more than ever, companies are capitalizing on the economic advantages of hiring qualified candidates from anywhere in the world. As a result, businesses need the right resources to accommodate disparate workforces, in turn causing cloud use and adoption to grow rapidly.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the growth of collaboration environments has exploded as workers communicate, collaborate, and share information across Microsoft Teams, Slack, and other platforms. With the hybrid work model emerging as the popular approach to daily work life, workers need the flexibility and reliability to access information and easily communicate with team members, whether they are in the office or at home.

To achieve this, even more, companies will adopt cloud technologies in 2023 to ensure workers can operate as productively as possible in the changing landscape of the professional world.

Authentication Systems Will Evolve

With the increase in remote and hybrid work and reliance on the cloud, security remains a top concern for companies. In fact, 54% of IT professionals say remote workers pose a greater security risk than traditional workers due to increased cybersecurity threats across multiple personal or public networks and different devices.

As we’ve seen recently, two-factor authentication has become the standard for most cloud-based accounts due to its intention to boost account security. In addition, token-based secure environments are becoming more popular, minimizing the widespread reliance on usernames and passwords as an authentication method.

For 2023, authentication measures will continue to evolve as companies search for new ways to authenticate users thoroughly in the most streamlined and secure manner. We’re already starting to see big names in tech change how they authenticate users.

For example, Microsoft’s move from basic authentication to modern authentication is intended to decrease the probability of compromised accounts for end users. Although the transition has been challenging for many and may require future modifications, the end goal is to increase security for all accounts.

Also, remember that thorough and user-friendly authentication methods are still needed in today’s digital landscape, where numerous threats remain with online transactions. We need authentication mechanisms that fully authenticate both a seller and buyer–while still protecting the identity of each party. We aren’t quite there yet, but I predict that these forms of authentication will be part of our daily lives sooner rather than later.

Multi-Cloud Environments Will Continue To Be A Challenge

With many organizations implementing the cloud into daily operations, they may likely be facing the new challenge of multi-cloud environments. This problem is particularly common during mergers and acquisitions, which are expected to continue to increase in 2023.

For example, a company could start working with a specific cloud provider, only to get acquired and merge with a new company that uses a different provider. As a result, the newly formed business may spend some time juggling more than one cloud environment. These multi-cloud environments are hard to manage since they each have different monitoring tools.

Without a single pane of glass to monitor all cloud environments, it becomes more difficult to track important metrics, including response times, alerts, uptime, or storage usage. Essentially, individual monitoring tools in different cloud environments have become increasingly impractical.

Managing multl-icloud environments will continue to be a challenge in 2023, leading many companies to turn to automation and machine-learning tools for support. With these tools, IT teams can monitor all aspects of their environment, making complex systems easier to run, monitor and control.

With machine-learning capabilities, automation tools can “learn” from the cloud environment and configure themselves. As a result, such tools can self-monitor and alert if an issue arises without needing specialized individuals who understand performance numbers and CPU metrics. Companies can’t have effective large multi-cloud environments without automation, making it a key tool many businesses will turn toward for support in 2023.

Migration Tools Will Still Be Sought-After

Approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes worth of data is generated each day, a number that is only continuing to rise. As a result of this rapid growth, companies require tools that enable them to seamlessly move large volumes of data from one place to another without overwhelming IT teams.

This process becomes increasingly more challenging when navigating the cloud space. Without the help of a purpose-built solution, it can be particularly hard to navigate a migration between two different cloud providers.

As a result, more companies will likely turn to migration tools in 2023 to help manage their large volumes of data. These solutions ensure that important data is efficiently transferred reliably and seamlessly without causing headaches and hassles for IT teams and MSPs.

Over the past 20 years, migrations have been a huge growth market—a trend that’s poised to continue for the foreseeable future.

Consolidation With Cloud-Based Technologies Amid Economic Headwinds

As talks of a potential recession loom in the background, many companies are evaluating their spending, which often means consolidation. It’s important that companies already have strategic plans in place before any economic upheaval. However, for those still trying to put this infrastructure in place, it’s better to do it now rather than later.

IT teams can sometimes be unaware of just how many applications they’re using, which can often result in duplicate applications and unnecessary spending. With cloud-based technologies, companies can do more with less and scale their operations while consolidating their applications.

Companies looking to optimize cloud spending should also consider migrating to more affordable solutions. With well-planned cloud migrations, the cost of total IT spending can be reduced by 15%. Companies must identify which systems to keep and which to consolidate to achieve this. Through this process, businesses can conserve the funds and resources they may need to get through an economic downturn.

Above all, companies should ensure they are running a “tight ship” from the very beginning and are prepared for any market challenges that come their way. As a result, they can face a relatively low impact during the challenging period and keep operations running as normal.

The Year Ahead

Of course, no one can fully predict the future. These past few years have shown us, time and time again, how unpredictable life can be—and how quickly things can change. Even so, 2023 is poised to be another strong year for the cloud, with plenty of breakthroughs, innovation, and adoption—not to mention a few surprises—across the industry in the year ahead.

About The Author

Rob Reinauer is currently the director of data products at IDERA in Austin, Texas. In this role, he leads an incredibly talented team of product managers driving the product features and technical decisions for the BiTitan MigrationWiz and Perspectium Cloud data migration services as well as the IDERA suite of SQL Management products. Before IDERA, Rob was the product unit director for the Microsoft SQL Server Engine Development organization, general manager of the SQL Systems Engineering organization, and system architect for the Microsoft Azure Data Warehouse development organization. Previous to Microsoft, Rob was CTO at Pervasive Software and chief architect for the IBM Personal Software Products Division.

About BitTitan

The BitTitan services utilize a worldwide, highly scalable, and redundant cloud infrastructure to provide several market share-leading Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings in multiple cloud data migration segments across: email, collaboration, On-Prem, and cloud drive stores as well as IT operations management.