Top 3 Cloud Trends in 2023
As the world progresses toward digital transformation, cloud computing is becoming increasingly crucial for businesses. In 2023, cloud computing will be more critical than ever, and several trends will shape the industry.
With the growing popularity of cloud computing, businesses can operate more efficiently and effectively. Cloud technology allows you to access your data from any device, anytime, and location. This flexibility makes it easier for businesses to grow their customer base by reaching consumers directly through subscription-based commerce or direct-to-consumer models.
This article will discuss practical recommendations around three of the most important trends in cloud computing for 2023: Multi/Hybrid cloud, cloud security and resilience, and serverless computing.
Trend 1: Multi/Hybrid Cloud
Understanding Multi/Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud manages and controls an environment that combines multiple cloud providers and on-premises infrastructure. In a hybrid cloud, you monitor performance, ensure security and optimize cost by monitoring usage patterns across all systems, including your servers and those run by third parties like Amazon Web Services.
A Multi/Hybrid cloud model also allows you to integrate different environments (for instance, blending internal data center resources with remote services like Salesforce) and store customer information in one central location.
According to Gartner, in 2023, worldwide public cloud spending will grow 20.7% to $591.8 billion, up from $490.3 billion in 2022. This data shows that businesses are increasingly turning to Multi/Hybrid cloud strategies to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing.
Our Top Multi/Hybrid Cloud Recommendations
Effective hybrid cloud management requires specialized skills and tools to handle the complexity of multiple environments.
If you are planning on implementing a Multi/Hybrid cloud strategy, you should consider the following:
Integration: Make sure that various applications and systems communicate seamlessly across environments.
Security: As data and application functionality cross between the public cloud and on-premises or between clouds, robust security requires encryption and access control monitoring to prevent data breaches and unauthorized access.
Cost Management: Hybrid cloud environments can be costly, with expenses arising from managing multiple environments, data transfer costs, and licensing fees. Consider cost optimization and plan and build the environment, taking into account the technical strategy and budget restrictions. Remember to consider the data transfer costs, which are the most intangible cost as they depend on the application or data query flow.
Trend 2: Cloud Security and Resilience
Understanding Cloud Security
Understandably, cloud security is one of the biggest concerns and questions we get.
The first thing to understand is that security is not ONLY your responsibility. Every cloud provider will address the basics. They all acknowledge the need for ever-evolving security due to multiple companies being attacked or held hostage due to security breaches.
Therefore, Cloud providers are taking responsibility by implementing enhanced security measures. Among them are multi-factor authentication, encryption, data loss prevention (DLP), intrusion detection systems (IDS), and other tools that can help protect against ransomware attacks or insider threats.
They're also streamlining operations by automating tasks such as patching software updates, so IT teams don't have to spend time managing those processes manually anymore.
The most common question I hear about security is, "Even with basic cloud provider security in place, what should our company do to improve the out-of-the-box cloud security?”
Our Top Cloud Security Recommendations
Use multi-layered application security, enhanced encryption, and role base access to your cloud or systems.
Implement continuous monitoring and threat detection.
Ensure compliance with relevant regulations and standards (HIPAA, PCI, GDPR, etc.)
Provide security awareness training to your employees; sometimes, the weak link is not bugs or backdoors in your technology – it’s your people.
Understanding Cloud Resilience
Cloud resilience is an essential aspect of cloud computing that ensures the systems remain intact and available during disruptions. This might mean ensuring that cloud-based applications can continue to operate despite hardware failures, data center outages, or network issues. Another example is ensuring that cloud-based data and services remain available and secure during cyber-attacks and natural disasters.
Cloud resilience also helps ensure business continuity during disruptions like power outages or hardware failures by allowing critical applications and data to remain available and accessible. It can also help organizations meet regulatory compliance requirements by ensuring that data remains available and secure during disruptions.
Our Top Cloud Resilience Recommendations
Use a multi-region or multi-cloud approach to reduce the risk of downtime, which involves replicating data and applications across multiple regions or clouds to minimize the impact of a potential outage.
Implement disaster recovery and business continuity plans. You should include identifying critical applications and data, testing backup and recovery procedures, and developing a cadence to regular plans.
Use automation to reduce the risk of human error. This can include automating backup and recovery processes and implementing automated failover and load balancing.
Conduct regular testing and validation of cloud resilience. This ensures that cloud resilience measures are working as expected and helps you identify and address potential issues.
Trend 3: Serverless Computing
Understanding Serverless Computing
Serverless computing is an application delivery model in which applications are deployed and scaled without concern about the underlying infrastructure.
Serverless computing allows businesses to scale their applications quickly and easily, as they can add more resources as needed. This makes serverless computing an attractive option for companies looking to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing.
Let’s use an example of a company with different applications for various functions and departments, and some of them are old systems patched up with electrical tape and strawberry gum. In particular, this company has a monolithic accounting application that desperately needs to be optimized. The application is becoming a bottleneck for the billing process because it disrupts business when it goes down, and it's a huge effort to update every time there's a new version released. Our example company needs a faster, more reliable model to increase uptime and make patches and upgrades easier.
Serverless computing is a good solution in this case because it allows companies to deliver a solution that is not only reliable but also modular, and each module can adapt to the corresponding demand. An application like this needs the reliability of microservices and event-driven applications.
Microservices and event-driven applications provide reliability as they are:
Scalable: Add or remove services as needed and on demand.
Resilient: If one service fails, it won’t bring down the entire application.
Fault-tolerant: Designed to handle failures gracefully and recover quickly from any issues.
Decentralized: Each service operates independently without relying on other services.
Microservices and event-driven architectures enable developers to make changes to applications quickly and easily. This means that new features can be added or removed without affecting the rest of the application. This agility makes the system more reliable because it can adapt to changing requirements and needs.
The Bottom Line
The cloud computing industry is evolving rapidly, and businesses must stay ahead of the curve to remain competitive. The top three cloud trends to watch for in 2023 offer businesses a wide range of benefits, efficiency, scalability, and cost savings.
Businesses embracing these cloud trends will be well-positioned to drive innovation, improve efficiency, and stay competitive in the rapidly evolving world of cloud computing.
Resources
Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2023
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