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2024 Cloud Predictions: Spend, AI and Multi-Cloud

By Jason Bright, Product Marketing Manager, Hyland

AI adoption is dominating nearly every industry as we head into 2024, but that doesn’t mean the cloud will fall to the wayside. In fact, AI will play a significant role in the cloud and help combat issues such as cloud waste and workforce management while driving innovation in the cloud and increasing the popularity of multi-cloud.

Cloud spend will remain top-of-mind

Cloud spend and cloud waste were two big themes this past year and while greater cost certainty and less waste would obviously be preferable, I assume those themes will remain top of mind, especially knowing businesses are navigating new AI demand and exploration — and how that impacts existing cloud infrastructure. Hyperscalers are working to accommodate these needs, but the adoption of AI is already a pain point for many businesses amid innovation projects solely focused on moving away from legacy infrastructure.

Organizations will continue to closely monitor cloud spend and optimize where possible. Third-party tools that assist with cost optimization will likely grow in popularity as more organizations implement them. The focus of the optimizations will likely be on “low value” cloud services such as general hosting, storage and for day-to-day IT operations. Many IaaS providers include standard tools but advanced third-party tools can provide better intelligence, work across cloud providers and are more objective when reigning in spend areas that tend to run out of control if not closely monitored.

AI upgrades will boost efficiency amid talent struggles

AI and ML will continue to grow, but the technology can be difficult to implement due to its newness. The large IaaS providers are racing to buy the hardware (GPUs) to enable it, but the tools to build your own AI/ML solutions on cloud platforms are still focused at the developer level. If a business has a problem they want to solve with AI, it would have to employ developers to build the tools for internal use. Cloud certainly accelerates this but the talent is expensive and scarce as the industry faces ongoing challenges with skills gaps.

Conversely, businesses can look to vendors who are using AI tools in more consumable ways and integrate them into the existing product. That AI upgrade to an existing product or a new product is an easier lift to garner the benefits of AI. We can expect businesses to follow a similar approach as IBM by leveraging partnerships and integrations to their generative AI solutions to customize their AI/ML solutions.

Multi-cloud popularity will increase as AI tools evolve

I wouldn’t expect a huge increase in hybrid deployments but instead typical cloud infrastructure and resource optimization. Multi cloud will likely increase as AWS (Bedrock) customers may look to Azure’s (Bing/ChatGPT) or Google’s (Bard) offerings and vice versa. I think AI offerings and capabilities, such as ease of development or implementation, will drive organizations to other platforms if their primary platform does not have exactly what they need.

Organizations will focus on vendors and partners who are accelerating the adoption of AI technologies, and doing so will drive them to be less loyal to their primary cloud provider and go where the technology they need is available. For example, if AWS Bedrock isn’t sufficient, they won’t move their entire cloud footprint to Azure and Google Cloud Platform — but they will move the appropriate pieces of their technology stack to satisfy the need. The cloud vendor that makes development and implementation the easiest, fastest and most robust will win. Cost will likely not be too much of a factor since the potential value of the technology is too great. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jason Bright is the product marketing manager at Hyland where he advises organizations on cloud capabilities and applicability to their enterprise needs. Jason has more than 15 years of experience in defining, launching and marketing hardware and software solutions. Having previously worked at Lexmark, he also has a strong background in developing strategy through analysis of customer pain points, competitive landscape and technology opportunities.