Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023.  Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

What's to Come for the Cloud in 2023

By Rob Reinauer of IDERA Software

The cloud landscape looks dramatically different today than it did three years ago. Since 2020, cloud adoption rates have risen significantly as businesses leverage the flexibility and convenience of the cloud to power operations and connect disparate teams during the pandemic.

Now, the cloud has become baked into the modern business landscape, with no signs of turning back. This is largely due to the prevalence of remote and hybrid workplaces that rely on cloud services and apps to power collaboration, connection and productivity.

Since the cloud has become much more common in the business world, its tangible benefits are simply too convenient to give up. So, what comes next for the cloud? Here are my predictions for what we can expect in 2023.

Hybrid Work Will Accelerate Cloud Growth

While some companies are going back to in-office operations, a large number have permanently adopted hybrid or remote work in some capacity. At the same time, a fully remote approach isn't the right option for all companies. Plenty of workers can do their jobs from home, but there are occasions when in-person connection with customers and colleagues is necessary.

More than likely, a hybrid work model will emerge as the dominant approach-giving workers the flexibility to log on from home or come to the office as needed. With hybrid and remote work models here to stay, cloud use and adoption will only gain more steam in the year ahead.

Managing Multicloud Environments Remain a Challenge

Now that many organizations are leveraging cloud solutions, they might be facing a new and unexpected need: handling multicloud environments. This problem is especially common with mergers and acquisitions, which will continue to be prevalent in 2023. A company may have started working with one cloud provider, only to get acquired or merge with a business that has a different provider. For some period of time, they may be forced to juggle managing more than one environment.

Though some organizations choose a multicloud approach for strategic reasons, multicloud environments are hard to manage since they each have separate monitoring tools. Without a single pane of glass to monitor all cloud environments in one place, it becomes harder to stay on top of response times, alerts, uptime or storage usage. Individual monitoring tools in these different cloud environments are becoming increasingly impractical. Managing multicloud scenarios is likely to remain complicated as monitoring solutions evolve to streamline multicloud management.

Automation Will Continue to Drive Effectiveness

While operating with a multicloud approach can be less efficient than a unified approach, multicloud environments are even harder to wrangle without the help of automation. IT leaders won't be able to get very far without automated solutions that can keep tabs on all aspects of their environment. If multicloud environments continue to be common, automation will be a necessary component to make them manageable.

Automation lowers the need for highly skilled IT personnel. Machine-learning tools that leverage automation can "learn" from the cloud environment and basically configure themselves. By using these tools, complex systems become easier to run, which reduces the burden on IT staff. Instead of needing specialized personnel that understands performance numbers and CPU metrics, the tools can self-monitor and alert the user if there's a problem. There's a lot to gain from automation and companies are sure to leverage its potential at a greater scale going forward.

Migration Tools Will Remain Valuable

Over the past few decades, there's been strong demand for the ability to move data seamlessly from one place to another. We're working with larger volumes of data that have made it harder for one person to move without the help of migration software. It's particularly challenging to navigate a migration between two different cloud providers without the help of a purpose-built solution, especially when data reaches gigabyte and terabyte quantities.

For now, data migrations will still be complex. As a result, I wouldn't be surprised if companies increasingly turn to migration tools to help ensure their data loads are transferred seamlessly without a huge lift on behalf of MSPs or IT teams. Migrations have been a huge growth market over the last 20 years and it's going to continue to be a substantial growth market moving forward.

Authentication Will Become More Sophisticated

Increased reliance on the cloud has placed greater importance on security. Two-factor authentication has become the standard for most cloud-based accounts, a transition intended to boost account security. Token-based secure environments are also on the rise, decreasing reliance on usernames and passwords as an authentication method.

Though these measures are helpful in preventing security issues, I expect we'll see authentication measures continue to evolve in the coming year. As we've seen with Microsoft's move from basic authentication to modern authentication, companies are making required changes to decrease the probability of compromised accounts for end users. The transition hasn't been easy for everybody and it may take some modifications, but the end goal is clear - enhanced security for accounts.

In today's digital commerce landscape, for instance, there remains a significant amount of riskiness with online transactions. There's a clear need for a mechanism that can easily authenticate both a seller and a buyer-while protecting the identity of each party. We're not there just yet, but it won't be long before this technology becomes part of our digital experience.

As always, predictions aren't set in stone. If the past few years have taught us anything, it's to expect the unexpected. One thing remains clear: The cloud is strong and will remain a consistent part of our everyday lives for the foreseeable future.

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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.

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.

Prior to 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.