Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
4 Predictions That Will Impact the Cloud and Infrastructure Market in 2023
By Lior Koriat, CEO of Quali
If there’s one thing everyone in the SaaS industry understands, it’s that technology never sits still.
In recent years, the shift to DevOps has given rise to a proliferation of new tools that have vastly improved the speed at which businesses can deliver new software and update existing applications. With companies becoming increasingly dependent on digital services, hence dependent on infrastructure, many are realizing that infrastructure automation will gain them a competitive advantage in today’s economic landscape. However, that gives rise to governance, compliance and cost control requirements without slowing innovation.
Below, I outline my top trends and technology predictions that will impact and support the cloud and infrastructure market in 2023.
Prediction 1: The rate of innovation around new technology will drive greater investment in infrastructure automation and the search for tools to manage the plethora of automation assets
The rate of tech innovation and evolution is significantly higher today, creating complexity across technology stacks, applications and infrastructures. This trend means environments will consist of a greater number of technologies that need to be governed and controlled and, ultimately, require more automation. As DevOps and infrastructure teams continue to invest in toolsets geared toward supporting the development process, organizations will be challenged by fragmentation leading to less visibility and control of development and operations. To manage this in the year ahead, there will be an increased demand for infrastructure automation technology to manage the overabundance of infrastructure environments and enable accessibility and productivity across the entire organization.
Prediction 2: Consumers of the Cloud: The focus will shift from producers of automation assets (under IT / DevOps) to consumers (developers), so there will be a need to apply solutions like a control plane to bridge the gap between the two and seamlessly blend them with developer tools like IDPs and IDEs
Everything that helps bring environments to the consumers of cloud infrastructure will win the attention of the market. The number of cloud consumers (i.e., developers, testers, SREs, etc.) is exponentially growing in the world, while the cloud becomes more complex, and organizations are trying to be in greater control over cloud security and spend. The market is also realizing that not every person who can code has the requisite skills to produce cloud automation because of the rising skillset bar and the targeted expertise necessary to safely create cloud automation assets. This creates an infrastructure access gap between consumers of the cloud and producers of automation assets. Solving the infrastructure gap is going to consume the time and minds of DevOps and IT teams, providing governed self-service access that is plugged into the daily life of the developer, our modern-day consumers of the cloud.
The need to strike a balance between centralized (governed IT) and decentralized access to the cloud (potentially unchecked velocity) will be a challenge which organizations need to address in 2023. With cloud adoption continuing to grow, companies will need to come to terms with control vs. velocity, finding the right balance between developers’ freedom to create in the cloud and IT/DevOps organizations’ need to govern access to it for cost and security reasons. To do so, cloud automation and access strategies need to be properly managed and configured to support business needs while also being mindful of consumption and mounting costs.
Prediction 3: The recessionary environment will separate category leaders from laggards
Times of economic uncertainty often create a clear distinction between category leaders and laggards-particularly in crowded markets with a wide range of players. By this time next year, we’ll see a shift in the competitive landscape across a range of industries resulting in less competition and the emergence of dominant industry players.
Prediction 4: Technology consolidation – architecture tools to collaboration apps
Organizations will look for consolidation across the board-from architecture tools to collaboration apps-to reduce spend, improve productivity, and closely examine and prioritize the “must haves” of the organization. This will also result in a decrease in tech stack investment.
Bottom line: As organizations scale application development to keep pace with modern technology and face an increasingly competitive market, they’re experiencing real growing pains related to the infrastructure they need and the associated challenges around access, cost and security. With this, the demand for infrastructure automation is increasing. Ultimately, infrastructure automation enables organizations to increase productivity, speed and performance without sacrificing control, infrastructure costs, security or compliance standards.
##
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lior Koriat, CEO of Quali
Lior Koriat has served as Quali’s CEO since November 2008. As a former pilot with degrees in computer science and economics, Lior has 25 years of experience in system and software engineering in the fields of automation, infrastructure, communication, real-time and embedded applications, robotics, and avionics.
