Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Cloud Optimization and Automation Drive IT Agenda in 2023
By Jared Cheney, Vice President of Services at SoftwareONE North America
The future of technology in the workplace has lived in limbo as of late, bouncing between the perils of a global pandemic, new paradigms on remote work, and economic headwinds rattling even the most prominent players. Modern IT departments are confronted with empowering and securing a hybrid workforce of unprecedented scale, which at its onset, was deployed at lightspeed.
The rush to hybrid work, despite happening nearly three years ago, led to patchwork and outdated IT infrastructures that still leave residual negative impacts on the workplace. A recent survey found that 93% of organizations whose IT setups have patchwork elements suffer from its adverse effects: increased security vulnerabilities, reduced productivity, and wasted budget.
Looking ahead into 2023, economic headwinds are setting the stage for an efficiency-driven agenda for IT and business leaders.
Cloud usage, with little governance and outdated IT infrastructures, are two of the most critical challenges of an organization’s modern technology ecosystem. They drive up costs, increase vulnerabilities, and magnify inefficiencies. Both challenges should be top-of-mind for IT professionals looking to find efficiencies, optimizations, and salvaged budgets in 2023.
Cloud Usage Transparency: Why FinOps Culture and Governance are Keys to Optimization and Efficiencies in 2023
Reliance on the cloud continues to grow, and with that comes a significant investment. Recessionary fears and an overall priority on spend optimization are driving the growth of FinOps. FinOps is a cloud financial management practice that combines IT, finance, engineering, product developers, and IT asset management (ITAM) teams to align on cloud usage and spending goals.
Cloud adoption and usage climbed in 2022, which presents an opportunity in 2023 for organizations to take more control of their cloud spend. As the cloud environment grows more complex, so does the risk of overspending on cloud usage. That’s why organizations and IT leaders must prioritize developing a transparent culture-identifying internal systems and processes for finance, marketing, IT, and every department in between to be aligned and held accountable for cloud usage and spend.
With a culture of transparency, organizations unlock the potential for better collaboration, visibility, and ultimately an opportunity to see where exactly it’s possible to cut unnecessary spending and invest in more valuable tools and services.
Automating ITOps Unlocks the Potential for Innovation and Disruption
In 2023, IT leaders should consider investing in automation as much as possible, especially provisioning infrastructure to drive efficiencies and better equip their teams for productivity. Many areas within the modern organization have historically not appeared to be lacking in optimization. Existing IT infrastructures for department-level activities worked fine, and people within those departments could get their jobs done.
Why fix what’s not broken, right?
The reality is that organizations and departments set themselves up for stagnancy by operating on a tech stack that is not regularly updated or that contains technology that does not work together cohesively. This creates a technical debt that the organization must cover sooner or later. The new year and the years to follow are setting a new standard as far as demand for urgency and efficiency levels go, so the “set it and forget it” mindset only disservices these organizations.
However, organizations will be equipped to drive drastically improved outcomes with a constant pulse on ways to improve and automate processes and systems that work together vs. on their own. As it stands, most organizations simply don’t understand the possibilities of automation. By making it a priority to reflect inward on current processes and systems, organizations will undoubtedly uncover quick wins that can drive return and utilization of their IT spend, delivering outcomes they never even considered.
From a broad perspective, containers and serverless architectures (when managed effectively) allow IT to be more effective and efficient and enjoy more consistency by using the same technology and framework across different environments. With these architectures, users can deploy and rapidly connect to other datasets without worrying about infrastructure, security, and integration.
What Lies Ahead in 2023 and Beyond
Over the last few years, businesses have focused on adopting cloud infrastructures and evolving technology to keep up with the pace of modern business needs. By taking the time to optimize cloud spend and invest in automation, organizations will be set up to overcome economic headwinds. Beyond the current macroeconomic environment, with FinOps and automation, 2023 has the potential to be a momentous year for innovation and disruption.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jared Cheney is the Vice President of Services in North America at SoftwareONE, a leading global provider of end-to-end software and cloud technology solutions. He is a seasoned and solutions-oriented technology executive with more than 20 years of experience in global strategy, technology innovation, operations, IT infrastructure, information systems, and support services for Fortune 500 companies. He also has experience in telecommunications, non-profit, and government industries.
He joined SoftwareONE in 2017, where he previously worked at Atmosera, an IT services and consulting company specializing in Microsoft Azure migrations, management, and optimization solutions. He has previously served roles at FCR, an outsourcing and offshore consulting company, and Xerox, a global company known for its print and digital document products and services.
Cheney has a strong background in managing large IT infrastructure transformation programs, public cloud migrations, data center buildouts, telecommunications, and network projects in complex, dynamic environments. He has extensive experience in accountability for profit and loss (P&L) and helping technology teams build, run, and manage complex global IT infrastructure.
He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Portland State University in business administration.
