Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024. Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Application Modernization and Hybrid Cloud will Become Intertwined Priorities
By Kyle Charlet, IBM Fellow, CTO for IBM Z Software
Throughout the last five years, technologists have experienced a significant transition from pure cloud migration toward hybrid and multi-cloud adoption. The COVID-19 pandemic and other global pressures accelerated this transition and demanded that more businesses digitize their products and services and that they do so as fast as possible. This became such a major priority for businesses that an overwhelming 97% of organizations now report being on more than one cloud.
This year, we have seen organizations further reorient and reconsider their budgets and priorities to make their current cloud spend work best for their unique needs. In fact, according to a recent Flexera “State of the Cloud” report, which examined cloud computing trends and statistics, 62% of IT leaders and decision makers said that optimizing their existing use of cloud was a top priority for them in 2023. Every organization must understand the uniqueness of their business processes and applications to develop a workload placement strategy and best understand which data and applications should reside in which environment – whether that be on prem or in the cloud. Heading into 2024, we predict the road ahead will be paved with the building blocks of hybrid cloud, application modernization and data management.
The Interoperability of On-Prem and Cloud will be a critical focus in 2024
With such a high percentage of IT leaders looking to optimize their cloud spend, it’s no surprise that, separately, a recent survey of 2,000 Java users found that 95% said they are taking steps to lower their cloud costs, including right-sizing resources (48%) or repatriating some compute resources from the public cloud back on-premises (33%). This is an example of a larger pattern we see around technologists looking for ways to cut down on costs while still managing increasingly complex business needs using existing resources.
As organizations face this growing pressure to compete in today’s market and to better deliver customer value, the interoperability between on-prem and cloud promises to be a critical focus area in 2024. We can expect to see a noticeable uptick in the prioritization of interoperability in hybrid cloud environments and investments in application modernization as a tool toward delivering better value. With effective interoperability, organizations can leverage their business and data services where they currently exist throughout the broader ecosystem. Together, hybrid cloud and application modernization allow businesses to go beyond their existing mainframe investments and use them to improve their overall hybrid cloud strategy. This enables businesses to lean on services hosted on the mainframe so they can focus on building effective digital experiences or augmenting with new value-adds from the cloud. For IT and business leadership, greater interoperability can help not only identify new areas for investment but help them make the most of the investments they already have in place.
Proliferation of AI will require intentional data and modernization strategies
Similar to the shifts in hybrid cloud adoption, the unmistakable impact, consideration and adoption of AI technologies will require organizations to be much more intentional about their data and modernization strategies heading into 2024. Prior to building applications and deploying AI, it’s imperative that IT leaders take the time to understand several key elements about their data: where it currently lives, where it should live from a regulatory perspective, where it is most secure, and how it creates dependencies in their applications. Within the context of applications, AI is making it significantly easier to modernize them and continue to leverage application data across the enterprise. In order to lay the best foundation for a successful modernization project, there is a need for organizations to understand where their data resides before critical decisions can be made about access, management and control of data across silos.
With 2024 just around the corner, it’s essential to create a holistic hybrid strategy that manages and meets businesses’ unique needs around security, data latency, and performance. As IT leaders consider priorities for the new year, this hybrid-by-design approach will not only enable them to optimize current cloud spend, but also help them continue making the right choices for their IT investments for many years to come.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kyle Charlet is an IBM Fellow and the CTO for IBM Z Software. Kyle leads the z/OS application modernization and hybrid cloud strategies, including all layers of the Z software stack. He works across IBM, Red Hat, and our hyperscaler partners to continue transforming the z/OS platform into a cloud-native, platform-as-a-service experience. He leads the Z generative AI approach to infuse Ansible with AI as well as leveraging AI in support of application modernization.
