Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024. Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
3 Cloud Computing Trends Enterprises Should Know
By Amitabh Sinha, CEO of Workspot
The IT landscape has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years, a trend that won’t be slowing down any time soon. Organizations are continuing to expand at an accelerated pace and scale globally. They must find new ways to overcome the challenge of balancing employee satisfaction, desktop and data security, and cost efficiency.
There is no doubt that the companies that figure out how to master all these trends will come out on top in 2024. So, let’s delve deeper into the key trends and challenges that I anticipate will shape the IT landscape in 2024.
Hybrid multi-cloud architecture will be the new “datacenter”
Multi-cloud adoption has accelerated in the past few years. In early 2023, a survey suggested that 98% of companies on the public cloud already have plans to switch to a multi-cloud infrastructure. At the same time, organizations have also been increasingly relying on hybrid cloud architecture for flexibility and cost-saving purposes in the hybrid work era.
In the coming year, we will see an influx of companies opting for hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. The difference with the previous years is evident, as they will aim to seamlessly combine these two approaches. Companies will be enjoying the best of both worlds: the flexibility and scalability of multi-cloud architecture coupled with sovereignty and control over their data and applications offered by the hybrid cloud – in-country, across regions, intra- or inter-country or around the world.
80% of organizations will seek out cloud-native VDI
For the past two decades, organizations heavily leaned on vendors – like Citrix and VMware – for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). However, both these companies are going through changes in their business ownership and strategy, creating major uncertainties for customers and partners alike. The reality is that while these traditional vendors worked well when the workplace was a single location, as the world evolved into a new widely distributed digital era, they are no longer capable of fully servicing the new hybrid and multi-cloud strategies organizations are increasingly adopting. In 2024, we can expect a significant increase in enterprises opting for modern, cloud-native VDI solutions that work anytime and anywhere versus their costly and complex legacy VDI.
The shift comes at a time when any type of downtime can cost organizations billions of dollars. Cloud-native VDI will become the dominant desktop virtualization platform and organizations will find themselves saving considerable time and money that was otherwise spent deploying and maintaining legacy infrastructure.
IT teams will be able to spend more time doing work that matters, while employees will be far more productive and satisfied with their desktop, turning IT from a traditional necessary cost into a profit center.
The increasing adoption of cybersecurity tools will exacerbate the end-user experience
Zero-day patches, security tool updates, application updates, driver updates, and more, are compromising the user experience every day. Nearly 75% of CISOs say that employees in their organization are frustrated with current security policies that are taking a toll on their productivity. As companies continue implementing these layered security protocols to safeguard their systems, users will increasingly encounter friction in their daily work interactions.
This growing user dissatisfaction could pose a significant risk to organizations’ employee retention, and as we move into 2024, we will see workers be more reluctant to tolerate cumbersome software updates, patches, and security measures that hinder their ability to work efficiently. Organizations will need to take a holistic approach that does not compromise security nor the end-user experience to keep their employees happy. This requires tools that help them monitor end-user satisfaction and productivity, and understand the impact of frequent, disruptive updates on their users.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amitabh Sinha is co-founder and CEO of Workspot. He has more than 20 years of experience across enterprise software, end user computing, mobile, and database software.
Prior to Workspot, Amitabh was the General Manager for Enterprise Desktops and Apps at Citrix Systems. In his five years at Citrix, Amitabh was VP Product Management for XenDesktop and VP Engineering for the Advanced Solutions Group.
Amitabh has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
