The cloud has driven technology to places that seemed inconceivable just a few years ago. How will it continue to transform business?
Many people will still remember a time when ‘the cloud’ was still an unusual term that the majority of people had trouble grasping as a concept. In just a few years, however, it has become a standard term in the public lexicon, and a hot topic in the business world. Organisations worldwide are investing more money than even into the cloud, as leaders and tech experts all agree that technology drives business success, and the cloud drives technological success. We discussed this with some London IT support companies with experience using the cloud. Everyone we spoke to stated that they were very intrigued to see where cloud computing goes next, and what is likely to become a trend this year.
So, what are some of the predicted cloud computing trends in 2023?
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the Cloud
Investment and utilization of AI and ML in business has grown exponentially in the last few years, and this is largely due to it being offers through cloud services. As many businesses do not have the resources to setup AI operations from scratch, their best option is to access it from cloud environments. However, it is also predicted that AI and ML will be utilized increasingly in the backend of the cloud – in other words, AI and Machine Learning could soon be powering the majority of cloud computing services.
When you consider the complicated nature of running a cloud – from managing distributed storage networks, to regulating power and resources within datacentres – it makes sense that AI, which has already shown vast potential in areas like automation and the Internet of Things (IoT), could soon be utilized this way en masse.
Cloud Resilience
For a long time there have been people questioning the security of cloud environments. For the most part, cloud computing has proven to be more than secure enough for most organisations – for example, we spoke with companies providing IT support for Charities, Schools, Hospitals, and many other organisations working with sensitive data, and they all confirmed that they have successfully implemented the cloud for secure and compliant organisations.
With all of this said, the cyber security industry is never at a standstill; and as the popularity of cloud computing is only expected to grow, the investment in cloud security and resilience is only predicted to reach new heights.
Multicloud
If one cloud ecosystem can work wonders for an organisation, imagine what multiple ecosystems could enable organisations to do. Multicloud generally refers to the use of multiple public cloud services from multiple different cloud providers (such as Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure).
There are a number of benefits to this type of approach. It offers both flexibility and redundancy – e.g. organisations can pick the best technologies of each vendor they use, and insulate themselves against issue relating to vendor issues (such as power outages).
Hybrid Cloud
Though similar in name, hybrid cloud is not the same as multicloud. It is in fact the use of public cloud services, private cloud services, and on-premise infrastructure in combination with one another. A hybrid cloud environment could be as basic as Office 365 companies that use software-as-a-service in conjunction with on-premise server infrastructure – but it is typically more complex than that.
This type of approach has been around for a while now, but according to IT experts, it is transforming in a few key ways. First of all, hybrid cloud infrastructures are becoming much more flexible – it used to be that public clouds run exclusively within vendor datacentres, and private clouds were ran exclusively on-premises. But with solutions like virtual private clouds, and third-party infrastructure providers, organisations have more flexibility around building their own private cloud. This in turn means hybrid cloud infrastructure is more accessible and more customizable than it ever used to be.
