Multicloud, Data Strategy & AI Commoditization: Trends for the Rest of 2023

As 2023 approaches the halfway mark, we can expect to see organizations become even more focused on cloud transformation projects that can increase efficiency, deliver near-term ROI and accelerate innovation.

We recently surveyed more than 1,400 IT decision-makers as part of our study, Managing IT in Challenging Economic Times. Our study revealed that businesses are becoming increasingly savvy about how to choose the best strategy and home for each application. Companies are taking the time to review IT strategy and assess their investments to ensure that their cloud transformation projects remain efficient, cost-effective and innovative.

As the IT landscape evolves over the second half of 2023, I believe companies will continue to benefit from three related trends that are spurring investment in technology and digital transformation:

• the adoption of more sophisticated data management models
• infrastructure resiliency and
• the commoditization of artificial intelligence (AI).

Let’s take a closer look at each:

Strategic data management. Chief data officers (CDOs) should continue to focus on developing and refining data playbooks to balance data protection and data utilization strategies. CDOs should engage with analytics and transformational processes to drive growth in the second half of 2023.

Companies will also focus on data reliability, as good data is required to drive strategies for both growth and risk mitigation.

Infrastructure resiliency and platform engineering. Organizations will continue to focus on improving the resilience of business-critical initiatives. This will require modernizing for stability, scale, security and repeatability and reliability of deployments. Platform engineering will continue to grow in importance as businesses seek to increase engineering efficiency.

Teams will use automation and abstraction to help organizations adopt new technologies and codify organizational policies and practices. Companies will continue to build their platform engineering capabilities with the goal of surpassing DevOps by the end of the year.

The commoditization of AI.  Finally in 2023, we will see continued growth in AI across all business areas. AI-based automation and insights will be key drivers for companies looking to optimize operations and maximize resources. AI has become increasingly sophisticated over the past decade and is now on the verge of becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives, as evidenced by the mainstream adoption of ChatGPT, the recent launch of Google Bard and several other generative AI tools that are coming online.

More and more products and solutions will integrate AI-driven decision support as an integral part of their offerings, paving the way for the commoditization of AI.  For companies looking to navigate economic uncertainty, a well developed FinOps program is critical to making these projects pay off. Cloud transformation projects are vital enablers of scalability, innovation, cost-efficiency and flexibility — all essential to succeed in even the most challenging environments.

Efficient, cost-effective and innovative

Cloud transformation projects have become essential for any business that wants to remain competitive for the remainder of 2023 and beyond. By focusing on strategic data management, infrastructure resiliency, platform engineering and the commoditization of AI, businesses can boost ROI, increase efficiency and accelerate innovation.

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