A Golden Future for Cloud in 2023

Article by Andy Ng, Vice President and Managing Director for Asia South and Pacific Region, Veritas Technologies

The allure of multi-cloud adoption is apparent for corporations looking to embark on their digital transformation journey. This could be driven by motivations spanning from operational flexibility, and cost savings to getting best-of-breed functionality. As 2022 draws to a close, the widespread adoption of the cloud shows no signs of slowing down and will continue to be a key pillar of transformative strategies for forward-thinking organizations. Now, having realized the advantages that the cloud offers, what will be the next steps for organizations ready to make longer-term decisions on their cloud strategy?

In 2023, organizations will be looking for new ways to make their cloud solutions more efficient and cost-effective against the backdrop of a possible recession.

Regaining control of cloud budgets in 2023

According to Veritas research, 94% of organizations globally are overspending on cloud, going over their allocated cloud budgets by an average of 43%. As the amount of data continues to grow year over year, so does the cost of storing it in the cloud, which is becoming harder to justify, though most companies have realized advanced business strategies through cloud adoption. The research also put a spotlight on the misconception around the cloud responsibility model. Nearly all companies assumed the cloud service providers (CSPs) are protecting their data and applications in the cloud, when the latter is only on the line to ensure the resiliency of the cloud.

As a result, it is unsurprising that unforeseen data protection needs were cited as the most common source of unexpected cloud costs. In parallel, businesses are also at risk of facing hefty bills following post-pandemic data storage surge. As businesses grapple with rising inflation, supply chain woes, labor shortages and cyber threats, a sudden step up in cloud storage costs is the last thing they need. To mitigate the cost overruns with organizations planning their cloud budgets without fully understanding what they are ultimately going to need to pay for, CEOs and boards will increasingly demand transparency surrounding the ROI of cloud spend.

With grim reminders of global economic headwinds for next year, we expect scrutiny of IT spending to intensify further in 2023. This will put pressure on IT leaders to justify their cloud budgets while identifying new ways to reduce data volumes. This could lead to more effective data storage and management strategies, such as deduplication techniques to ensure reduced storage consumption.

We also expect more organizations to deploy autonomous cloud-first optimized solutions from a single pane of glass – combining automation, artificial intelligence, and elastic architecture to deliver secure and flexible cloud data protection – while reducing the operational complexity and costs associated with managing multi-cloud environments.

Cross-cloud data mobility will gain prominence

Across the APAC region, 93% of companies are embracing a multi-cloud strategy. While there are countless benefits to a multi-cloud strategy such as flexibility and agility, interoperability continues to be a challenge for data managers. Not only is it expensive to move data from cloud to cloud, but when clouds are not deployed in a seamless manner, it creates silos within an organization and can introduce potentially major security vulnerabilities.

Over time, these piecemeal cloud data protection solutions add up, creating a continually growing cost and management burden that becomes unsustainable at scale. With hackers growing in sophistication and relentlessly exploiting security loopholes, we have the makings of a perfect storm if security gaps are not addressed in time.

To keep up with the pace of cloud offerings and achieve business-driven cloud goals, businesses will start leveraging AI/ML and autonomous solutions to help mitigate the challenges of siloed workloads to enhance cloud interoperability through data portability. As organizations work to address interoperability challenges and gain more control in the cloud, cross-cloud data mobility will become more mainstream in 2023.

Kubernetes goes mission-critical

According to Veritas research, 86% of businesses around the world are looking to deploy Kubernetes in the next two to three years, and a third already relying on it today. The need to quickly innovate at scale has put pressure on organizations to implement transformational IT strategies in a timely manner. Kubernetes has emerged as a convenient solution, as it is easy for enterprises to deploy, and quickly improves affordability, flexibility, and scalability.

Kubernetes has become mainstream over the last 24 months and organizations have taken the step of moving into serious deployments. Containers are now being adopted in mission-critical environments, meaning that the application environment and the underlying data in these environments now need protection.

Now, ownership of these containers and the protection of them has become more complex, creating silos and confusion over if it’s the backup admin or the DevOps admin that’s responsible. At the same time, organizations are struggling to identify which containers to back up and how to do so, which will likely lead to more investment in training to help close the Kubernetes skills gap. In 2023, IT departments will continue to navigate how to adequately protect and backup their Kubernetes environments.

As we head into 2023, innovation is set to continue at a breakneck pace, with organizations struggling to define best practices in data protection to accommodate the latest cloud architectures and applications. A less complex and more cost-effective solution is often available when DevOps and data protection teams collaborate more closely to extend the corporate data protection platform into these new Kubernetes environments.

 

The views in this article is that of the author and may not represent the views of Tech Wire Asia. 

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