Companies are striving to optimize their cloud utilization while reducing costs more than ever. The cloud, however, is not a panacea for all software, and cloud pricing is based on the specific requirements of each company.
Major Cloud Storage Market Trends We Can Expect to Shape 2023
Object Storage will be Linked to Cloud Managed Services
In 2023, application vendors will create and publish their own extended storage APIs that will improve reporting, performance acceleration, data placement, and monitoring. Object storage solutions will integrate with these APIs to give enterprise and mid-market customers more attractive solutions and a better return on investment. These solutions can be used for backup and ransomware protection, big data analytics, and AI/ML, among other things.
Also, object storage vendors will work with large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or managed service providers (MSPs) in 2023 to offer fully integrated, private-cloud storage-as-a-service solutions. This will happen because customers will want storage services that are like the cloud but can be set up in their own data centers.
Hybrid Clouds are Expected to Become the Standard
Managing expenses effectively will always be front and center in terms of decision-making when considering cloud storage market trends in 2023. Increasingly, businesses are exploring cloud-based alternatives because they provide greater adaptability at a reduced cost. Yet in reality, not all applications can benefit from cloud computing, and cloud charges can fluctuate substantially based on factors such as data type, frequency of access, and amount of data transferred.
To facilitate essential business operations and analytics solutions, firms must first simplify their current complicated data landscapes from a data management standpoint. Understanding this is essential for evaluating the effects of planned cloud migrations and for figuring out the nature of any business logic that may be hardcoded in the data layer.
There isn’t much to be gained from simple lift-and-shift operations, therefore it’s often a good idea to reverse-engineer existing data repositories in order to find places where performance and insights may be optimized.
It is crucial from a management standpoint to begin categorizing data based on access frequency so that cost-effective storage and retrieval methods can be chosen.
Last but not least, companies must prepare for consistent data access control across the data environment, especially when implementing hybrid or multi-cloud solutions. Using centralized, fine-grained access controls that are easily deployable across environments can make this process much simpler.
Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Systems
The term “multi-cloud approach” is used to describe a business’s practice of utilizing the cloud services of multiple vendors, each of which specializes in a certain service area. As an illustration, they might use two different companies, one for development and the other for storage. The term “hybrid cloud” is used to describe scenarios in which cloud computing is used while some tasks are also maintained in a private data center. These tactics are highly versatile and can be employed together or separately to provide businesses an edge.
In addition, these methods can include redundancy and shield businesses from growing too reliant on any one service provider. It’s helpful to have backup plans in place in case your current service provider decides to modify its operations, whether that means focusing on a different area or going out of business entirely. It also gives businesses the flexibility to move the containerized apps to a new server in an effort to improve quality or reduce costs.
There will be a continued emphasis on multi-cloud and hybrid cloud methods in the cloud plans of many businesses in 2023 and beyond.
Storage as a Service
The idea behind this major cloud storage market trend is that storage as a service is that large-scale suppliers can provide cloud-like pricing for on-premises storage facilities. Organizations can save money on the up-front cost of an enterprise storage array by paying as they go instead.
Businesses who prefer the public cloud’s cost structure but are required to keep some data in-house will find Storage-as-a-Service (SaaS) to be an excellent solution. However, businesses who opt for storage as a service should be aware of the possibility of price hikes upon contract renewal and the existence of minimum expenditure requirements.
The Sustainability of Storage
The sustainability of information technology operations is becoming increasingly important to businesses, and this is one of the most prominent cloud storage market trends out there for that reason. This cloud storage market trend not only aids businesses in reducing their power use, but it also has positive effects on the environment. Given that power is the largest operating cost for most data centers, this results in significant cost savings for the respective businesses.
When cartridges are not being used and are just lying on a shelf, tape is an energy-efficient storage medium. The sustainability movement has been building steam for some time, and it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
More Adaptable and Nimble Composite Architecture
This is also one of the most important cloud storage market trends we foresee in 2023. Why? Many companies over the past few decades have relied on enterprise-scale Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software from companies like Oracle to manage their day-to-day operations. However, as corporations search for greater agility and efficiency, these monolithic systems increasingly create unacceptable levels of risk, and specialized solutions are being sought. By 2024, Gartner predicts that at least half of ERP customers would consider alternatives to upgrades of their present ERP, with this trend being most pronounced among businesses who are also attempting to modernize their analytics. Undoubtedly, significant cognitive transformations are required to take advantage of the transition to composable ERP.
Although this is a desirable outcome, ERP mega-vendors have made it difficult to discover, acquire, and utilize data from sources outside of their own technology stack. In order to fully capitalize on the benefits of their ERP metadata (which are often complicated), businesses planning to establish advanced analytics capabilities, which are often hosted in the cloud, need to devise a strategy for understanding and sharing this data. Safyr and similar tools simplify the search for ERP and CRM metadata, which aids in risk management.
Data on customers, suppliers, and employees is especially likely to be used by both the ERP and other applications, therefore these types of data must be accounted for in any master data strategy. Finally, as data flows between apps as a result of business processes, it will be more vital to identify critical roles and responsibilities and to create cross-platform data integrity policies to guarantee that the data is accurate and useful. Data integrity is crucial if a composite architecture is to realize its potential for fostering corporate agility and conducting advanced analytics.
XaaS
Storage, security, and networking are just some of the many online services that can be made possible by XaaS cloud computing. XaaS is an abbreviation for “everything as a service,” which describes this cloud storage market trend. In particular, the professional services sector has embraced XaaS as companies are bundling digital capabilities, data, or assets with human-based services. With this model, businesses may pay only for results, rather than for the time spent on obtaining them, and professional service providers can expand their offers.
This industry is expanding at a rapid rate because of the numerous opportunities it presents for customization and new developments. The global XaaS market was valued at $198.6 billion in 2021, according to research firm IMARC Group, and is projected to grow to $624.1 billion by 2027.
Cloud Native
Building apps, services, and other forms of software and hardware for the cloud is what’s known as a “cloud-native strategy.” Companies will increasingly move to the cloud as a result of the efficiency gains that cloud computing may provide for many of their solutions. Furthermore, enterprises will adopt this strategy due to the growing popularity of container technology.
Primary advantages of a cloud-native development strategy include improved productivity thanks to the use of tools and cloud services, lower costs owing to the lack of a need to invest in physical infrastructure, and guaranteed availability because of the dependability of cloud-based services. With so many positives, it’s no surprise that more businesses will start using cloud-native processes in 2023.
Microservices are the building blocks of cloud-native applications. With this method, developers can make programs that are quicker to construct and use less computational power. Businesses that wish to increase their adaptability, efficiency, competitiveness, and cost effectiveness should consider adopting a cloud-native strategy for these reasons. A movie explaining the cloud-native methodology is provided below.
Creating a Culture that is Based on Data
Analysis of the leading BI trends reveals a rising motivation to become data-driven, independent of technological considerations. Companies that rely heavily on data are putting resources into areas like data quality, data governance, and master data management.
Investments in self-service BI, data discovery, and updating the data analytics stack will continue to increase the demand for improved visibility. McKinsey found that the impact of analytics on sales grows significantly when organizations make data available to their entire workforce. Leaders in the data space that put money into unified dashboards that provide knowledge workers access to all of their data in one place stand to reap the benefits of increased productivity and fewer data inaccuracies.
The leaders in the data industry will also be on the lookout for ways to connect data products to bottom-line results. The value of an organization’s investment in data management and analytics tools will become increasingly important.
In conclusion, data governance is still essential for involving the right people at the right time in decision-making, whether that’s to reach consensus on investment priorities, to boost agility via enhanced impact analysis, to manage access and ensure data privacy while enabling analytics, or any number of other use cases.
Sovereign Clouds
The sole territory of operation for a sovereign cloud is a single nation or geographical area. Each country has its own data protection standards, making it difficult for any supplier to accommodate enterprises in multiple countries without the use of this technology. This phenomenon will likely accelerate the adoption of sovereign clouds in 2023 as the number of data privacy needs grows.
Services of this nature are invaluable in the banking sector and other areas where customers’ private information must be guarded. Industry clouds are similar to sovereign clouds in that they are tailored to the computing and security needs of a particular sector, such as retail, telecommunications, or utilities. The use of clouds in the industrial sector is also on the rise.
Cost reduction, security, usability, adaptability, enhanced functionality, novelty, and benefits to the end user are only some of the many advantages that these tendencies bring. Organizations can better control cloud expenditures, for instance, by implementing FinOps procedures. The level of protection that businesses can experience while utilizing cloud services can be improved with the help of security features and sovereign clouds. A number of cloud services, including public cloud offerings, serverless alternatives, and unlimited storage, aim to simplify cloud utilization. And the options to use many cloud services or a combination of cloud services increase a company’s adaptability.
Meanwhile, shifting to a native cloud strategy can boost performance. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the edge, and the internet of things are propelling progress forward. The advantages to the consumer of cloud-based services like gaming and XaaS are practically limitless. Given these and other benefits, it’s no wonder that businesses are rapidly adopting cloud plans for 2023 and beyond.
The exponential proliferation of unstructured data and the prevalence of ransomware in 2022 have hampered IT departments’ efforts to keep business networks up and running smoothly. What will the data storage business look like in 2023, given the current economic context of increased costs and geopolitical uncertainty?