Technology trends that will define 2023

By Puneet Gupta, Managing Director and VP India/SAARC, NetApp

India’s technology landscape has exploded over the last decade- to the extent that it is being called a “techade”. With data and cloud-based technology at the pivot of all businesses when it comes to operational excellence, several exciting developments await the industry in 2023.

Delivering a Better Hybrid Multicloud Experience for Enterprises

The hybrid multicloud will grow in importance as more services move from on-prem to the cloud and as customers seek to balance their cloud spending across multiple Cloud Service Providers. Public cloud spending in India is expected to grow 27% YoY in 2023, according to Gartner. The migration to cloud saw an acceleration at the onset of the pandemic and in the new post pandemic world, the adoption is only set to go up.

More enterprises are also embracing the multicloud strategy moving ahead. Already, 53% of Indian enterprises have increased their cloud adoption over the last one year, as per estimates from NASSCOM. However, many enterprises realized that their cloud is not living up to its full potential due to complexity and uncontrolled cloud sprawl; siloed, disparate environments; security risks; and rising costs, which has led to the emergence of a True Hybrid Cloud Model

Moving forward, more organisations will take a strategic approach that seamlessly connects a mix of clouds and on-prem environments. In the next phase of the evolved cloud, enterprises will turn to a unified control plane to remove management complexity, stay secure against evolving cyber threats, be sustainable, and cut costs through automation, whether their data resides on the cloud or on-prem. This will put organisations in a position to focus on innovation and drive their business.

Addressing the ICT Skills Gap

The skills gap among ICT talent is expected to intensify. A NASSCOM-Zinnov report has stated that by 2026, India could face a shortage of 1.4-1.9 million technologists. While digital transformation and cloud deployment continue to be priority for enterprises, the dearth of technical talents can undermine the adoption of emerging, cloud-based technologies. As hybrid multicloud adoption picks up, IT leaders will need to ensure their teams are sufficiently upskilled.

Although upskilling is critical in narrowing the skills gap, enterprises need to recognize that hybrid multicloud architectures are highly complex. Managing multiple clouds and on-premises environments together can be tricky and inefficient. Going into 2023, we expect more organisations to simplify and standardize their operations, reducing their need for environment, cloud, and workload-specific skills.

Achieving True Sustainability

With the rising importance of ESG and focus on sustainability, enterprises increasingly require their IT infrastructure to be green and able to support their sustainability initiatives.

Creating greener value chains and solutions that can drive sustainable outcomes, including energy efficiency with their cloud and on-prem infrastructure will be crucial. This is in addition to providing improved methods for data categorization that enables buyers to look across their entire data estates and tier data, which is particularly effective in the cloud. For instance, if 68% of your data is used once and then never used again, moving the unused data to the cloud, where it can be tiered and moved to cold storage, can reduce your data’s carbon footprint and contribute to a better planet.

Businesses must look at helping customers minimize their carbon footprint by moving on-prem storage to inherently greener public clouds. Technology tools can be leveraged to audit consumption, locate waste, and automatically set guardrails to stop overprovisioning thereby helping reduce carbon emissions and cutting operational costs.

Pre-empting the Impact of Quantum Hybrid Computing on Cybersecurity

Companies need to think about data protection now more than ever. Data breaches and hackers are getting increasingly sophisticated, and companies need to be a step ahead in their data security measures to ensure protection of business-critical data.

The industry is already exploring how quantum hybrid models can help protect sensitive data more effectively and drive the development of new encryption protocols and algorithms. Businesses are increasingly looking at cloud-based approaches to solve data security challenges.

With cloud technology, the only constant is change. Companies must have a foresight on how and where they manage their data, security, and their hybrid, multicloud infrastructures. We may not have a control on natural crises, but with a strong cloud strategy, its impact can be mitigated.