What are the top Cloud Computing trends for AWS and Azure in 2022/23?

This article is a look at the trends in the cloud market for AWS & Azure over the next 18 months. 

How is the cloud doing? 

What are the biggest headwinds? 

How will this affect you and your business?

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There is every possibility that Microsoft will introduce a price rise in countries that are affected by an increase in interest rate charges, meaning that people may choose to move their data to different data centre locations if it is more cost effective for them to do so.

In the past, Azure implemented a core cap to individual accounts, meaning that if you wanted to use more storage, you’d have to apply to have it added to your account. This was to ensure that they could keep up with the demand, and it did cause a slightly slower service for some clients who had to wait for the additional storage limits to be added on. Although this method hasn’t been used for a while, this could be something Microsoft look at reintroducing if they’re unable to get hold of the chips and servers that they need to keep up with customer demands.

A Cloud Solution Provider, or CSP, is the company that provides businesses with cloud-based infrastructure, networks, and software applications. There have been previous issues with the Azure CSP model in that it can lead to overspending on the cloud and a lack of control over what you have access to. Microsoft has now started to make changes to their model to make it much easier for customers to move between Microsoft partners, meaning that there will probably be a lot more movement in this area than there has been in the past. You can find out more about this change in our recent article, about the challenges of being on a CSP and how to manage the risk and find out if you are. 

Microsoft has spent a lot of time listening to their customers to understand what is important for them in 2022, and is putting a particular focus on hybrid and multi-cloud functionality. Issues that exist within their managed services and products such as Azure ARC and Azure Stack HCI/Edge are uniquely resolved with Azure hybrid capabilities, enabling them to run anywhere.

They are also putting an increased focus on their AI. Edge computing is now able to build intelligent applications that span the cloud and network, bringing together a set of connected systems and devices that can gather and analyse data. Azure AI services such as Azure Cognitive Services bring a trained AI model to the edge, integrating it into their customer’s applications for low-latency intelligence. This allows for real-time insights, analysing data close to the system where it is stored.

Circular cloud data has been a discussion point for a few years, and this is another area that Microsoft is putting the focus on over the next year. With an aim to drive overall cloud sustainability, they believe it is important to understand and measure an organisation’s environmental impact based on their various data centres. Microsoft has committed to enabling their customers to build more sustainable solutions for their data solutions, introducing Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability as a service to help track, record, report and lower an organisation’s impact. The insights this service gathers can then help to produce actionable insights to lower carbon emissions.

When it comes to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the risks facing them are very similar to those facing many other businesses, such as issues with chip shortages, increases in energy costs and ways of maintaining the safety of their client’s data.

There have been a number of events recently highlighting the vulnerabilities associated with cloud-based storage, two in particular which were closed by AWS’s core services. One of these vulnerabilities had the potential to allow any user to access and take control of a company’s infrastructure, and while this issue has now been resolved, it has highlighted just how serious one of these problems could be.

With regards to the chip shortage, Amazon has been taking the issue into their own hands by announcing that they will be releasing their own semiconductors in the future, helping to keep costs down for their customers while also helping them avoid supply chain issues. Although they have been working on their own chips for many years, the worldwide shortage has acted as an accelerator for them to bring these into production much quicker, with hopes to provide their customers with a range of different options, including a data processor chip (the Graviton2) and a networking chip which allows data to be moved around networks for hardware switches.

Amazon opened their UK data centre in 2016, allowing for a whole new scope of collaboration and cost efficiency than was previously possible before it was introduced. This was especially useful for those within the public sector, such as the local governments and healthcare, as it meant they could stay within UK guidelines for data storage. You can find out more about the UK AWS data centre and take a virtual tour in our recent blog post.

As mentioned above, UK data centres can help to provide a solution for businesses that want to store their data locally, however it could create additional issues when it comes to ensuring this is being done compliantly. It’s worth noting that as with other providers, AWS will have different price sets for different data centres, so keeping your data within the UK may not always be the cheapest option.

Our key prediction for 2022 is that there will almost certainly be price rises across each cloud provider at some point in the year to help cover the increase in energy prices that these companies will be facing.

It’s always worth remembering that cloud providers are not intel, they’re being hit with the same issues as other industries when it comes to chip shortages and the effects of the rise in energy and fuel prices, so they do have to take some form of action - whether that be core caps or another reaction - to restrict and manage demand in their platforms and maintain a good level of service for their customers.

For this reason, we highly recommend working with a cloud management specialist such as us who can take the time now to sort out any pricing issues you have before these increases hit. Our CloudOps software has been designed specifically to bring together performance and cost monitoring tools, support processes and general administration functions through a single portal to manage your cloud which includes:

• Guaranteed cost savings
• Always on support, fault find and fix
• Management monitoring and reporting dashboards
• Proactive infrastructure optimisation

Another trend that we’re expecting to see in 2022 is the cloud being used more as a commodity that you purchase, rather than businesses having any form of brand loyalty with any particular provider. This means that they will go with whoever offers them the best solution or price for their needs, likely bringing about a more competitive cloud market.

Boeing is a good example of a business who are taking the idea of cloud commoditisation and building it into their disaster recovery process. They have introduced a highly efficient safety management system, investing in ‘fundamental design practices’ to ensure their data is stored safely, becoming a far more resilient business in the process. Part of this system includes having multiple different options when it comes to their cloud storage, not basing their solution on any one provider.

One of the other changes that we may expect to see in 2022 is an improvement in the current skills shortage for higher-level IT professionals. As many people within the IT sector are generally quite risk averse, this has previously meant that people stayed within their roles for much longer than in other industries, creating a shortage of availability in more skilled roles within areas such as cloud management and cloud infrastructure. With the introduction of the IR35 amendment, many may decide that they want to move away from contracted roles and into full-time employment, meaning more people on the market to fill these spots within other organisations.

There is no doubt that activities and trends within the cloud sector change on a frequent basis, with a number of outside factors affecting a variety of areas, from the cost of delivering the cloud to clients to the solutions that are available to use.

At IG CloudOps, we like to keep our ears to the ground when it comes to every different factor that could have a negative impact on our clients and continuously develop our software and services to ensure we can always offer the very best solutions, helping to resolve pricing and management issues quickly.

Investing in a cloud platform should be cost-effective and add greatly to your business. Your cloud-based IT infrastructure should be driving increases in speed, efficiency, and performance. But many organisations are facing rising costs and failing to release the promised cloud advantages. 

You need an automated software solution sophisticated enough to match the complexity of the cloud, and a partner who will be there to ensure the ever-changing nature of the technology is being managed proactively, rather than just reactively.

With CloudOps, you get all of that and more.

Over 70 customers across 8 countries manage AWS & Azure with CloudOps