CloudBolt Thoughts on Forrester Predictions 2023

Near the end of every year, everyone likes to look ahead and imagine how life might change. It’s fun and it allows us to write about what we want! 

So Forrester gives us their predictive takes (Predictions 2023) on what’s coming in 2023 and I thought, why not weigh in on those that affect our world of multi-cloud infrastructure?

CloudBolt could NOT agree more! Being pragmatic is a requirement for transitioning from the ‘great resignation’ into a possible recession and a period of ‘do more with less’. Automation ensures greater coverage, efficiency, and productivity. One of CloudBolt’s strengths is its Automation/ Orchestration capabilities around the delivery, usage, and reporting of resources and applications. Every organization has multiple automation scripts and snippets, but they’re often trapped within organizational silos. CloudBolt can tap into that well and bring order to automation chaos. Speed to market and new innovations with fewer people is the goal! Another angle to automation is security and governance. Through automation, you can dictate safe, standardized, and predictable behavior! 

Kubernetes use and investment will continue to rise and SHOULD, but VM-based workloads are not going to be totally replaced in 2023. A transition period has begun around DevOps, CloudOps, ITOps and it centers around delivering resources faster, more consistently, and in a governed and well-tracked manner. It could be K8s,  Internal Developer Portal (IDP), or call it ‘Platform Engineering’. They’re all poking at the same issue -to more efficiently deliver innovative solutions to problems (customer or internal). With an API-based open architecture, CloudBolt supports containerization today, and can easily adopt the next tool to aid DevOps, FinOps, or SecOps that is right around the corner! 

Forrester claims “an average of 200,000 open tech jobs that cannot be filled due to lack of suitable candidates.” I think automation and orchestration play another HUGE part here too! If I can automate the tasks of 3 people into 1, then I don’t need as many people. “But what about the skills?” Build some of that into the process. If this happens, then do this….essence of automation! Part of the skills gap problem is that we are constantly changing seeking new and innovative ways to deliver. But by doing so, we CREATE a skills gap. CloudBolt address by building expertise into the workload/container. We build Terraform workloads, Kubernetes workloads for example that don’t require users to KNOW that tool, they just click the button and it works!

The 2021 Verizon Data Breach Report reports miscellaneous errors were responsible for almost 20% of all data breaches. Much more eye-opening is this finding from a Gartner Survey that found misconfigurations cause 80% of all data security breaches! IT’S A PROBLEM and scandals caused by cyber-attacks erode customer trust.  

WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT? 

Of course, you can invest in tools to monitor for bad behavior, alert to its bad presence, and protect credentials but reducing application and resource misconfigurations and human errors address these hidden vulnerabilities. CloudBolt enables you to offer workloads that orchestrate approved and tested processes and resources. Those procedures are governed by policy to ensure they execute safely and consistently every time, without thought from users. 

We regularly hear our customers say they were rapidly able to reallocate 20-30% of their staff to other high-value projects or that we gave them back the equivalent of one full workday per week! 

EVERY new year brings uncertainty. You know the problems and issues that plague your organization, and some, like those above, are likely to be written about.. But regardless of today’s and tomorrow’s problems, the tools of automation, easy adoption (APIs), and tracking become essential. CloudBolt is focused on addressing the operational complexities introduced in a multi- and hybrid-cloud environment. How can we help you?