Cloud computing has revolutionized how we store, manage and access data. 2023 has arrived and digital transformation initiatives remain in the fast lane, and if 2023 cloud trends are any indication, there’s no slowing down. Moving to the cloud is no longer an option, as its benefits and new capabilities prove vital for moving forward, especially in an uncertain economy. Gartner Inc. forecasts that in 2023, worldwide public cloud spending will grow 20.7% to total $591.8 billion, up from $490.3 billion in 2022. The cloud computing market is expected to reach over $1 trillion by 2028. Within a span of 10 years (between 2010 to 2020), the market grew by a massive 635 percent.

The overarching concept of delivering computing resources through a global network was rooted in the sixties. The idea of an “intergalactic computer network” was introduced by J.C.R. Licklider, who was responsible for enabling the development of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) in 1969.” His vision was for everyone on the globe to be interconnected and accessing programs and data at any site, from anywhere”, explained Margaret Lewis, product marketing director at AMD. “It is a vision that sounds a lot like what we are calling Cloud computing.” Other experts attribute the Cloud concept to computer scientist John McCarthy who proposed the idea of computation being delivered as a public utility, similar to the service bureaus which date back to the sixties.

Cloud is the infrastructural paradigm shift that is sweeping across the IT world. Cloud computing has been described as arguably the third revolution of IT, following the personal computer and internet revolutions. Cloud computing is no doubt a a business game changer and will define IT in the second decade of the 21st Century.