The Next Wave of Cloud Computing:
Trends for 2024 and Beyond

_{Written by}

Jesse Wilker
Modern Cloud –
Services Manager

Jesse is a consulting leader for Insight's Modern Cloud Services practice. Jesse has certifications in Google Cloud, Azure and HashiCorp with proven experience in winning strategic deals and delivering cutting-edge projects. He is a thought leader within enterprise cloud architecture, engineering, automation and multicloud strategy.

The Next Wave of Cloud Computing: Trends for 2024 and Beyond

The cloud computing industry experienced incredible growth in 2023. Its rapid evolution is largely due to the explosion of generative AI, growing adoption of multiple cloud providers and the complexity of keeping up with business-critical innovations. Increasingly, businesses are turning to cloud consulting partners to help them navigate this journey and establish a strong foundation for their infrastructure while also mitigating risks.

“By 2026, 80% of large software engineering organizations will establish platform engineering teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery,” according to Gartner^®.¹

As a leader for our delivery of cloud services for enterprise clients, I’ve been fortunate to directly oversee well-established enterprise clients in their adoption of another cloud provider into their environment. This includes execution of large-scale migrations to the cloud, as well as the (at times) painful path of modernizing applications and infrastructure. These experiences have given me an appreciation as I learn from the clients who have successfully navigated this season of tremendous innovation.

In this article, I’ll share the top trends
for the cloud in 2024. These are based on my real-world client experiences and insights from consultants working with enterprises worldwide.

These trends are shaping the future of the cloud computing industry and can help organizations keep pace with innovation, deploy cost-effective environments and achieve operational efficiency.

Whether you’re running a startup or leading a large enterprise, understanding these concepts is crucial to stay competitive in the fast-paced world of cloud computing.

So, let’s dive in
and explore what’s

trending for 2024:

Multicloud operational strategy

As enterprises deploy and manage production workloads across multiple clouds, they experience significant interoperability challenges around identity, networking and siloed security models. These challenges lead to greater IT complexity and potential for greater risk.

With new advancements in interoperability standards, such as IEEE Standard for Intercloud Interoperability and Federation (SIIF) in March of 2022, the implementation of federated identity has become much more practical. As more interoperability standards emerge for cross-cloud networking, operating multicloud environments will become easier for businesses to grasp.

How organizations decide to learn and execute on these concepts will determine how they reduce risk and increase innovation in a multicloud world — this will be a differentiator in the marketplace for them.

Generative AI goes into production

Gartner predicts, “By 2026, more than 80% of enterprises will have used generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) application programming interfaces (APIs) or models, and/or deployed GenAI-enabled applications in production environments, up from less than 5% in 2023.”² Generative AI is clearly transforming and evolving the cloud computing industry just as it is so many others.

While 2023 was explosive and experimental, what’s next for enterprises is the need to have production-ready solutions. New concepts are unfolding, costs of running models are
increasing and AI cloud architecture is an emerging discipline in the industry.

Platform engineering is driving adoption

Developer platforms are becoming the norm for large organizations. This is because these platforms make it easier for legacy application teams to adopt cloud technologies. Gartner predicts, “By 2026, 80% of large software engineering organizations will establish platform engineering teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery.”¹ It must be easy for developers to get environments, migrate applications and innovate while remaining secure. These platforms do just that while making it easier for businesses to scale their cloud infrastructure.

Emerging
industry clouds

Industry clouds are an appealing trend to business consumers, and organizational adoption is growing. In a 2023 PwC cloud survey, 20% of executives indicated they are looking to adopt an industry-based approach in the near future. A full set of industry-relevant capabilities taking advantage of the underlying ecosystem and power of the cloud is the perfect accelerator for digital transformation. These solutions offer particulate business segments the data, compliance and foundational processes they need to innovate at scale.

Modern
identity-based segmentation

New ways to protect public cloud environments have already emerged and are replacing traditional networking setups in cloud computing. These approaches enable businesses to secure their cloud infrastructure more effectively and manage access to resources based on user identity. Traditional segmentation and firewalling are becoming unrealistic and antiquated in newer multicloud and serverless deployments.

Re-platform
to the cloud

The new “lift and shift” is re-platforming. That’s because business leaders are seeking greater command and control over their cloud infrastructure. An overemphasis on lift and shift in the past has led many organizations to a post-migration state of maintaining legacy infrastructure on a cloud platform. This in turn causes them to miss out on the agility and cost benefits they originally expected by going to cloud in the first place.

Re-platforming with a focus on containerization or slightly refactoring along the way is more realistic than ever with established patterns, techniques and practices to execute a large scale modernization in a timely manner.

Sustainable technologies

With commitments from AWS, Google and Microsoft to have zero emissions by 2040, customers are placing an emphasis on executing on the same vision. Energy efficiency is especially important to customers in regions with unstable energy supplies or prices, and of course for customers engaged in high consumption AI model training.

Containerization

Hosted containers are becoming the new standard for cloud computing, as they enable businesses to deploy applications quickly and efficiently. And, as organizations strive to lower costs and improve productivity, 46% of container organizations now run serverless containers. Virtual machines are becoming an afterthought, as businesses focus on containerization to improve their cloud infrastructure and innovate faster than
ever before.

Indispensable skills for DevOps engineers

Python, Terraform and CI/CD coding skills with YAML were nice to have for engineers, but are now table stakes for effective cloud engineers. Add also the ability to generate and debug code at a more productive clip than ever before with GitHub Copilot,
Duet AI and CodeWhisperer. All are powerful coding assistants.

Businesses are looking for cloud consulting firms that can help them leverage these tools to improve their cloud infrastructure and streamline their development processes.

Rise of the multicloud architect

In a 2023 HashiCorp cloud strategy survey, 76% of respondents indicated they were planning, implementing or expanding a multicloud strategy. With this statistic in mind, the multicloud architect is becoming a critical role in cloud consulting. These architects can cover two layers deep across multiple cloud providers and have enough consulting skills to bring in the appropriate subject matter experts.

AI-infused cloud computing services

Each public cloud provider has begun integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) into their services. Azure OpenAI runs on a powerful language module. And Google just introduced Gemini, a multimodal model that can understand, explain and generate high-quality code.

These providers have already started integrating these models into their core Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. This will change the way cloud computing architecture and engineering take place.

Cloud providers
will continue to vie for market share

AWS has continued its lead with a mature and leading-edge array of IaaS and PaaS services. Microsoft with its first-to-market partnership with OpenAI continues to inch forward on its vision and leadership in democratizing AI. And Google Cloud has gained ground in vision and ability to execute based on their ability to apply their core principles of design elegance and simplicity to their cloud platform.

Looking up

These top trends underscore the growing importance of multicloud adoption, emerging technologies like generative AI, and the need for effective cloud engineering tools and expertise. As businesses strive to enhance their cloud infrastructure and drive innovation in today’s ecosystem, it’s valuable to understand how leading enterprises are achieving success — and that’s where a cloud consulting partner like Insight comes in.

For businesses and verticals at the forefront of generative AI transformation, investing in teammates and providing them
with the necessary training and skills is crucial. They need to be well-rounded on the technical side and familiar with multiple clouds and development frameworks.

The ability to work as a team and effectively communicate complex concepts is critical for driving change and delivering long-term value within your organization.

Take to the cloud with confidence.

Our cloud experts will help you optimize your cloud consumption, improve agility and clear the path for innovation.

Learn more

1 Gartner Article, What Is Platform Engineering?, October 2023, https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/what-is-platform-engineering.

2 Gartner Press Release, Gartner Says More Than 80% of Enterprises Will Have Used Generative AI APIs or Deployed Generative AI-Enabled Applications by 2026, October 2023, https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-10-11-gartner-says-more-than-80-percent-of-enterprises-will-have-used-generative-ai-apis-or-deployed-generative-ai-enabledapplications-by-2026.