Welcome to a future as a service (Part 1)

There’s no such thing as standing still in the IT world. In the blink of an eye, the past fades away in our rearview mirror and the future transforms from mirage to certainty. Looking forward is no easy feat, but the future looks bright for those able to anticipate the right trends.

In this two-part blog series, we will examine a few of the trends that will shape the future of IT in the coming years.

IT spending will continue rising

The pandemic forced organizations to adapt quickly, resulting in a surge of spending on remote-working solutions. As the corporate world slowly acclimatizes to its new order, budgets are also returning to a steadier and more structured pace. Spiceworks Ziff Davis’s 2023 State of IT forecasts that — despite a potential recession ahead — roughly 51% of companies still plan to increase tech spending in 2023.

IT budgets are expected to grow by 13% year-over-year, driven by the need to support remote workforce and hybrid work environments, updating infrastructure, strategic projects to sustain growth, and rising security concerns.

Interestingly, the major shift in IT spending seems to benefit managed services, which should rise to 18% of IT budgets (up from 15% before the pandemic). It indicates an increased need to manage both on-premises and cloud infrastructure at a time when companies are right-sizing their environments to support employees.

Spiceworks Ziff Davis also predicts that the largest share of 2023 managed services budgets will go to managed business applications, security, hosting, and hardware support and maintenance.

In the context of a possible recession, the most important thing any company can do is maximize how you utilize the assets you already have, especially your people. While optimizing your bottom line remains key, your employees are still your company’s ‘engine room’ and you should invest in them to drive client satisfaction and new innovations.

Cloudy, with no chance of clearer skies

The rise of remote as-a-service solutions had already begun, but the pandemic triggered a sudden shift to remote work and the steady flow of companies implementing digital workplaces became a tidal wave. Even as employees come back into offices, the adoption of cloud services shows no sign of slowing down.

Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will grow by 20.7% to a total of $591.8 billion in 2023, up from $490.3 billion in 2022, according to the latest Gartner forecast.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach in this new reality, and companies need expertise and assistance to navigate this cloud complexity. Employees all over the world now expect to work from anywhere with a consistent quality of service that only a tailored ecosystem can deliver. As such, software and IT services are driving most of Gartner’s global IT spending forecast for 2023, growing by 11.3% and 7.9%, respectively.

Within cloud computing, Gartner predicts that infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will experience the highest end-user spending growth in 2023, while PaaS and SaaS will be impacted by inflation, staffing challenges and margin protection.

Looking forward, we expect edge computing to emerge as the natural evolution for cloud services. Edge enables enterprises to benefit from a remote infrastructure tailored to their needs and able to handle vast amounts of data near where it is produced and used.