Fortune tellers at Gartner group have been shuffling their Tarot cards and concluded that cloud computing will shift from being a technology disruptor to being compulsory for firms by 2028
Big G says that IT spending on public cloud services remains unabated. In 2024, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to total $679 billion and exceed $1 trillion in 2027.
Gartner analyst Milind Govekar said that organisations are actively investing in cloud technology for its potential to foster innovation, create market disruptions, and enhance customer retention to gain a competitive edge.
“While many organisations have started seizing the technical advantages of the cloud, only a few have unlocked its full potential in supporting business transformation. As a result, organisations use the cloud to launch a new wave of AI-driven disruption, enabling them to unlock business value at scale.”
Currently, most companies see the cloud as a technology platform. In 2023, organisations use cloud computing either as a technology disruptor or capability enabler.
Gartner predicts half of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms by 2028 to accelerate business initiatives. By 2028, most organisations will use the cloud as a business necessity.
Organisations using the cloud as a technology disruptor are harnessing its transformative potential to revolutionise non-cloud, datacentre-oriented computing approaches and technologies.
“As businesses navigate digital transformation, moving to the cloud becomes a key decision point,” said Govekar.
Gartner also found companies adopting cloud technology as a capability enabler use its potential for things such as elasticity, rapid continuous integration/delivery (CI/CD), serverless functions, and AI-infused APIs and processes that were difficult pre-cloud.
To exploit these capabilities, organisations must evaluate factors like skills development, breaking down operational silos, and promoting team collaboration to seamlessly adopt automation, Gartner stated.
Over the next few years, Gartner said cloud computing will continue evolving from an innovation facilitator to a business disruptor and ultimately, a business necessity.
With cloud computing as an innovation facilitator, organisations can distribute platform business concepts widely using its underlying platform technology for interconnections, scale, aggregation and analysis capabilities. This allows using technology as a fundamental business model component.
“By leveraging the cloud provider ecosystem, organisations can introduce innovative products and services, like fraud prevention for second-hand cars from tyre manufacturers, or rapid vaccine development through cloud-based machine learning,” said Govekar.
By 2028, most organisations will fully transform into digital entities capable of sensing and responding to business and market conditions.
“With the cloud becoming integral to business operations in 2028, CIOs and IT leaders will have to implement a highly efficient cloud operating model to achieve desired business objectives,” Govekar said.
