From Multicloud To The Metaverse: The 6 Significant Tech Trends Of 2023

From Multicloud To The Metaverse: The cloud continues to grow, as well as data and cyber threats within increasingly smart working environments. Here are some tech trends for 2023.

2023 promises to be a fascinating year in terms of tech trends. It will presumably be a year of transition: still too early for disruptive scenarios such as quantum computing or advanced manifestations of smart cities, but capable of consolidating trends that have been evolving for years, such as the most advanced cloud models and state-of-the-art security paradigms.

In the meantime, the evolution of work continues. After the emergency smart working and hybrid work of recent months, companies are preparing for what will come next, i.e., an increasingly fluid model characterized by the total separation between activity (work) and place (office). A model, of course, is digitally enabled without forgetting the Metaverse, which in 2023 could abandon that aura of mystery that still distinguishes it and become much more concrete and tangible. Some examples of the Corporate Metaverse prove it.

So let’s see 6 tech trends that will be talked about during 2023. 

Tech Trend: the cloud shows no signs of slowing down

Recently, the Cloud Transformation Observatory of the Milan Polytechnic confirmed a further increase in spending on cloud services, which, as regards the public decline (cloud), grew by 22% compared to 2021. In particular, most companies are adopting the hybrid model, i.e., mixing some services and workloads delivered via on-premise infrastructure with others performed in the cloud. The hybrid model is almost mandatory in industries subject to heavy regulation, such as healthcare and the financial sector: the internal infrastructure is adopted for core processes (subject to controls and restrictions), and the public cloud has dominion over the non-mission critical.

In 2023, the most successful cloud model will be the hybrid multi-cloud, i.e., equipped with public cloud components from various providers such as Microsoft, AWS, or Google. How to choose them? It depends from case to case, but technology, skills, and cost considerations intervene. 

Welcome to New Ways of Working

That’s what they call them, and they are the evolution of emergency smart working and also of today’s hybrid work, which manifests itself in an alternation between the office and remote work. For 2023, the Smart Working Observatory forecasts that there will be 3.63 million remote workers, slightly increasing compared to 2022.

The new ways of working are characterized by the employee’s absolute responsibility and centrality, engagement, and well-being. This entails major cultural, organizational, and even technological challenges for the company since the office must become where you want to work, not where you are forced to. Collaboration platforms, coworking areas, adoption of an activity-based working model, organization of events, revision of the communication model, and provision of tools for managing shared resources (desks, meeting rooms) will be necessary to be successful. These will be fluid models based on almost eliminating place constraints: people can work from home, from a library, in a coworking, or outdoors.

Technology and sustainability

Sustainability, in its environmental, social, and economic forms (governance), will remain a driving theme for tech companies whose mission is precisely to accompany their customers toward more sustainable and efficient operating models. In 2023, technology will be evaluated in terms of sustainability: the large cloud providers will get closer to their Net-Zero goals, and tech trends such as software sustainability will take hold, i.e., the impact of code quality on data center energy consumption.

The tech trend of the Corporate Metaverse

In 2023, the Metaverse will become more tangible than it is today. We are not referring, in particular, to large consumer platforms such as Decentraland and Roblox, but to a “corporate” version of the Metaverse (we are talking about Corporate or Enterprise Metaverse). In other words, businesses are adopting advanced technologies to create new experiences and innovative ways of relating and interacting.

For example, some large companies operating with a B2B business model have created virtual environments to host (and create) events dedicated to dealers, partners, and customers, adding the immersive experience with the possibility of seeing new products and ‘trying out’ the new services. The same goes for internal training, the management of smart working, or, in a very different area, the simulation of new solutions through digital twins. 

Some companies have completely recreated their premises, including meeting rooms, to welcome employees, customers, and guests from all over the world, focusing on the fact that a better employee experience makes people more productive, and an excellent customer experience helps sales and retention. In 2023, this corporate version of the Metaverse will start to catch on, while the consumer one (summarized by the two platforms above) is gradually and continuously evolving. 

The exponential growth of data, not all real

The exponential growth of data is nothing new, but the trend will no doubt continue in 2023. Rather, new tech trends are the methodologies with which companies aim to manage and exploit large volumes and a variety of data.

At the enterprise level, a model on which Gartner focuses a lot is the Data Fabric, literally ” data fabric. ” It is not a technology but a conceptual model, which the most advanced companies can create by adding different existing software and platforms: the goal is to ensure that the Data Fabric can acquire data from disparate sources (from IoT to hybrid multi-cloud models, from the data warehouse to the data lakes present in the company) and, by exploiting automation, can make them available to “consumers,” therefore typically of employees but also of applications. Among the tech trends of data management, there are also synthetic data.

The most advanced companies are turning to synthetic data, i.e., artificial data but equipped with the same statistical characteristics (therefore the relationship between data) as real ones, to make AI ever more powerful and compliant with the law. To train AI algorithms, companies need huge volumes of real data, which often do not exist or are linked to strict privacy constraints.

Cyber ​​security, the tech trend that never dies

We heard less about it at the end of 2022, but cyber security remains a stainless tech trend. Threats, risks, and vulnerabilities are on the rise: although a particularly innovative security model for 2023 is not foreseen at present (as was Zero-Trust in the early days of the cloud), this year will provide many companies have the opportunity to adopt virtuous technologies and behaviors, to improve the company’s security posture.

Also Read : Digital Sustainability, The Solution For The Future Of The Planet