Published on the 09/01/2023 | Written by Jeremiah Stone CTO at SnapLogic

Key data, cloud and AI trends that will reshape the future of business for the year ahead…

Real-time data in greater demand

Real-time insights are, arguably, an organisation’s most valuable source of information in turbulent environments. Long-term trends and ‘last month, last quarter, or last year’ musings are irrelevant when fundamental business conditions are changing rapidly.

While working with real-time data requires a more sophisticated data and analytics infrastructure and often comes at a greater cost, there’s perhaps no greater expense than missed opportunity in today’s fast-paced landscape. Up-to-the-minute insights empower organisations to make faster, more informed decisions by understanding what is – and is not – working in the business. This helps businesses survive inflationary cycles by cutting non-functioning investments and doubling down on the profitable parts of the business.

Real-time insights are critical for business agility. Agility without data is operating on instinct and hunch. Most critically, real-time data can alert a company of issues early. Unlike wine, problems do not get better with age.

As an increasing number of companies look to data to gain a competitive advantage, those with real-time data will secure a winning position. This is why real-time data analytics will be in high demand throughout 2023.

Embracing a multi-cloud strategy

CIOs are concerned about cloud spending. And rightly so. According to KPMG’s annual technology survey, many companies that have shifted enterprise-technology tools into the cloud in recent years, in part as a cost-saving measure, say those investments have yet to pay off. Some are even seeing costs go up.

The primary reason for these blown budgets? Cloud costs are often not transparent in early deployments due to consumption-based pricing and the lack of experience with new technology models. Without experience, CIOs aren’t able to think strategically about how to distribute IT capabilities across different cloud providers to maximise cost productivity and figure out how to make different cloud services work well together.

While some cloud vendors are lowering sales forecasts for the year ahead, we believe the answer to the problem lies in embracing a multi-cloud strategy, optimising for cost productivity on a per-provider basis.

At SnapLogic, we announced at the AWS re:Invent 2022 event significant business momentum resulting from enhancements to our Partner Connect Program, which helps partners accelerate their integration and automation capabilities.

SnapLogic was also recognised for providing customers and partners with the highest return on investment (ROI) in the shortest amount of time, as assessed by Forrester. Since its inception last year, partners have developed over 400 SnapLogic specialisations that accelerate customer value with services and solutions.

As stated by Jason Wakeam, Vice President of Global Channels at SnapLogic: “As a cloud native integration platform, we’re constantly improving ways our partners help customers modernise their cloud, applications and data architecture.”

Bridging the ‘great data divide’

Those organisations that are truly data-driven have the ability to act with certainty in the face of uncertainty. That is, when up against economic uncertainties, wars, flow of talent trends, pandemics, natural disasters and the like, those that are truly data-driven will thrive through informed decision-making. Those that are not will rely on luck rather than their wits to survive.

While big data has largely been harnessed by large corporations and governments, real-time data is now more accessible to companies of any size. Data democratisation, through more accessible analytic tools and cloud technologies, puts insights in the hands of everyone, working to create a generation of business owners that are swapping their gut instincts for data-driven operations.

2023 will see more firms of all sizes embrace the power of data analytics to grow their revenues and margins in the face of difficult economic headwinds, effectively bridging the Great Data Divide.

2023: The year of AI

AI is fast moving from lofty fantasy to reality, and 2023 is only going to see the use and development of AI accelerate. Already today, AI has the ability to turn text into drawings and videos demonstrating the ability to not only analyse but create. Tesla’s autonomous driving system has also made a giant leap forward, illustrating the progress that image processing and edge computing are making. SnapLogic’s Iris AI, for instance, uses AI to automate difficult, low-level development tasks, eliminating the data and application integration backlog that stifles most technology initiatives.

And this is just AI in its infancy. The future of AI technology is set to greatly impact the business landscape in the next year and beyond. It’s likely 2023 will bring AI-based technologies that personalise enterprise software for the individual employee experience. AI will also continue to help employees do specific jobs better and more efficiently.

AI holds great promise to deliver not only productivity but business agility. By adopting powerful AI technologies that can unify data in one platform, an organisation is primed to connect the dots between its data and its people seamlessly.

Jeremiah Stone is CTO at SnapLogic, responsible for guiding the continued development and future direction of SnapLogic’s Intelligent Integration Platform enabling customers to further speed the integration and automation process.