The transport, logistics, and supply chain sectors are laser focused on efficiency. The aim is to get the right thing to the right place at the right time, making best use of the available infrastructure, while a multitude of global and local factors attempt to eat into margins. In the last 36 months, a litany of events have caused consistent supply chain issues, from Covid to grounded cargo ships, to industrial action to escalating fuel prices.

As IoT (Internet of Things) device form factors have got smaller and batteries have got better, use cases for IoT applications have expanded into every sector. From trucks, to shipping containers, people, to cattle, an organisation’s assets can be fixed, mobile, autonomous and even sentient - relaying information that can deliver new business insights and competitive advantage. But these benefits only come if the information is able to get to the right place at the right time.

Almost three years into the hybrid working experiment and for some, the unintended pilot has turned into an adopted model, while for others the IT complexities of dealing with a remote workforce remain a persistent headache. Although hybrid or remote working are not new concepts, there are several reasons it wasn’t a widely adopted model prior to the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. Many of those reasons are cultural, but some are purely technical.

Internet of Things (IoT) deployments continue to expand globally, revolutionising the way businesses operate by boosting efficiency and enhancing experiences for customers and employees. But as is the case with many innovations, growth has outpaced security considerations resulting in unforeseen problems emerging as bad actors seek to exploit new vulnerabilities.

Microsoft, like Amazon and Google, is experiencing slowing growth in its cloud operation, Azure, with analysts at UBS noting that the cloud business may be maturing as the economy struggles, curtailing the hockey stick curve of previous years.

Despite being the oldest and largest cloud vendor, market leader Amazon Web Services, known to all as AWS, is not immune to market trends. Despite a 20% year-on-year increase in fourth quarter revenue on 2022, growth was considerably slower than the preceding quarters, as companies of all sizes in all sectors reel in their tech spend.

Google Cloud, as it’s now known - it dropped the ‘Platform’ in recent months - is the number three market leader, offering hosting on the same supporting infrastructure that Google uses internally for products like Google Search and YouTube.

During times of economic uncertainty, some companies become extra sensitive to costs, while others look to optimise their spend as they seek out competitive advantage during the downturn. Adopting public cloud services and infrastructure purely as a means of saving costs has long been debunked as a false economy, with many of the savings realised in the form of agility, efficiency, and optimisation, which may at some point turn into revenue gains.

With costs rising across the board, business leaders are seeking to become more savvy about their tech expenditure. It’s now well recognised that without proper oversight, cloud costs can easily spiral out of control, but reducing spend isn’t always easy. Understanding when and where to make changes to your infrastructure is what is key to maximising productivity and ROI from cloud infrastructure investments.

Digital transformation continued apace in 2022, with the public cloud helping businesses reduce the financial risk of innovation and drive agility when they need it most. A quote from Dave McCarthy, Research Vice President at IDC, sums up the sentiment of the year: "Cloud is no longer considered a location but rather an operating model for future innovation." With that in mind, here are three of the key cloud trends to watch in 2023…