Gartner: ‘No Business Strategy Without a Cloud Strategy’

Partners take note: Revenue from organizations’ pursuit of a cloud strategy will surge by $66 billion next year — from $408 billion in 2021 to $474 billion. That’s according to Gartner. And within a few years, cloud revenue will eclipse its non-cloud counterparts, the research firm predicts.

All that activity comes thanks to cloud, which represents the centerpiece of new digital experiences. These services that have grown imperative amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. So that makes cloud indispensable.

Gartner’s Milind Govekar

“There is no business strategy without a cloud strategy,” said Milind Govekar, distinguished vice president at Gartner. “The adoption and interest in public cloud continues unabated as organizations pursue a ‘cloud-first’ policy for onboarding new workloads.”

Examples of those new workloads include mobile payment systems where banks have invested in startups; energy companies using cloud to improve customers’ retail experiences; and car companies launching new personalization services for customer’s safety and infotainment, Govekar said.

As such trends lead the way, Gartner analysts expect more than 85% of organizations to have a cloud-first ethos by 2025. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll be fully enabled with cloud technologies. In fact, these organizations won’t be able to execute their digital strategies without a cloud-native approach, Gartner says. (This is where partners come in really handy.)

“Adopting cloud-native platforms means that digital or product teams will use architectural principles and capabilities to take advantage of the inherent capabilities within the cloud environment,” said Govekar. “New workloads deployed in a cloud-native environment will be pervasive, not just popular, and anything non-cloud will be considered legacy.”

To that point, Gartner estimates that more than 95% of new digital workloads will reside on cloud-native platforms by 2025. That represents a 30% jump from 2021. This shift also is going to lead to a product-oriented operating model, Gartner says — business and IT will align by products. As a result, expect the creation of new roles such as site reliability engineers or product managers. Furthermore, depending on the circumstances, channel partners could fill these roles on a third-party basis.

Other Outcomes from an All-Cloud Strategy

The benefits of cloud capabilities will simplify organizations’ processes, too, per Gartner. For example, the firm projects the use of low-code and no-code technologies to almost triple by 2025. That’s going to democratize application development within organizations, letting the teams that use the software program it to meet specific needs.

“The technological and organizational silos of application development, automation, integration and governance will become obsolete,” said Govekar.

In this instance, channel partners can serve as sounding boards and advisers, offering best practices insight and even hands-on help as customers develop their applications.

Finally, remember that any cloud strategy requires connectivity. And these days, said connectivity has to be speedy and secure. That’s why, when it comes to networking and security, cloud-delivered secure access service edge (SASE) presents the fastest growth opportunity, Gartner says. That’s a boon for partners selling these services, for sure. Gartner analysts say the reason for the increase goes back to the cloud: As most traffic from branches and edge computing locations will not go to an enterprise data center, CIOs and IT leaders will rely on SASE to secure the anywhere and anytime access needs from users and devices.

Gartner estimates that in 2022, end-user spending on SASE will total $6.8 billion, up from $4.8 billion in 2021. In addition, by 2025, more than one-half of organizations will have explicit strategies to adopt SASE, up from less than 5% in 2020.

“CIOs and IT leaders must bring security to the sessions, instead of bringing sessions to the security,” said Govekar.