Cloud Computing Trends From Forrester: Recent Episodes
Forrester
As AI adoption accelerates, many organizations are discovering that spending is rising faster than their ability to control it. Building the right cost management capabilities is becoming essential to scaling AI without sacrificing financial discipline.
SpaceX is a rocket company. It also became an AI company the day its founder Elon Musk folded in xAI, inheriting a frontier model in Grok, the planet-scale Colossus training cluster, and the live data feed of the X platform (formerly Twitter). The IPO headlines fixated on the trillionaire status, the stock price, and the […]
Unified storage has long been treated as a pragmatic, commodity storage investment: Balance cost, simplify operations, move on. In a world of AI enablement and, consequently, downside AI risk, that mindset no longer holds. Agentic, autonomous AI use cases are making storage a strategic decision point to address capability needs, performance requirements, and GRC concerns. AI systems increasingly operate directly on live enterprise data, […]
SUSECON 2026 in Prague marked a clear advance on the platform pillars SUSE introduced a year earlier in Orlando — and a more forceful articulation of its choice narrative. SUSE argued that choice only matters if it can be operationalized: enabling sovereign workload control and resilience not just to technical failure but to economic and […]
Google Cloud Next 2026 opened with Thomas Kurian declaring the end of the AI pilot era and Sundar Pichai comparing the enterprise refrain of last year (“Can we build an agent?”) to today’s: “How do we manage thousands of them?” Google Cloud Next ’26 answers the second question with a single product story: Gemini Enterprise […]
At KubeCon Europe 2026, Kubernetes’ AI story shifted from “add support” to “rebuild the platform.” AI conformance, upstream GPU orchestration, shared inference blueprints, and in-platform governance are setting the new defaults.
What Is The AI Divide In Data Centers, Semiconductors, And Sovereignty? The AI divide represents a strategic inflection point for global business. Those without these resources will fall behind, not just technologically but competitively. Productivity, customer engagement, and decision-making is widening across industries and geographies, creating systemic issues for companies that fail to invest, such as: […]
Predictions are a tough sport to play. If you get them all right, you played it safe by recapping existing trends or gave wishy-washy statements that are hard to verify. If you got them all wrong, you likely went for the headlines with little accountability on those claims. Every year, we try to find that […]
The goal of this year’s event was to position AWS as a newly transformed, AI-native cloud that’s ready right now. Here’s a closer look at the key announcements and developments.
The 10th anniversary of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in Atlanta was both a celebration of progress in the open-source community and a moment of reflection about the challenges facing that same community amid change.
Cloud used to be a sleepy space but not anymore. Today, the top cloud trends are the top business trends. Learn three of the top 10 cloud trends for 2025 in this preview of a new report.
Kubernetes is evolving from a cloud-native foundation to an AI-native enabler. Get a preview of what to expect at the upcoming KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 event in Atlanta on November 10–13.
According to Forrester’s Priorities Survey, 2025, almost 30% of enterprises exceeded their IT budgets in 2024, indicating a strategic failure beyond mere budgeting issues. Find out how high-performance IT organizations are merging FinOps and IT finance to manage technology spend more effectively.
Sovereignty is no longer optional. Geopolitical tensions, tariffs, and regulatory pressures have made digital sovereignty a permanent concern for tech leaders. But chasing full sovereignty across your IT stack can lead to decision paralysis, ballooning costs, and operational complexity. Instead, organizations should aim for what Forrester calls minimum viable sovereignty — a pragmatic, risk-based approach […]
Find out more about Tencent’s sovereign cloud solution, Tencent Cloud Enterprise, which it is using to pursue overseas business expansion.
At the fifth Tencent Cloud International Summit, as part of the company’s wider Global Digital Ecosystem Summit in Shenzhen, Tencent made its strategic direction clear: It is accelerating two engines to drive future growth.
AWS Summit New York City is a smaller cousin to the re:Invent mega-conference set for the late fall in Las Vegas, so most big announcements tend to wait until that event, but agentic AI won’t wait, despite its relatively modest take-up to date.
The struggle to balance single- and multisourcing decisions is pervasive. Because service engagement decisions are fragmented across the organization and made at the portfolio level — not the enterprise level — companies are constantly at odds.
What we’re now observing in Southeast Asia is a more nuanced and strategically driven “diverse cloud” approach that directly addresses concerns around US foreign policy uncertainty and the imperative for localized data control.
Learn how increased complexity and additional market factors led us to rethink the title of our upcoming Forrester Landscape report on digital sovereignty platforms
Forrester has just released its inaugural Vector Database Wave, marking a significant milestone in this rapidly evolving category. The vector database market is buzzing and nearly all other database vendors are racing to offer vector support. While native vector databases have had a head start over the past few years, traditional database vendors are now […]
Commvault announced that it is acquiring Clumio for $47 million on September 24. What does this acquisition mean to one of the leaders in the enterprise data resilience market?
On Tuesday, IBM announced its acquisition of Kubernetes cost management solution Kubecost. This acquisition follows a series of FinOps-focused companies in recent years with Apptio (TBM/FinOps), Turbonomic (FinOps/resource automation), Nordcloud (FinOps services), and Instana (observability). Answers To Your Top Questions About The Kubecost Acquistion What should I know? Kubecost enhances an already market-leading solution. In […]
Public cloud may be the major underpinning of enterprise infrastructure strategies, but it comes with risks. Learn the top three cloud trends that CISOs and security leaders need to be aware of in this preview of our upcoming Security & Risk Summit on December 9–11.
Enterprise business applications run all phases of a company’s operations such as sales, customer service, accounting, finance, human resources, inventory, and manufacturing. They streamline and coordinate work across the enterprise, supporting corporate goals of revenue, profitability, and cost optimization. As a result, the market for these applications continues to aggressively grow. Today’s business applications are […]
VMware Explore 2024 began with Broadcom CEO Hock Tan reannouncing a significant departure from the previous VMware direction (embracing hybrid cloud) to a singular focus on making private cloud a success. Much like hyperscalers deliver an integrated set of infrastructure services, Broadcom is targeting integrating compute, storage, and network resources. It is aiming at making […]
On August 15, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced its intent to acquire Morpheus Data, a multicloud management solution “to make HPE GreenLake cloud the de facto platform for innovating IT.” The deal is expected to close early FY2024 Q4 of its fiscal year. Morpheus follows a string of HP acquisitions in recent years (OpsRamp (2023), Ampool […]
Forrester’s top 10 cloud trends for 2024 report is out. No one will be surprised that AI figures prominently. Yet there are other fundamental shifts in play — the rise of the intelligent edge, increased cloud compliance complexity, and (finally!) mature multicloud networking offerings. Tracking these trends was a collective effort with all of my […]
For a time, it appeared that the reach of serverless platforms had exceeded their grasp. After some notable success stories like the high-profile “serverless-first” Capital One strategy, hype appeared to be dying down. This is partly because serverless has always struggled from unclean definitions, and despite the lack of infrastructure and application servers to wrangle […]
At long last, the The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Cost Management And Optimization (CCMO), Q3 2024 is published! The process is incredibly long and thorough. We go through hours long briefings, customer calls, and perform multiple iterations on scoring. Vendors go through the same. They put in many hours setting up customer references, product demonstrations and […]
Our latest report highlights how these linear asset intensive industries, although relatively late to public cloud, are now eagerly pursuing its potential.
For many organizations, SaaS and commercial off-the-shelf software are at best an 80% solution to the business need. Find out how cloud-native development can help close the gap in this preview of our upcoming Technology & Innovation Summit North America.
At its annual flagship event, Cisco Live, about 20,000 IT and security pros gathered in Las Vegas to hear the company’s latest announcements, plans for its $28 billion Splunk acquisition, and vision for the future. While there was a heavy dose of AI everywhere, as compared to other vendor pronouncements, Cisco’s AI aspirations are modest […]
Technology and data leaders are at a pivotal moment, being pressed to chart a path that capitalizes on new and emerging technology to drive meaningful business results. Learn how Forrester's annual Technology and Innovation Summit North America can help you get there.
IT platform teams’ responsibilities in 2024 are expanding radically. They’re being asked to provide cost-effective alternative solutions for the VMware virtualization technology that typically dominates enterprise IT. While they’re at it, could they please also stand up state-of-the-art AI platforms that can support generative AI in the data center and cloud that work as well […]
Wiz (founded in 2020) announced a new VC funding round of $1B at a post-money valuation of $12B. Wiz has cumulatively raised $1.8 billion in venture capital, is generating over $350M in ARR and on an upward trajectory towards a likely IPO in 2025. This signals high investor confidence in cloud security (specifically cloud security […]
With Selipsky Out, What’s Next For AWS? On May 14, AWS announced Adam Selipsky’s departure as CEO and that Matt Garman, AWS senior VP of sales and marketing, would replace him in June. Selipsky’s reasoning for this move was to “spend more time with family for a while, recharge a bit, and create some mental […]
The consistent, high-usage profile of data centers may lead us to believe that cloud data centers are markedly more sustainable than private cloud data centers. But data shows that public cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry – a notoriously carbon-intensive segment. A single public data center can consume the same […]
The Forrester Wave™: Commerce Solutions For B2B, Q2 2024, reveals that public clouds help vendors refocus on their markets by narrowing what used to be a chasm between being feature-rich or being architected for today. Now, B2B businesses can find a commerce solution provider that gives them the best of both: Architecture alliances let commerce […]
Cloud has driven enterprise IT transformation with newfound speed and scale. But IT operating models haven’t always kept up. Learn how Forrester’s Cloud Operating Model Framework can help catch up.
As the cloud landscape adapts to new changes, there is a renewed interest in cloud governance programs. But implementation of cloud governance may prove to be more difficult than expected. Find out why.
This year’s Mobile World Congress went well beyond the usual telco topics and themes. Learn six of the key themes coming out of one of the most important annual tech events in Europe.
Microsoft announced recently that it was unbundling Teams from its various Microsoft 365 plans worldwide. Find out what is actually changing and what it means for customers, regulators, and Microsoft.
The boundaries of IT service providers are in flux due to a variety of motivations, and too often, customers are left with more questions than answers. Read this blog to get four tips for managing service provider transitions.
The AI cloud is on the rise. Learn the key considerations that cloud customers should have as they sort out which cloud offerings fit and which don’t fit with their AI workload requirements.
GenAI, WebAssembly (Wasm), and cloud sustainability were big topics at KubeCon Europe 2024. Read our three key takeaways from the event as well as three recommended next steps in this review.
Chipmaker NVIDIA announced some compelling new products and breakthroughs in AI infrastructure at its 2024 GPU Technology Conference. Get the details in this comprehensive review of the event.
Learn who the six leaders are in Forrester's new Wave report on Application Modernization And Migration Services what they do to set themselves apart.
Last month, I published The Future Of Cloud report and a corresponding blog post to talk about its future as abstracted, intelligent, and composable. Let’s take a closer look at the “intelligent” component and what it means amid the intense interest in generative AI today and long-term trends in cloud. Cloud is nearly always mentioned […]
The debates the Energy Efficiency Act, aiming to reduce energy use in public authorities, corporations, and data centers, potentially influencing future laws globally. Why is this important and what does this mean? Here’s the context: Data centers use a lot of energy. The International Energy Agency estimated that global data center electricity consumption in 2022 […]
Subscription-based hardware is the emerging model that every hardware vendor is promising to customers, partners, and investors. It’s a significant shift from the classic capex model where firms spend money for outright hardware purchases. There are several scenarios like new technology, short-term projects, test before you buy, and infrastructure bundled with managed services, etc. where […]
In late June, at FinOpsX, the annual event the FinOps Foundation organizes, a big topic was the open-source project FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS) which aims to standardize the billing construct and presentation of cloud cost data. This is a BIG DEAL. In doing so, FOCUS will remove the complexity and overhead involved […]
A precarious economy has tempered business and technology leaders’ budget expectations. But now is not the time to retreat. Our 2024 Planning Guides advise on where to invest and experiment for success.
The only the thing more complex than running on Kubernetes is figuring out how to run containerized apps consistently across different environments without it. Find out more in this preview of our Technology & Innovation North America event.
I just spent an amazing few days at FinOps X in San Diego, the second annual event hosted by the FinOps Foundation. From its initial start in 2022, the event tripled in attendees and featured 48 companies out of the Fortune 50. Mirroring its members, attendees were a mix of vendors offering cloud cost management […]
It’s been a great decade and a half for the clouds. Every tech executive I speak with wants to know what’s next – and not just in the next couple of years, but the next decade. In my latest report, The Future Of Cloud – I lay it all out. In a nutshell, cloud is […]
Government, healthcare, retail, supply chain and logistics, manufacturing and financial services will see an explosion in cloud adoption in India. We expect Indian cloud market to see an unprecedented growth 24% in the coming year. Indian enterprises adopting public cloud are spending an average of ₹3.7 billion on public cloud in the past 12 […]
The first quarter earnings reports from hyperscale public cloud providers highlight the challenges of repositioning themselves for the generative AI transformation promised by large language model (LLMs) even as those vendors must adapt to customers’ tighter tech budgets. Forrester clients can find our perspective here. Microsoft’s bid to seize the initiative in cloud with an […]
Late Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that IBM is in potential late-stage talks to acquire cloud cost management and optimization (CCMO) and IT financial management (ITFM)/TBM company, Apptio, for roughly $5 billion. If the deal closes, the value would be at more than twice Apptio’s previous purchase price of $1.94 billion in 2018 when […]
Kubernetes is the de facto standard for deploying and managing application workloads and containers. Lee has written quite a bit about the power of Kubernetes as an innovation platform, but while development and architecture teams are bullish on Kubernetes, security teams can find themselves scrambling to secure Kubernetes environments as they hurtle towards production. The […]
The functions-as-a-service (FaaS) market is developing rapidly as vendors elevate their offerings to meet enterprise needs. Driving demand is a shift from the cloud-born startup development shop to the large-scale enterprise, where FaaS platforms are helping developers rapidly deploy new capabilities into production without wrangling with Kubernetes clusters or building out application servers. To help […]
The tide of COVID-19 has finally receded. As Asia’s economies repopulate the global economic shoreline, they find the beach littered with new opportunities and new threats. Not even half a year in, 2023 already feels like a pivotal year between two eras of digitization. As 2023 progresses, the Asia Pacific technology market is a cauldron […]
Until a few months ago, many saw Gaia-X as a dead entity — a project designed to create a federated and secure European data infrastructure that got stuck in a rut of bureaucracy, national interests, and blurred objectives. The service catalog was empty, the number of members was stagnating, and the real-world impact was absent. […]
While the prevailing macroeconomic conditions reinforce the need to control cloud spend, CFOs still require a solid business case for any net-new spend. Building a business case for FinOps is relatively straightforward with a fairly quick ROI. First, most companies just purchase a relatively inexpensive cloud cost management and optimization (CCMO) solution that adds efficiency, […]
Tools leveraging ML models in dynamic environments must be continuously fed new data in order to adapt to changing conditions and goals. They need to learn as much as possible about their new environments before being fully able and safe to provide service and ultimately deliver value. Synthetic data can help address these and other AI/ML challenges.
Financial services firms are no strangers to innovation. Deep pockets and customer pressure to continually differentiate means that new digital capabilities are constantly in development. Still, this process is not unfettered. With high regulatory pressure FS firms innovate within boundaries, create digital services protected behind corporate firewalls, abide by tenancy isolation rules, and ensure that […]
Happy Cloud Native WASM Day, Europe 2023, part 2! In celebration, I present an interview with Liam Randall and Bailey Hayes from Cosmonic about web assembly. Liam and Bailey discuss the evolution of enterprise computing, from servers to VMs to containers and now to WASM. Learn about how wasmCloud builds a PaaS for applying web […]
Happy Cloud Native WASM Day, Europe 2023! In celebration, I present an interview with Matt Butcher from Fermyon about web assembly and what it brings to modern application programming. He gives a great overview of the origins of WASM and talks about some of the current use cases for the technology, addressing gaps that exist […]
Last week, we published our latest in a series of “State Of” reports for specific verticals. You can find The State Of Cloud In Retail, 2023 on the Forrester website now. Unlike more highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services, retail has leaned on cloud heavily since the early days to power blazing-fast websites […]
Enterprises are hitting their stride in learning how to manage hybrid cloud environments. This week’s announcements from IBM and HPE kick off April on a good note for hybrid cloud. It is a clear sign that clients are continuing to push vendors to deliver the solutions they actually want, not just solutions that vendors want […]
Hear what customers are saying about the new SAP cloud strategy at the DSAG’s Technology Days event in Mannheim, Germany.
Earlier this year I promised a slew of research on FinOps. Today, I published the first in this series on What Technology Executives Need To Know: FinOps. This report is especially timely as FinOps is getting a front row seat with executives globally across verticals and across organizations of all sizes. Amid a growing economic […]
A thriving Data Centre and Cloud Services market in India is spoiling CIOs with choices. Along with the established providers, there is a huge influx of local vendors. AI-enabled solutions, IaaS, PaaS, Identity as a service are a few of the many latest offerings by these vendors. And that is not it. The Indian market […]
On Monday, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced its intention to acquire OpsRamp, which offers a multitenant AIOps-powered IT operations management (ITOM) solution for hybrid cloud environments. Its AIOps solution will be integrated into HPE’s GreenLake edge-to-cloud Platform. OpsRamp’s 300 employees will join HPE’s office of the CTO. Terms of the OpsRamp acquisition were not announced, […]
Mobile World Congress 2023 shows that there is still a lot of dynamism in the tech sector and gives attendees insights into networks, cloud infrastructure, and the emerging world of connected solutions.
I’ve been focusing a lot of my time on two key cloud management conversations: Cost optimization and operationalizing cloud. Over the past three years, I’ve been tracking the cloud cost optimization space closely. I published my latest Wave on this topic last fall, along with a bunch of tactics on how to get started. Cloud […]
The European vendors’ landscape for public cloud development and infrastructure platforms (PCDIPs) is dominated by hyperscalers. Hyperscalers shine particularly in core competencies such as storage and compute capabilities and their ability to rapidly scale and build resilience into their services, but European HQ organizations rated as Strong Performers also made strong claims in areas such […]
I’ve been working with a long list of financial services companies from various subsectors on their cloud strategies. Each wants to know how to best take advantage of cloud while meeting stringent (and shifting) regulatory requirements. It’s been a long road for financial services and cloud. Here’s a little bit of history. Financial services have […]
The nature of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications means that there is not a single silver bullet or method for protecting all SaaS applications. Instead, businesses must look at their SaaS tools as a portfolio of different platforms, each with their own risk profiles. Additionally, modern SaaS tools are API-driven and allow for composability to extend functionality […]
Indian enterprises have had software as a service (SaaS) on their radar for the last seven-plus years, if not more. SaaS uptake in India was slow, and cost used to be the only major driver toward SaaS adoption. Indian enterprises were in dilemma when major software vendors shelved their on-premises solutions in favor of SaaS-only […]
Leading firms use a mix of service providers to build their future fit strategies. Forrester data shows that in 2021, 46% of APAC infrastructure decision-makers whose organizations are adopting cloud said they want to use managed services from cloud service providers. Firms in the region are increasingly turning to partners that can help orchestrate the end-to-end journey to […]
Only 7% of Indian firms qualify as future fit. Learn five critical aspects Indian CIOs should review to ensure a successful digital transformation.
The four-way hyperscaler horse for market share matters as the leading players continue to invest up and down the stack for new capabilities that set the pace for the industry. Those efforts are reflected in the results of The Forrester Wave™: Public Cloud Development And Infrastructure Platforms, Global, Q4 2022, in which custom silicon and […]
Workloads heretofore bound up in information technology outsourcing (ITO) contracts will become a potential source for cloud migration under a new agreement forged by AWS and Atos. Cloud has already been draining the data center outsourcing market by incrementally siphoning off workloads to the cloud, thereby reducing the potential market scope of ITO. In this […]
This week, the US Department of Defense put an end to the year-long suspense by announcing the winners for its Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability contract. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure were the big winners of the $9 billion contract.
Apptio, a pioneer in the technology business management (TBM) field, welcomed some 1,000-plus in-person attendees to its annual conference November 7–9, 2022, in Austin, Texas. Now years in the running, the company launched TBM and the Technology Business Management Council, a quasi-user group and think tank for viewing, understanding, and analyzing IT cost data. The […]
This blog piggybacks off of my last post regarding the management evaluations I’ve been working on in 2022. As previously noted, they take a lot of effort but deliver high value — a lot of which can’t be captured in a single report. I already shared my tidbits of advice for the cost management evaluation. […]
It’s been a grand spring, summer, and fall of Forrester Wave™ evaluations for me. These evaluations are time-intensive. I’ve spent many nights, weekends, and early and late hours on two separate cloud management evaluations. The participating vendors each spent long hours submitting answers to detailed questionnaires, lining up customer references and executive briefings, and preparing […]
Learn about NVIDIA's multiyear collaboration with Microsoft to build a cloud-based artificial intelligence supercomputer.
How will economic headwinds impact spending on cloud native or security in the year ahead? Get a sneak peek at our 2023 cloud computing predictions.
In 2023, European banks and governments will accelerate their cloud plans while Kubernetes will see increased interest, as well. Learn more in our 2023 cloud predictions for EMEA.
As KubeCon North America 2022 gets underway, it’s useful to reflect on how far the cloud-native ecosystem has come, a focus of a new report by my colleague Charlie Dai and me. It wasn’t so long ago that IT enterprise architects began every project with a list of constraints: What can be built with a […]
(Photo copyright: Abhinav Sunil) Circular economy strategies play a substantial role in carbon footprint reduction for technology companies, especially those with product- and IT infrastructure-centered offerings. Organizations such as Dell, which has large consumer as well as enterprise businesses, must prioritize multiple sustainability levers that extend beyond green energy procurement and operations. These priorities must […]
Learn which two of Forrester's top 10 emerging technologies can deliver value to your organization today.
Learn about the the primary carbon reduction levers from being on the public cloud vs. being on premise from Christopher Wellise, director of sustainability and carbon at Amazon Web Services.
Increase, decrease, or experiment? Get tips on assessing your 2023 technology spending plans.
Asia Pacific (APAC) is a vast region with enormous diversity in climate, topography, history, culture, ethnicity, and political and economic development. At $30.9 trillion, the region makes up nearly 40% of the world’s GDP and is now covered by the world’s largest free trade agreement with a market 2.5 times larger than that of the […]
Cloud carbon footprint calculation and optimization is a critical part of an organization’s overall sustainability strategy. Forrester’s technology sustainability framework highlights the importance of addressing cloud and technology architecture for reducing the overall scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions in any industry. I recently talked with the core leadership team at Thoughtworks that led the […]
The competition in the global cloud computing market is heating up. Globally, the market is dominated by a handful of US cloud computing giants, along with a couple of Chinese companies and a plethora of much smaller European players. But there is anxiety across Europe. Fears are mounting (rightfully so) that the continent’s digital future […]