The forecast calls for multi-cloud chaos: By 2025, multi-cloud environments will become the “new normal,” but with a twist—organizations will be navigating clouds with as much finesse as a game of Twister. A recent Gartner report found that by 2028, more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms, but managing these clouds will resemble herding digital cats.—Ravi Ithal, GVP and CTO, Proofpoint DSPM GroupHybrid multi-cloud infrastructure will be standard, supported by data observability: In 2025, hybrid multi-cloud environments will become the standard for data-driven enterprises, optimizing security, privacy, and cost management. Data observability will be essential for ensuring seamless operations and unified visibility across these diverse infrastructures, helping organizations manage multi-cloud and on-premises data assets with enhanced resilience.—Rohit Choudhary, co-founder and CEO, Acceldata
The rise of the hybrid lakehouse: The resurgence of on-prem data architectures will see lakehouses expanding into hybrid environments, merging cloud and on-premises data storage seamlessly. The hybrid lakehouse model offers scalability of cloud storage and secure control of on-premises, delivering flexibility and scalability within a unified, accessible framework.—Justin Borgman, co-founder and CEO, Starburst
Cloud optimization will shift from cost to risk mitigation: Enterprises will increasingly view cloud infrastructure as a tool for risk mitigation rather than just a means to cut costs. As organizations balance hybrid infrastructures with regulatory demands and the need for resilient systems, they’ll focus on creating secure environments that safeguard data, support AI-driven operations, and withstand unpredictable outages and cyber threats. Standards like DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) will play a crucial role in guiding companies in establishing reliable, secure, and efficient cloud architectures that prioritize resilience and reduce operational risks across complex, distributed environments.—Catchpoint CEO Mehdi Daoudi
Slow and steady will not win the cloud modernization race: The traditional "slow and steady" approach to cloud modernization isn’t working—traditional engagement models often prioritize time and materials over measurable transformation outcomes. Organizations will need to break free from gradual modernization patterns and embrace more decisive approaches. We’ll see increased adoption of modernization strategies that emphasize speed and efficiency, backed by clear metrics and business outcomes. The market will not forever tolerate endless modernization cycles that fail to deliver real transformation. Organizations must either modernize decisively or watch more agile competitors capture market share.—Amir Rapson, CTO, CCSO, and co-founder, vFunction
Reevaluating cloud versus on-prem decisions: Enterprises, especially in regulated industries, will adopt a more structured and informed framework for deciding which applications will run in public clouds vs. in private cloud/virtualization infrastructure. This will be driven by performance, governance and cost considerations, as well as security. The automatic assumption that every new application needs to run in a public cloud has been losing its inertia as infrastructure and operations teams realize that, in some circumstances, they can do a better job with less effort and cost on-prem, and that not all applications need the on-demand elasticity enabled by public cloud providers.—Rani Osnat, SVP strategy, Aqua Security
All hail the sovereign cloud: In 2025, we’re going to see a real push towards sovereign and private clouds. We’re already seeing the largest hyperscalers pouring billions of dollars into constructing data centers around the world to offer these capabilities. This rush to build capacity will take a while to come online, in the meantime, demand will skyrocket fueled by a wave of legislation coming predominantly from the EU. Those with flexible, scalable and elastic cloud infrastructure will be able to adopt sovereign or private approaches quickly. Those with monolithic, rigid infrastructure will be putting themselves behind the curve.—Kevin Cochrane, CMO of Vultr
The amount of unstructured data stored in both public cloud and private cloud environments will continue to grow: The impact of unstructured data management solutions that give customers the ability to manage data no matter where it is located will increase as the data in multiple environments accumulates. It’s no longer realistic to ignore the fact that, in most organizations, data lives in a hybrid environment and global data management is required.—Steve Leeper, VP of product marketing, Datadobi