241: A Reflection on 2023: Clouded by the Fog of AI

Welcome to episode 241 of the Cloud Pod Podcast – where the forecast is always cloudy! Can you believe we’ve reached the end of 2023? Neither can we! Join us today for a look back at 2023 and all of the announcements that excited, befuddled, and confused us – as well as a slew of predictions for 2024. Make sure to share your own predictions (after listening, of course) with us on socials. 

Titles we almost went with this week: 

• Wait, How is it 2024? 
• Thank God 2023 is Over
• Thank God 2020 is Over… Finally?
• The Cloud Pod Breaks the Crystal Ball when Trying to Predict 2024
• 2023: A Snarky Saga of Disappointment
• 2023: A Snarky Saga of AI 
• 2023… Was Anything Announced Besides AI
• How Cloudy Was It? A Whimsical Look Back at 2023 and Forecasting the Fluff in 2024 The 2023 Cloud Recap and 2024 Foggy Forecasts
• 2023’s Cloudiest Moments and 2024’s Forecasted Fun
• Cache & Carry: Storing Up 2023’s Memories and Downloading 2024’s Dreams 
• Even AI can’t help us find the best announcements of 2023
• Even AI can’t help us predict the announcements of 2024

A big thanks to this week’s sponsor:

Foghorn Consulting provides top-notch cloud and DevOps engineers to the world’s most innovative companies. Initiatives stalled because you have trouble hiring?  Foghorn can be burning down your DevOps and Cloud backlogs as soon as next week.

General Podcast News

00:23 Lot’s of changes around these here parts! 

• • As we reflect on 2023, we would love to hear your general thoughts on the podcast. 2023 was a big year of changes for us. 
    • Peter left as host, and we replaced him with Matt.
    • We dropped the lightning round, and reduced the number of stories we covered; going for more depth and discussion. (I think we could still improve here.)
    • We added the Cloud Journeys and did a segment on CCOE, Containers, Kubernetes, Cloud Platform, etc.
    • We added the aftershow to talk about tech adjacent things that interest us as hosts.
• Absolutely do get on our Slack channel and let us know what you all would like to hear or your general thoughts on the show. 

2023 Predictions

Also known as “things we’re always wrong about.”

• Jonathan: Microsoft will release in preview of an Azure branded Chat GPT
• Justin: Data Sovereignty will drive single panes of glass against multi-cloud
  • Totally missed on this on panes of glass, but OUT OF THE PARK when it comes to data sovereignty. That was a big deal this year. 
• Ryan: An influx of all of the AI and No-Code solution convergence. 
  • We’re closer…but not quite there yet. Maybe another year or two. 
• Peter: Recession will drive significant developer layoffs, and drive automation solutions for ops and deployment..
  • So, layoffs were a thing. But not because of recession, but because of corporate greed. So that’s fun. 

06:50 Ryan – “I also think Microsoft will get there’s no matter which way it goes, right? Because they’re either gonna sell it directly, or their investment in Open AI will pay off through shareholder price of stocks.”

11:26