A Dec. 30, 2022, Data Center Knowledge article forecast five shifts for 2023: wider adoption of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), greater attention to sustainability, growth in cloud-native and industry-specific cloud services, more data-center automation, and investment in semiconductor manufacturing. These were forecasts made before 2023, not a report on what ultimately happened. The predictions described different kinds of change: technology adoption, operating priorities, and large-scale construction spending.
How the five forecasts differed
| Area | What the forecast focused on |
|---|---|
| SASE | Adoption of a security and networking architecture |
| Sustainability | Business investment priorities and more efficient use of infrastructure and devices |
| Cloud-native and industry clouds | Software-development approaches and cloud services tailored to industries |
| Data-center automation | Market growth for tools and systems that automate data-center operations |
| Semiconductor manufacturing | New factory construction and supply-chain capacity |
1. SASE adoption was expected to rise
The article reported that SASE revenue grew 33% in the third quarter of 2022, citing Dell’Oro Group. On that basis, Dell’Oro research director Mauricio Sanchez expected continued investment and forecast that the SASE market would exceed $8 billion in 2023. That figure was a forecast, not a confirmed 2023 result.
SASE, or Secure Access Service Edge, brings networking and security functions together to support secure connections to applications. Gartner research vice president Jeffrey Hewitt connected its adoption to hybrid work and the shift to cloud computing. He also advised infrastructure and operations teams implementing SASE to favor an integrated approach and consider single-vendor solutions. That recommendation is an implementation perspective, not evidence that one-vendor products suit every organization.
2. Sustainability was becoming an infrastructure priority
The article cited Gartner’s finding that 87% of business leaders planned to increase sustainability investment in 2023 and 2024. The figure was reported in the 2022 article and describes planned spending, not verified spending or a data-center-only survey result. The article situated the plans in the context of environmental, social, and governance goals.
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For data-center operators, the proposed focus extended beyond the facility itself. Hewitt pointed to improving the sustainability of data centers and cloud services, raising infrastructure efficiency and performance, and embracing an IT circular economy for devices. In practical terms, the prediction linked sustainability to how organizations use infrastructure assets and manage devices over their lifecycles; it did not specify a particular efficiency target or quantify expected savings.
3. Cloud-native and industry-specific cloud services were set to expand
Cloud-native development across cloud and data centers
Forrester principal analyst Lee Sustar described Kubernetes, containers, and serverless technologies as extending across both public cloud and data-center environments. The article connected these approaches with developing and deploying software at scale more quickly and using IT resources more effectively. It also identified 5G and edge technologies as additional sources of pressure to modernize infrastructure.
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The prediction was not that traditional data centers would disappear. Rather, the account described cloud-native tools operating across public-cloud and data-center settings, alongside virtual-machine technology. It offered no adoption percentage or date for those technologies.
Industry cloud platforms
Gartner forecast that more than 50% of enterprises would adopt industry cloud platforms by 2027. In the article, an industry cloud platform means a combination of traditional cloud services and functionality tailored to a particular industry. This was a 2022 forecast about enterprise adoption by a future date, not a measured adoption rate.
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4. Data-center automation was forecast to grow
Grand View Research put the global data-center automation market at $7.6 billion in 2022 and forecast it would reach $20.9 billion by 2030, a 13.5% compound annual growth rate. These figures were estimates and projections cited in the 2022 article, not later audited market results.
The drivers named in the article included cloud-native server use, enterprise cloud spending, hybrid-cloud architectures, 5G deployment, efficient servers, reliable infrastructure, resilient power, and balanced load management. Together, these drivers frame automation as an operational response to more complex infrastructure and demands for efficient, dependable service. The forecast measures market growth; it does not establish that every operator would automate the same tasks or realize a particular cost reduction.
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5. Semiconductor investment was expected to strengthen capacity
SEMI forecast that 28 semiconductor manufacturing facilities would begin construction in 2023 and that more than $500 billion would be spent building new factories by 2024. Both were forward-looking estimates cited in the 2022 article. The facility count refers to construction starts, while the spending figure refers to factory building; neither alone establishes how much production capacity would be online by a given date.
SEMI president and CEO Ajit Manocha linked the projected buildout to semiconductors’ strategic importance across countries and industries, as well as government incentives to expand production and strengthen supply chains. For data centers, the connection is that computing infrastructure depends on chips; the forecast, however, was about semiconductor facilities and investment broadly, not a quantified allocation to data-center components.
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What readers should take from these 2023 predictions
The forecasts described a connected but varied set of pressures on the data-center industry. SASE concerned how users and applications are connected securely; sustainability and automation concerned how infrastructure and devices are operated; cloud-native and industry-cloud growth concerned how software and services are built and deployed; semiconductor factory investment concerned the upstream capacity supporting digital systems.
Because the article was published before 2023, its figures should be read as historical expectations, not current market data or proof that each forecast came true. The available account does not provide actual 2023 outcomes for SASE revenue, sustainability spending, facility construction, or automation-market size. It is therefore useful as a record of what industry forecasters emphasized at the end of 2022, rather than as a present-day investment forecast.
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