Every year, Forrester predicts what lies ahead for cloud. Did our 2023 predictions come true? This report holds us accountable by assessing each prediction against what happened in the previous year. Early 2023 was a time of economic uncertainty: Higher interest rates, failing regional banks, and government bailouts limited spending on new opportunities and IT investments. Despite the uncertainty, firms continued to increase spending on cloud, albeit not at the exponential pace of the pandemic years. Major progress on genAI made 2023 the year of AI; many vendors refocused their investments and acquisitions to align with this.