Research agency Gartner has presented the technologies and trends that infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must start preparing for to support digital infrastructure in 2019.
“The focus of I&O leaders is no longer to solely deliver engineering and operations, but deliver products and services that support and enable an organization’s business strategy,” said Ross Winser, senior director, Analyst at Gartner.
10 key trends to support digital infrastructure
Serverless Computing
I&O leaders need to adopt an application-centric approach to serverless computing, managing APIs and SLAs, rather than physical infrastructures. Serverless does not replace containers or VMs, so it’s critical to learn how best and where to use the technology. More than 20 percent of global enterprises will have deployed serverless computing technologies by 2020, which is an increase from less than 5 percent today.
AI Impacts
AI is climbing up the ranks in terms of the value it will serve I&O leaders who need to manage growing infrastructures without being able to grow their staff. AI has the potential to be organizationally transformational and is at the core of digital business, the impacts of which are already being felt within organizations. AI-derived business value will reach nearly $3.9 trillion by 2022.
Network Agility
The focus for 2019 and beyond must move to how I&O leaders can help their teams increase the pace of network operations to meet demand.
The demands on the network are set to grow with the advent of 5G, cloud maturity, and the explosion in numbers of IoT devices.
Death of the Data Center
Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80 percent of enterprises will migrate entirely away from on-premises data centers with the current trend of moving workloads to colocation, hosting and the cloud leading them to shut down their traditional data center.
I&O leaders must prepare to place workloads based on business needs, not constrained by physical location.
Edge Computing
IoT and immersive technologies will drive more information processing to the edge, redefining and reshaping what I&O leaders will need to deploy and manage. Edge computing is a part of a distributed computing topology where information processing is located close to the edge, which is where things and people produce or consume that information. The critical time frame for organizations to adopt this trend is between 2020 and 2023.
I&O leaders find that staffing justifications require resolving complex relationships between costs, activities and customer quality expectations. Explaining I&O staffing requirements to IT and business leaders in terms of business value by connecting staffing levels to business performance and strategic objectives is a must in today’s modern digital enterprise.
Software as a Service (SaaS) Denial
In 2019 and beyond, SaaS will have a big impact on how organizations look at infrastructure delivery strategies moving forward. Most I&O leaders are still focused on infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) solutions.
Talent Management Becomes Critical
Expanding I&O skill sets, practices and procedures to accommodate hybrid operations is of the utmost importance in 2019 and beyond.
Global Infrastructure Enablement
Despite few infrastructures being truly “global” in nature, organizations must still prepare for the notion of “infrastructure everywhere.” I&O leaders must work within the constraints of tight budgets and cost pressures.
