Gartner Says the Future of IT Infrastructure Is Always On, Always Available, Everywhere

Analysts Explore the ‘Brave New World’ of Agile Infrastructures at
Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference
2018, December 3-6 in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#GartnerIO–As more organizations embrace digital
business, infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will need to
evolve their strategies and skills to provide an agile
infrastructure for their business. In fact, Gartner, Inc. said that 75
percent of I&O leaders are not prepared with the skills, behaviors or
cultural presence needed over the next two to three years. These leaders
will need to embrace emerging trends in edge
computing, artificial
intelligence (AI) and the ever-changing cloud marketplace, which
will enable global reach, solve business issues and ensure the
flexibility to enter new markets quickly, anywhere, anytime.

Gartner analysts presented their findings during the Gartner
IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference, which
is taking place here through Thursday.

IT departments no longer just keep the lights on, but are also strategic
deliverers of services, whether sourced internally or external to the
organization. They must position specific workloads based on business, regulatory
and geopolitical impacts. As organizations’ customers and suppliers grow
to span the globe, I&O leaders must deliver on the idea that
“infrastructure is everywhere” and consider the following four factors:

Agility Thrives on Diversity

Bob
Gill, vice president at Gartner, said the days of IT controlling
everything are over. As options in technologies, partners and solutions
rise, I&O leaders lose visibility, surety and control over their
operations. “The cyclical, dictated factory approach in traditional IT
cannot provide the agility required by today’s business,” Mr. Gill said.
“The need for agility evolved faster than our ability to deliver.”

Despite agility placing among their top 3 priorities for 2019, I&O
leaders are faced with conundrum as a diverse range of products is
available to them. “The ideal situation for I&O leaders would be to
coordinate the unmanageable collection of options we face today —
colocation, multicloud, platform as a service (PaaS) — and get ahead of
the business needs tomorrow. We must reach into our digital toolbox of
possibilities and apply it to customer intimacy, product leadership and
operational excellence to establish guardrails around managing the
diversity of options in the long term,” Mr. Gill said.

The need for agility will only increase, so the two key tasks of I&O
leaders will be to manage the sprawl of diversity in the short term and
become the product manager of services needed to build business driven,
agile solutions in the long term. “I&O has the governance, security and
experience to lead this new charge for the business,” Mr. Gill said.

Applications Enable Change

Infrastructure can save money and enable applications, but by itself it
does not drive direct business value — applications do. Dennis
Smith, vice president at Gartner, said that there is no better time
to be an application developer. “Application development offers an
opportunity to jump on the express train of change to satisfy customer
needs and build solutions composed of a tapestry of software components
enabled through APIs,” Mr. Smith said.

Gartner research found that by 2025, 70 percent of organizations not
adopting a service/product orientation will be unable to support their
business, so I&O engineers must engage with consumers and software
developers; integrate people, processes and technology; and deliver
services and products all to support a solid infrastructure on which
applications reside.

Boundaries Are Shifting

Digital business blurs the lines between the physical and the digital,
leveraging new interactions and more real-time business moments. As more
things become connected, the data center will no longer be the center of
data. “Digital business, IoT
and immersive experiences will push more and more processing to the
edge,” said Tom
Bittman, distinguished vice president at Gartner.

By 2022, more than half of enterprises-generated data will be created
and processed outside of data centers, and outside of cloud. Immersive
technologies will help to light a fire of cultural and generational
shift. People will expect more of their interactions to be immersive and
real time, with fewer artificial boundaries between people and the
digital world.

The need for low latency, the cost of bandwidth, privacy and regulatory
changes as data becomes more intimate, and the requirement for autonomy
when the internet connection goes down, are factors that will expand the
boundary of enterprise infrastructures all the way to the edge.

People Are the Cornerstone

I&O leaders are struggling to deliver value faster in a complex,
evolving environment, hindering the ability of organizations to learn
quickly and share knowledge.

“The new I&O worker profile will embrace versatile
skills and experiences rather than reward a narrow focus on one
technical specialty,” said Kris van Riper, managing vice president at
Gartner. “Leading companies are changing the way that they reward and
develop employees to move away from rigid siloed career ladders toward
more dynamic career diamonds. These new career paths may involve
experiences and rotations across multiple technology domains and
business units over time. Acquiring a broader understanding of the IT
portfolio and business context will bring collective intelligence and
thought diversity to prepare teams for the demands of digital business.”

Ultimately, preparing for I&O in the digital age comes down to
encouraging different behaviors. Building competencies such as
adaptability, business acumen, fusion collaboration and stakeholder
partnership will allow I&O teams to better prepare for upcoming change
and disruption.

About Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies
Conference

The Gartner
IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference 2018
provides analysis on cloud strategies and infrastructure and operations
trends. Follow news, photos and video coming from this event on Smarter
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About Gartner

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To learn more about how we help decision makers fuel the future of
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Contacts

Jennifer Garfinkel
Gartner
+ 1 571 303 3485
jennifer.garfinkel@gartner.com