Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Trends Impacting Infrastructure and Operations for 2019
Analysts Explore Top Industry Trends at Gartner IT Infrastructure,
Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference 2018, December 3-6 in Las
Vegas
LAS VEGAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Gartner, Inc. highlighted the key technologies and trends that
infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must start preparing for to
support digital infrastructure in 2019.
Gartner analysts presented the findings during the Gartner
IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference, which
is taking place here through Thursday.
“More than ever, I&O is becoming increasingly involved in unprecedented
areas of the modern day enterprise. The focus of I&O leaders is no
longer to solely deliver engineering and operations, but instead deliver
products and services that support and enable an organization’s business
strategy,” said Ross
Winser, Senior Director, Analyst at Gartner. “The question is
already becoming ‘How can we use capabilities like artificial
intelligence (AI), network automation or edge computing to support
rapidly growing infrastructures and accomplish business needs?’”
During his presentation, Mr. Winser encouraged I&O leaders to prepare
for the impacts of 10 key technologies and trends to support digital
infrastructure in 2019. They are:
Serverless Computing
Serverless computing is an emerging software architecture pattern that
promises to eliminate the need for infrastructure provisioning and
management. I&O leaders need to adopt an application-centric approach to
serverless computing, managing APIs and SLAs, rather than physical
infrastructures. “The phrase ‘serverless’ is somewhat of a misnomer,”
noted Mr. Winser. “The truth is that servers still exist, but the
service provider is responsible for all the underlying resources
involved in provisioning and scaling a runtime environment, resulting in
appealing agility.”
Serverless does not replace containers or VMs, so it’s critical to learn
how best and where to use the technology. “Developing support and
management capabilities within I&O teams must be a focus as 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,” added Mr. Winser.
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. According to Gartner,
global AI-derived business value will reach nearly $3.9 trillion by 2022.
Network Agility (or Lack of?)
The network underpins everything IT does — cloud services, Internet of
Things (IoT), edge services — and will continue to do so moving forward.
“Teams have been under pressure to ensure network availability is high
and as such the team culture is often to limit change, yet all around
the network team the demands for agility have increased,” said Mr.
Winser. 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.
“Part of the answer is building network agility that relies on
automation and analytics, and addressing the real skills shift needed to
succeed,” said Mr. Winser.
The demands on the network are set to grow with the advent of 5G,
increasing cloud maturity, and the explosion in numbers of IoT devices.
“These are just a few of the pressures leaders should anticipate — so
the critical time frame to deal with this challenge is now,” said Mr.
Winser.
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. From colocation through to public
cloud — plenty of alternatives to on-premises data centers exist.
Leaders must identify whether there are truly strategic reasons to
persist with on-premises needs, especially when they consider the
significant amount of investment involved is often amortized over many
years,” said Mr. Winser. Preparations must begin now, as the critical
time frame for this is 2021 to 2025.
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. The edge is the physical location where things and people
connect with the networked digital world, and infrastructure will
increasingly reach out to the edge. 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. It touches on the laws of physics, economy and land,
all of which are contributing factors to how and when to use edge.
“This is another trend that does not replace the cloud, but augments
it,” said Mr. Winser. “The critical time frame for organizations to
adopt this trend is between 2020 and 2023.”
Digital Diversity Management
Digital diversity management is not about people, but rather about the
discovery and maintenance of assets that are “out there” in any given
modern digital enterprise. “There has been huge growth in the range and
quantity of “things” that I&O is expected to know about, be supporting
and be managing,” said Mr. Winser. “Traditional asset
management is still important, but we’re moving into the realms of
involvement with new assets that might have direct effects on the
finances, health and welfare of the organization’s customers.” Preparing
I&O is vital now before the critical time frame of 2020 to 2025.
New Roles Within I&O
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.
“For instance, IT is increasingly taking on the role of supporting cloud
services in terms of aggregation, customization, integration and
governance. A big challenge with cloud services is keeping costs under
control, and the business expects I&O to be doing just that. Rather than
focusing solely on engineering and operations, I&O must develop the
capabilities needed to broker services; these will require different
roles to the I&O of old,” said Mr. Winser. The critical time frame for
this trend starts immediately in 2019.
Software as a Service (SaaS) Denial
SaaS is software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or
more providers. The provider delivers software based on one set of
common code and data definitions that is consumed in a one-to-many model
by all contracted customers at any time on a pay-for-use basis or as a
subscription based on use metrics.
In 2019 and beyond, SaaS
will have a big impact on how organizations look at infrastructure
delivery strategies moving forward. However, most I&O leaders are still
focused on infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service
(PaaS) solutions. “SaaS itself is becoming a level of complexity that IT
shops aren’t yet coping with as they should. The shift to SaaS must be
accompanied with I&O support, all the way from ensuring visibility is
maintained of what is in use, through to supporting compliance
requirements and enterprise integration needs. Leaders must start this
now as the pressure will be on through 2021 and beyond,” said Mr. Winser.
Talent Management Becomes Critical
Historically, IT staff have been vertically organized based around the
technology stack they managed. As infrastructures go digital, there
becomes a need for people to work horizontally across stacks in order to
identify and remediate technology work stoppages in their business.
Expanding I&O skill sets, practices and procedures to accommodate hybrid
operations is of the utmost importance in 2019 and beyond. “In short,
talent is the critical ingredient for a modern, high-performing
technology organization, and great talent is in high demand. People that
show versatility and adaptability are quickly becoming must-haves,
particularly in hybrid environments,” said Mr. Winser.
Global Infrastructure Enablement
Despite few infrastructures being truly “global” in nature,
organizations must still prepare for the notion of “infrastructure
everywhere.” While doing so, I&O leaders must work within the
constraints of tight budgets and cost pressures.
One way to tackle this challenge is to wisely choose the network of
partners needed for global success. “I&O leaders must look hard at their
existing partners and raise the bar of expectation. Can they clearly
identify the value the partner will bring to them in the context of
global infrastructure? Are they unlocking all the value from recent
investments their partners have been making?” said Mr. Winser. “There
will be no time for ‘B-team’ partners in 2019 and beyond — I&O leaders
must be on top of this trend between 2020 and 2023.”
Gartner clients can learn more about I&O leadership in the report,”2019
Planning Guide for Infrastructure and Operations.”
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Contacts
Jennifer Garfinkel
Gartner
+ 1 571 303 3485
jennifer.garfinkel@gartner.com
