The FINANCIAL — 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.
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.
Serverless does not replace containers or virtual machines, so it’s critical to learn how best and where to use the technology.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
