Six key trends will impact infrastructure and operations over the course of 2023 and beyond as IT leaders look to optimize how they purchase, deploy and manage technology solutions to produce business results, according to IT analyst firm Gartner.
The firm, which held its annual IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference last week in Las Vegas, says secure access service edge (SASE), sustainable technology, platform engineering, wireless value innovation, industry cloud platforms and a competition for skills will highlight infrastructure and operations trends over the next 18 months.
According to Gartner, an increase in solution complexity and deployment scenarios are challenging IT infrastructure and operations leaders to approach skills, roles and career path management from a different perspective.
The firm says SASE, a single-vendor product sold as an integrative service that enables digital transformation, can connect and secure users, devices and location as they work to access applications from anywhere.
Gartner predicts global end user spending in SASE to reach $9.2 billion in 2023, a 39% increase from this year, due to the increase in hybrid work and the never-ending shift to the cloud. However, organizations should prioritize single-vendor solutions and an integrated approach, the firm advises.
IT Infrastructure and operations technologies also have an opportunity to be a key part of an enterprise’s sustainability efforts, Gartner says, as sustainability improvements can be made in data centers, the cloud and embracing the IT circular economy for devices.
According to Gartner’s findings, 87% of business leaders expect to increase their organization’s investment in sustainability over the next two years, and IT leaders must embrace sustainable technology to support those goals.
The analyst firm also identified platform engineering as another key trend, which it defines as the unity of management tools and various components of infrastructure technologies such as application resource management, application performance monitoring, digital experience monitoring and digital platform conductor tools.
According to Gartner, this trend can enable user-driven self-service infrastructure deployments that extend the principle of continuous integration and delivery while furthering infrastructure and operations agility, efficiency, safety and compliance. Embracing platform engineering can help identify gaps in infrastructure and operations, and adopting automation can enable self-serviceability, the firm says.
Gartner also calls on organizations to leverage multiple wireless technologies to extend business disruption opportunities beyond connectivity. Overlaps between Wi-Fi, 5G, bluetooth and high frequency can facilitate connectivity solutions and create innovation opportunities despite significant complexity and new skills required, such as wireless integration capabilities and wireless tracking, the firm says.
Presented as an alternative to public clouds and purchasing a variety of cloud offerings, industry clouds provide a pre-integrated solution that coincide with specific vertical market needs, Gartner says, calling industry clouds a tailored industry-specific offering.
Organizations can accelerate time-to-value, leverage composability to build differentiating digital products and services and benefit from cross-industry innovations, Gartner says, adding that more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms by 2027.
As technology continues to expand and innovate, there will be a greater need for a wide variety of skills within infrastructure and operations teams. However, there is a limited talent pool available with high-demand skills such as cloud, automation and advanced analytics. As organizations create more IT positions in business units, competition for skills increases.
Gartner calls on organizations to think outside the box when it comes to talent acquisition, such as tools to identify upcoming skills requirements and new training approaches to enrich the skills of existing employees and reduce the risk of turnover.
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