I&O leaders face a mix of traditional and transformational challenges
Gartner points out that as organizations strive to align IT and operational technology to drive digital business innovation, infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders should focus on the top 10 technology trends to support these initiatives.
David Cappuccio, vice president and analyst emeritus at Gartner, says technology trends impacting I&O fall into three areas: strategic, tactical and organizational. “These trends are linked to aspects of society and business – and all will have a direct impact on how IT will deliver services to companies over the next five years. Unless IT leaders understand how these trends are emerging and what ripple effects they will have on Information Technology operations, the influence on strategy, planning and operations can be significant,” says Cappuccio.
Strategic Area
1 – Data Center Disappearance
Gartner predicts that, by 2020, more computing services will have been sold by Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers than for deployment in an enterprise data center. Most companies, with the exception of smaller ones, will continue to have their data center on-premises or hosted. However, with the majority of computing services moving to IaaS providers, enterprises and vendors need to focus on managing and leveraging the hybrid mix of cloud, non-cloud, on-premise and hosted architectures.
2 – Interconnected suppliers
Interconnected data center vendors are poised to deliver on the promise of delivering these centers as software defined, dynamic, and distributed. The ability to nimbly monitor, manage, and distribute workloads or rapidly deliver LAN and WAN services through an Application Programming Interface (API) opens up a wide range of possibilities.
3 – Containers, microservices and application flows
Containers, such as Docker, and microservices are the new application platform for cloud development. Containers provide a convenient way to implement process isolation, which makes them ideal for developing microservices where applications are built as a set of small services that run as separate processes and communicate through lightweight mechanisms. Microservices can be deployed and managed independently and, once inside containers, have little direct interaction with the underlying Operating System.
Tactical Area
4 – Business driven IT
Recent Gartner research shows that up to 29% of IT spending comes from business units rather than traditional IT, and this will increase in the coming years. This business-driven IT was often a way around traditional, slow IT processes. However, in today's world, this model is more commonly developed to provide technically savvy business people with a means to quickly implement new ideas while adapting or entering new markets as easily as possible. Today's savvy IT leaders recognize that business-driven IT has real value to the business and that its role should be to build relationships with the company's key stakeholders, thereby keeping core IT aware of new projects. and the potential impacts they will have on overall operations in the longer term.
5 – Data Center as a Service
IT leaders need to create a Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) model where the role of IT and the data center is to deliver the right service and speed, with the right provider and price. IT becomes a service agent. These leaders can enable the use of Cloud services in business, but with a focus on choosing the right service, at the right time, from the right provider and in such a way that the underlying IT service and support is not compromised.
6 – Stagnant capacity
Stagnant capacity (items that are paid for but not actually used) can be found both in an on-premises data center and in the Cloud. IT leaders must learn to focus not just on uptime and availability, but also on capacity, utilization and density. Solving this problem can increase the life of an existing Data Center and reduce operational costs for providers.
7 – IoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) will change the way future Data Centers are created and managed and how they develop as massive volumes of information flow from devices, constantly or periodically, to companies, Government departments and agencies around the world . The I&O department must use an IoT architecture that pursues long-term strategies for IoT and Data Centers.
Organizational Area
8 – Management of remote devices
A growing trend for many organizations with remote factories or offices is the need to centrally manage remote assets. This takes on more importance as companies focus on Micro Data Center support for regional or remote factories and the emerging role of edge computing environments for geographic computing requirements such as IoT. The rapid adoption of IoT solutions by business units has introduced a new type of asset: connected sensors. The sensor may need firmware updates or periodic battery replacement, which would require a new level of detail and control within the asset tracking and management system.
9 – Micro and edge computing environments
Microcomputing and edge computing run real-time applications that demand high-speed response from the closest servers. The communication delay is reduced to a few milliseconds – instead of several hundred milliseconds. These environments offload some of the intensive computational processing of user devices onto high-end servers and make application processing less dependent on device capacity.
10 – New roles in IT
As IT evolves to embrace these trends, some new positions will be needed within the infrastructure and operations classifications. First is the Cloud IT agent, responsible for monitoring and managing the various service providers. Next is the IoT architect, tasked with understanding the potential impact of various IoT systems on the data center. He will also work with business units to ensure that closed-loop IoT solutions are compatible with the core architecture or that the most common protocols and data structures are used. There will also be a need for a specialist, which can evolve into a team, responsible for ensuring the integration of new initiatives such as Cloud, IoT and edge computing.
David Cappuccio, vice president and analyst emeritus at Gartner, says technology trends impacting I&O fall into three areas: strategic, tactical and organizational. “These trends are linked to aspects of society and business – and all will have a direct impact on how IT will deliver services to companies over the next five years. Unless IT leaders understand how these trends are emerging and what ripple effects they will have on Information Technology operations, the influence on strategy, planning and operations can be significant,” says Cappuccio.
Strategic Area
1 – Data Center Disappearance
Gartner predicts that, by 2020, more computing services will have been sold by Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers than for deployment in an enterprise data center. Most companies, with the exception of smaller ones, will continue to have their data center on-premises or hosted. However, with the majority of computing services moving to IaaS providers, enterprises and vendors need to focus on managing and leveraging the hybrid mix of cloud, non-cloud, on-premise and hosted architectures.
2 – Interconnected suppliers
Interconnected data center vendors are poised to deliver on the promise of delivering these centers as software defined, dynamic, and distributed. The ability to nimbly monitor, manage, and distribute workloads or rapidly deliver LAN and WAN services through an Application Programming Interface (API) opens up a wide range of possibilities.
3 – Containers, microservices and application flows
Containers, such as Docker, and microservices are the new application platform for cloud development. Containers provide a convenient way to implement process isolation, which makes them ideal for developing microservices where applications are built as a set of small services that run as separate processes and communicate through lightweight mechanisms. Microservices can be deployed and managed independently and, once inside containers, have little direct interaction with the underlying Operating System.
Tactical Area
4 – Business driven IT
Recent Gartner research shows that up to 29% of IT spending comes from business units rather than traditional IT, and this will increase in the coming years. This business-driven IT was often a way around traditional, slow IT processes. However, in today's world, this model is more commonly developed to provide technically savvy business people with a means to quickly implement new ideas while adapting or entering new markets as easily as possible. Today's savvy IT leaders recognize that business-driven IT has real value to the business and that its role should be to build relationships with the company's key stakeholders, thereby keeping core IT aware of new projects. and the potential impacts they will have on overall operations in the longer term.
5 – Data Center as a Service
IT leaders need to create a Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) model where the role of IT and the data center is to deliver the right service and speed, with the right provider and price. IT becomes a service agent. These leaders can enable the use of Cloud services in business, but with a focus on choosing the right service, at the right time, from the right provider and in such a way that the underlying IT service and support is not compromised.
6 – Stagnant capacity
Stagnant capacity (items that are paid for but not actually used) can be found both in an on-premises data center and in the Cloud. IT leaders must learn to focus not just on uptime and availability, but also on capacity, utilization and density. Solving this problem can increase the life of an existing Data Center and reduce operational costs for providers.
7 – IoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) will change the way future Data Centers are created and managed and how they develop as massive volumes of information flow from devices, constantly or periodically, to companies, Government departments and agencies around the world . The I&O department must use an IoT architecture that pursues long-term strategies for IoT and Data Centers.
Organizational Area
8 – Management of remote devices
A growing trend for many organizations with remote factories or offices is the need to centrally manage remote assets. This takes on more importance as companies focus on Micro Data Center support for regional or remote factories and the emerging role of edge computing environments for geographic computing requirements such as IoT. The rapid adoption of IoT solutions by business units has introduced a new type of asset: connected sensors. The sensor may need firmware updates or periodic battery replacement, which would require a new level of detail and control within the asset tracking and management system.
9 – Micro and edge computing environments
Microcomputing and edge computing run real-time applications that demand high-speed response from the closest servers. The communication delay is reduced to a few milliseconds – instead of several hundred milliseconds. These environments offload some of the intensive computational processing of user devices onto high-end servers and make application processing less dependent on device capacity.
10 – New roles in IT
As IT evolves to embrace these trends, some new positions will be needed within the infrastructure and operations classifications. First is the Cloud IT agent, responsible for monitoring and managing the various service providers. Next is the IoT architect, tasked with understanding the potential impact of various IoT systems on the data center. He will also work with business units to ensure that closed-loop IoT solutions are compatible with the core architecture or that the most common protocols and data structures are used. There will also be a need for a specialist, which can evolve into a team, responsible for ensuring the integration of new initiatives such as Cloud, IoT and edge computing.
EN 
PT 
