Gartner warns that legacy infrastructure and operations (I&O) practices and traditional data center architectures are not enough to meet the demands of new digital businesses. Digital transformation requires IT agility and speed overcoming classic architectures and practices. In 2018, technology will increasingly be responsible for supporting complex, distributed applications using new technologies spread across systems across multiple locations, including on-premises data centers, Public Cloud and hosting providers.
Gartner Vice President and Emeritus Analyst David Cappuccio says I&O leaders should focus on ten technologies and trends to support their companies' digital transformation. "These aren't necessarily the top 10 technologies or the best trends in IT, but rather the 10 trends that we think will impact I&O teams in the next few years. Some are already happening, some are just getting started, but each will have a impact on how IT operates, plans, enhances internal skill sets and supports the business," says Cappuccio. The analyst highlights that complete information on the topic will be released at the Gartner Infrastructure, IT Operations and Data Center Conference, already confirmed for April 4 and 5, 2018.
Strategic
1. Geographical Planning - External factors, including new global laws like the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, each region's workloads, and global and regional network access are driving IT to spend more time on geographic planning as part of their long-term strategies. The long-term goal is not to have a global infrastructure, but to build the infrastructure necessary to support the business through partners, as well as leverage an organization's partner infrastructure to help support initiatives such as multiple network connections and design and support. of infrastructure.
2. Intelligent Edge – Many digital business projects create data that can be processed more efficiently when computing power is close to the thing or person generating it. Edge Computing solutions address this need for localized computing power. For example, in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), the sources of data generation are often things with sensors or embedded devices. The intelligence age serves as the decentralized extension of campus networks, cellular networks, data center networks or the Cloud. Organizations that have embarked on a digital business journey have realized that a more decentralized approach is needed to meet digital business infrastructure requirements.
3. Intent-based Networking (IBNS) – Gartner predicts that by 2020, more than 1,000 large companies will use Intent-Based Networking systems. Intent-based networking (IBNS) is not a product or a market, but a network software that helps to plan, design and implement/operate networks that can improve the availability and agility of companies, which becomes increasingly important as as organizations transition to new digital business models. With IBNS, rather than explicitly defining the network what needs to be done, the software translates the business intent to determine the "correctness" of the network configuration prior to deployment. The system then continuously compares the actual and desired state of the running network.
Tactical
4. Integration Economy - A digital business is supported by technology platforms in five areas: Information Systems, Customer Experience, Data and Analytics, IoT and Ecosystems. The ecosystem technology platform supports the creation and connection of external ecosystems, markets and communities. The management of the Application Performance Interface (API- Application Performance Interface) allows the digital platform to work. Organizations should design APIs based on ecosystem requirements, not "outside-out" based on existing applications or technology infrastructure. "Make sure your organization adopts a 'first API', designed based on your organization's ecosystem requirements. APIs designed in this way can be mapped to internal technology infrastructure. This approach is more effective than simply generating APIs based on existing infrastructure and data models" explains Cappuccio.
5. Reputation and Digital Experience – There are two intertwined trends affecting business today that have nothing to do with IT infrastructure, but everything to do with infrastructure design. Digital Experience Management (DEM) is the impact of delivering the right digital experience to customers. The experience can be mobile or web-based, and it must be always available, continually improving and running quickly and consistently. If any of these items are missing, customer satisfaction is at risk. If customer satisfaction is in jeopardy, especially in today's social media world, corporate reputation can quickly be damaged.
6. Beyond traditional IT – New Realities – Business units demand agility, opening new markets, taking on emerging competitors, bringing in new suppliers and creating innovative ways to interact with customers. More than 30% of current IT spending is not part of the industry budget, but overall responsibility for supporting these new initiatives – once they are tested and stabilized – will reside with traditional IT. Managing these new providers, managing workflows, and managing new types of assets in this hybrid environment, regardless of where they are located, will become critical to IT success.
operational
7. DCaaS as a strategy – In a perfect world, at least from the perspective of many business leaders, IT and the data center would essentially be a very agile generator of service outcomes rather than the owner of the infrastructure. To do this, organizations are creating a Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) model, in which the role of IT and the data center is to deliver the right service, at the right pace, from the right provider, at the right price. "Making fundamental decisions in the short term can lead to a long term strategy that incorporates the best of 'as a service' and the Cloud, without compromising overall IT goals, both to protect and enable the business. In this way, IT can enable the use of Cloud services across the enterprise, 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," says Cappuccio .
8. Cautious Cloud Adoption – For many companies, migrating to the Cloud is a slow and controlled process. Co-hosting and colocation providers have established private or shared clouds on their premises to provide customers with some basic services, enabling controlled migrations, staff skills training and a "secure" Cloud environment as a step towards increasing Cloud adoption in the future. As customers become comfortable with these services and costs, increased migrations to external providers are enabled through interconnection services. Using this partner ecosystem to enable agile infrastructure is an emerging trend.
9. Capacity Optimization – Everywhere – Organizations need to focus on optimizing capacity and avoiding waste – things that are paid for but not actually used. This issue can be found both in existing on-premises data centers and in the Cloud. A culture change is needed to correct this problem. Organizations must learn to focus not just on uptime and availability, but also on capacity, utilization and density. This can extend the life of an existing data center and reduce operating expenses for cloud providers.
10. Extended Infrastructure Management – The data center as a single source of IT infrastructure has given way to a hybrid model of on-premises, colocation, hosting, and public and private cloud solutions. These elements are being combined with a focus on service delivery and business results, rather than a focus on physical infrastructure. Enterprises must apply a "steady hand" to enterprise-wide forward-looking IT strategy and planning and apply appropriate safeguards, or face the possibility of losing business relevance, governance and agility.
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