The Future of IT Infrastructure Is Always On, Always Available, Everywhere

As more organizations embrace digital business, infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will need to evolve their strategies and skills to provide an agile infrastructure for their business, according to Gartner. 75 percent of I&O leaders are not prepared with the skills, behaviors or cultural presence needed over the next two to three years.

These leaders will need to embrace emerging trends in edge computing, AI and the ever-changing cloud marketplace, which will enable global reach, solve business issues and ensure the flexibility to enter new markets quickly, anywhere, anytime. IT departments no longer just keep the lights on, but are also strategic deliverers of services, whether sourced internally or external to the organization. They must position specific workloads based on business, regulatory and geopolitical impacts. As organizations’ customers and suppliers grow to span the globe, I&O leaders must deliver on the idea that “infrastructure is everywhere.“

Bob Gill, vice president at Gartner, said the days of IT controlling everything are over. As options in technologies, partners and solutions rise, I&O leaders lose visibility, surety and control over their operations. Despite agility placing among their top 3 priorities for 2019, I&O leaders are faced with conundrum as a diverse range of products is available to them.

The need for agility will only increase, so the two key tasks of I&O leaders will be to manage the sprawl of diversity in the short term and become the product manager of services needed to build business driven, agile solutions in the long term. “I&O has the governance, security and experience to lead this new charge for the business,“ Gill said.

Gartner research found that by 2025, 70 percent of organizations not adopting a service/product orientation will be unable to support their business, so I&O engineers must engage with consumers and software developers; integrate people, processes and technology; and deliver services and products all to support a solid infrastructure on which applications reside.

Digital business blurs the lines between the physical and the digital, leveraging new interactions and more real-time business moments. As more things become connected, the data center will no longer be the center of data. By 2022, more than half of enterprises-generated data will be created and processed outside of data centers, and outside of cloud. Immersive technologies will help to light a fire of cultural and generational shift. People will expect more of their interactions to be immersive and real time, with fewer artificial boundaries between people and the digital world.

The need for low latency, the cost of bandwidth, privacy and regulatory changes as data becomes more intimate, and the requirement for autonomy when the internet connection goes down, are factors that will expand the boundary of enterprise infrastructures all the way to the edge. I&O leaders are struggling to deliver value faster in a complex, evolving environment, hindering the ability of organizations to learn quickly and share knowledge.