Gartner’s top 10 trends affecting infrastructure and operations in 2019

Gartner’s top 10 trends impacting infrastructure and operations in 2019

Serverless computing, edge computing, digital diversity management and the death of the data center are among the top trends organizations should expect, the research firm says.

About these predictions

Gartner highlighted the key technologies and trends that infrastructure and operations leaders must start preparing for to support digital infrastructure in 2019. Gartner analysts presented the findings during the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference. According to the research firm, these are the top trends organizations can expect.

Serverless computing

“Serverless computing is an emerging software architecture pattern that promises to eliminate the need for infrastructure provisioning and management,” the report explains. “infrastructure and operations leaders need to adopt an application-centric approach to serverless computing, managing APIs and SLAs, rather than physical infrastructures.”

AI impacts

“AI is climbing up the ranks in terms of the value it will serve infrastructure and operations leaders who need to manage growing infrastructures without being able to grow their staff,” the report says. “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 the lack of it)

“The network underpins everything IT does—cloud services, Internet of Things (IoT), edge services—and will continue to do so moving forward,” the report says. “The focus for 2019 and beyond must move to how infrastructure and operations leaders can help their teams increase the pace of network operations to meet demand. 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

“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,” Gartner predicts.

Edge computing

“IoT and immersive technologies will drive more information processing to the edge, redefining and reshaping what infrastructure and operations leaders will need to deploy and manage,” the report predicts. “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,” the report explains. “There has been huge growth in the range and quantity of ‘things’ that infrastructure and operations is expected to know about, be supporting and be managing.”

New roles within infrastructure and operations

“Infrastructure and operations leaders find that staffing justifications require resolving complex relationships between costs, activities and customer quality expectations,” the report says. “Explaining infrastructure and operations 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 report explains. “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.“

Talent management becomes critical

“Historically, IT staff have been vertically organized based around the technology stack they managed,” the report notes. “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 infrastructure and operations 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,’ " the report says. “While doing so, infrastructure and operations leaders must work within the constraints of tight budgets and cost pressures. One way to tackle this challenge this is to wisely choose the network of partners needed for global success. There will be no time for ‘B-team’ partners in 2019 and beyond, Infrastructure and operations leaders must be on top of this trend between 2020 and 2023.”