Gartner releases 4 trends that will impact enterprises in 2023

Enterprise infrastructure and operations teams will face economic and geopolitical pressures as they support new technologies and ways of working, according to new Gartner research about the four trends that will impact cloud, data center and edge infrastructure in 2023 pivot to.

Paul Delory, VP analyst at Gartner, believes the biggest problem facing organizations will be those external forces, not IT infrastructure. During Gartner’s recent IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies conference, Delry said that infrastructure and operations teams have a critical role to play in improving their effectiveness. He said this would be a year of “refocusing, retooling and rethinking” infrastructure.

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Top Cloud, Data Center and Edge Infrastructure Trends

Trend 1: Cloud teams will optimize and refactor cloud infrastructure

Even though public cloud use is widespread, many deployments are ad hoc and poorly implemented. To make clouds more efficient, flexible and cost-effective, I&O teams must re-examine infrastructure that was hastily or poorly designed.

Cloud infrastructure should focus on optimizing refactoring costs. This can be done through a series of steps that start with eliminating redundant, overburdened or underutilized cloud infrastructure, as well as creating business resilience instead of service-level redundancy; using cloud infrastructure as a way to minimize supply chain disruptions; and modernization of infrastructure.

Pay off: According to Gartner, 65% of application workloads will be optimized or ready for cloud delivery by 2027, up from 45% in 2022.

Trend 2: New application architectures will demand new types of infrastructure

New and growing demands from new types of infrastructure – edge infrastructure for data-intensive use cases, non-x86 architectures for specialized workloads, serverless edge architecture and 5G mobile service – continue to challenge I&O teams. Gartner predicts that 15% of on-premises production workloads will run in containers by 2026, up from less than 5% in 2022.

To prepare, I&O professionals must carefully evaluate alternative options, focusing on their ability to manage, integrate and transform in the face of time, talent and resource constraints. “Don’t fall back on traditional methods or solutions just because they’ve worked well in the past,” Delory advised. “Challenging periods are a time to innovate and find new solutions to meet the demands of business.”

Trend 3: Data center teams will adopt on-premises cloud principles

Data centers are shrinking as organizations turn to platform-based co-location providers. Used together with the new model as a service for physical infrastructure, which can mimic cloud-like services with economic benefits in on-premises infrastructure.

According to Gartner, 35% of data center infrastructure will be managed from a cloud-based control plane by 2027, up from less than 10% in 2022. I&O professionals should focus on three phases this year:

• Build cloud-native infrastructure within the data center.
• Migrate workloads from owned facilities to co-location facilities or to the edge.
• Or, adopt a model for physical infrastructure as a service.

In an interview with TechRepublic, Delory said that consumption-B

ASED pricing is becoming increasingly popular in the data center. “It allows you to pay for hardware on an ongoing, monthly basis. It brings the economic model closer to cloud, and means you don’t have to write one big check upfront for all your equipment.”

He noted that all the major hardware vendors now have consumption-based pricing programs, and he encourages you to use them.

Trend 4: Organizations that make skills development their top priority will succeed

One of the biggest hurdles in infrastructure modernization efforts is the skills shortage and any organization finds that they cannot afford to hire outside talent to fill the skills gap. Unless IT organizations prioritize organic skill development, they will not be successful, the firm warns.

Gartner states that operational skills development should be a top priority for I&O leaders this year.

In addition, they should encourage I&O professionals to take on new roles as site reliability engineers or subject matter expert consultants for developer teams and business units. Gartner predicts that 60% of data center infrastructure teams will have relevant automation and cloud skills by 2027, up from 30% in 2022.

More IT tips on cost, supply chain and strategies

There are other steps IT organizations must take from a strategic and cost perspective, Delry said. Noting that technology buying power has largely shifted to business units and that “IT is no longer a technology vending machine,” he added that the I&O teams’ job is to work with technology buyers to provide them with the right infrastructure. Can help in decision making.

“We are almost transitioning to becoming internal consultants who help non-technical business buyers make good technical decisions,” he said.

In terms of cost control, in the cloud, applications should be reengineered to migrate to cloud-native principles such as serverless or serverless container architecture instead of using virtual machines, he recommended.

“That’s how you get the most value out of the cloud infrastructure and pay down your technical debt,” Delury said.

He expressed disappointment about the supply chain outlook, saying disruption is a continuing effect of the COVID-19 shutdown. “Some of our data looks terrible.”

For example, Gartner is seeing lead times on network equipment of 200 days on average, and in some cases, customers have reported delays of 400 days.

“This means that if you order new network gear today, you might not get it in 2023,” Delry said. “Many organizations that expect to do a network refresh this year may need to sweat those assets for another year.”

Delory said cloud and consumption-based models are also ways to mitigate supply chain issues. In the context of cloud, capacity management is a problem for cloud vendors. In a consumption-based model, items are shipped with extra capacity, so you don’t pay for them until you use them.

“A lot of IT shops have become accustomed to just-in-time ordering because it’s more resource efficient,” Delry said. “But in times of widespread supply chain disruptions, just-in-time ordering may not work.”