These trends highlight the need for I&O teams to optimize cloud infrastructure
Gartner, Inc. has identified four trends that will impact cloud, data centre, and edge infrastructure in 2023. These trends come at a time of economic uncertainty, requiring infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams to adapt to new technologies and ways of working. The trends highlighted by Gartner are as follows:
- Optimization and Refactoring of Cloud Infrastructure: While public cloud usage is widespread, many deployments are ad hoc and inefficient. I&O teams have an opportunity to revisit their cloud infrastructure and make it more efficient, resilient, and cost-effective. This includes eliminating redundant or unused infrastructure, building business resilience, using cloud infrastructure to mitigate supply chain disruptions, and modernizing infrastructure.
- New Application Architectures Driving Infrastructure Changes: The growing demand for new application architectures requires I&O teams to adopt new types of infrastructure. This includes edge infrastructure for data-intensive use cases, non-x86 architectures for specialized workloads, serverless edge architectures, and support for 5G mobile services. Containerization is also on the rise, with Gartner predicting that 15 per cent of on-premises production workloads will run in containers by 2026.
- Adoption of Cloud Principles On-Premises: Data centres are shrinking, and many organizations are migrating to platform-based colocation providers. This shift, combined with as-a-service models for physical infrastructure, allows for the introduction of cloud-like service-centricity and economic models within on-premises infrastructure. Gartner predicts that 35 per cent of data centre infrastructure will be managed from a cloud-based control plane by 2027.
- Focus on Skills Growth: The lack of skills is a major barrier to infrastructure modernization initiatives, and organizations often struggle to hire external talent to fill these gaps. It is crucial for IT organizations to prioritize organic skills growth. I&O leaders should make skills development their highest priority, encouraging professionals to take on new roles, acquire automation and cloud skills, and become subject matter experts. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 60 per cent of data centre infrastructure teams will have relevant automation and cloud skills, up from 30 per cent in 2022.
In summary, these trends highlight the need for I&O teams to optimize cloud infrastructure, adapt to new application architectures, embrace cloud principles on-premises, and prioritize skills growth to successfully navigate the evolving landscape of cloud, data centre, and edge infrastructure.
