According to news Gartner studies four trends that will impact cloud, data center and edge infrastructure in 2023.
Paul Delory, an analyst at Gartner, thinks these external forces, not the IT infrastructure, will be the biggest problems companies will face. Infrastructure and operations teams “will have a critical role to play in improving” their effects, Delory said at Gartner’s recent IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies conference, quoted in a press release from the society. It will be a year of “refocusing, retooling and redesigning” infrastructure, he noted.
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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 usage is ubiquitous, many deployments are ad hoc and poorly implemented. To make clouds more efficient, resilient, and profitable, I&O teams need to re-examine infrastructure that was hastily assembled or poorly architected.
Cloud infrastructure refactoring should focus on cost optimization. This can be done through a series of steps that begin with eliminating redundant, overprovisioned, or unused cloud infrastructure, as well as building business resiliency rather than service level redundancy; use cloud infrastructure as a means to mitigate supply chain disruptions; and modernization of infrastructure.
The hard work will pay off: According to Gartner, 65% of application workloads will be optimal or ready for cloud delivery by 2027, up from 45% in 2022.
Trend 2: New application architectures will require new types of infrastructure
New and growing demands for new types of infrastructure – including edge infrastructure for data-intensive use cases, non-x86 architectures for specialized workloads, serverless edge architectures, and 5G mobile service – continuously challenge I&O teams. Gartner predicts that 15% of on-premises production workloads will be running 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 go back to traditional methods or solutions just because they’ve worked well in the past,” Delory advised, quoted in the press release. “Difficult times are times to innovate and find new solutions to meet business demands.”
Trend 3: Data Center Teams Will Adopt On-Premises Cloud Principles
Data centers are in decline as organizations turn to platform-based colocation providers. Used in tandem with new as-a-service models for physical infrastructure, it 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. Three milestones I&O professionals should be on focus this year:
- Create cloud-native infrastructure within the data center.
- Migrate workloads from owned facilities to colocation or edge facilities.
- Or adopt models as a service for physical infrastructure.
In an interview with TechRepublic, Delory said consumer-b
Personalized pricing in the data center is becoming increasingly popular. “It allows you to pay for the hardware on an ongoing monthly basis. This brings the business model closer to that of the cloud, and it means you don’t have to write a big check up front for all your gear.
All major hardware vendors now have consumption-based pricing programs, and they encourage you to use them, he added.
Trend 4: Organizations that make skills development their top priority will succeed
The biggest obstacle to infrastructure modernization efforts is lack of skills and any organization that finds it cannot recruit outside talent to address skills gaps. Unless IT organizations prioritize organic skill growth, they will not succeed, the company warns.
Growing operational skills must be the top priority for I&O leaders this year, Gartner said.
Additionally, they should encourage I&O professionals to take on new roles as site reliability engineers or subject matter expert consultants to 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 advice on costs, supply chain and strategies
There are other steps IT organizations should take from a strategic and cost perspective, Delory said. Observing that the purchasing power of technology has largely shifted to business units and that “IT is no longer the vending machine of technology”, he said the job of I&O teams was to work with technology buyers to help them make the right infrastructure decisions.
“We’re becoming almost in-house consultants helping non-technical business buyers make good technology decisions,” he said.
In terms of cost control, in the cloud, applications should be refactored to use cloud-native principles such as migrating to serverless or serverless container architectures rather than using virtual machines, he said. he recommends.
“That’s how you get the most out of cloud infrastructure and pay off your technical debt,” Delory said.
He expressed pessimism about the supply chain outlook, saying the disruptions continue to be an ongoing effect of the COVID-19 shutdowns. “Some of our data looks pretty dire.”
For example, Gartner sees delivery times on network equipment averaging 200 days, and in some cases customers have reported delays of 400 days.
“That means if you order new networking gear today, you might not receive it in 2023,” Delory said. “Many organizations that expected to perform network updates this year may need to sweat these assets for another year.”
Cloud and consumer-based models are also ways to mitigate supply chain issues, Delory said. In cloud terms, capacity management is the problem for cloud providers. In a consumption-based model, items are shipped with excess capacity, so you only pay for them when you use them.
“A lot of IT shops have become accustomed to just-in-time ordering because it’s more resource-efficient,” Delory said. “But in a time of widespread supply chain disruptions, just-in-time ordering may not work.”
