Infrastructure and Operational Trends for 2023

The growth of cloud, edge computing, and work-from-anywhere programmes has drastically changed access requirements

FREMONT, CA: The changes that I&O teams encounter are shifting perspectives on selecting, installing, and maintaining technology solutions for optimal business results. Furthermore, I&O leaders are being challenged to view skills, roles, and career path management from a different perspective due to the rapid rise in solution complexity and deployment circumstances.

SASE is a single-vendor product that facilitates digital transformation and is an integrative service. As consumers attempt to access apps from any location, this trend connects and secures individuals, devices, and locations. Global end-user spending on SASE will hit USD 9.2 billion in 2023, up 39 per cent from 2022.

Hybrid work and the constant move to the cloud have sped up SASE adoption. SASE increases management effectiveness and lets users connect safely to applications. To prioritise single-vendor solutions and an integrated approach, I&O teams utilising SASE should do so.

Sustainable technology is the second trend. It includes customer sustainability as well as sustainable IT in the context of a technologically enabled organisation. Four critical factors are involved in this trend: environmental, social, governance (ESG), and economical. I&O must adopt sustainable technology to support organisational-wide ESG goals, as shown by a recent Gartner poll that found 87 per cent of business leaders anticipate increasing their organisation's investment in sustainability over the next two years.

I&O has the chance to play a significant role in enterprise sustainability efforts. I&O can encourage sustainable technology by improving the efficiency and performance of infrastructure assets, from enhancing the sustainability of data centres and the cloud to embracing the IT circular economy for gadgets.

Engineering Platforms is the Third Trend

Application resource management (ARM), application performance monitoring (APM), digital experience monitoring (DEM), and digital platform conductor (DPC) tools are examples of management tools that are combined with various infrastructure technology components. The notion of continuous integration and delivery is extended by user-driven, self-service infrastructure and deployments, enhancing I&O agility, speed, efficiency, safety, and compliance.

By identifying the skills and capability gaps that exist within I&O organisations and developing a strategy to fill those gaps, I&O can embrace platform engineering. Additionally, employing techniques like automation can make self-serviceability possible.

Innovation in Wireless Value is the Fourth Trend

I&O can expand business disruption prospects beyond connectivity by utilising a variety of wireless technologies. Wi-Fi, 5G, Bluetooth, and high frequency (HF) technology overlaps make connectivity options possible and open up chances for innovation. Wireless value creation delivers a scalable return on wireless investment and transforms networks into a platform for strategic innovation.

To execute this innovation, however, several new talents, including those for wireless integration and wireless tracking implementation, are needed, and there is a great deal of complexity at work.

Cloud Computing for Industries is the Sixth Trend

There is no one-size-fits-all for the public cloud. Instead, because they offer a pre-integrated solution that fits the needs of a certain vertical market, industrial clouds are an alternative to businesses buying a variety of cloud products.

Industry-specific functionality is incorporated into regular cloud services through industry cloud platforms. These solutions are being used by organisations that want to shorten the time to value, take advantage of composability to create distinctive digital products and services, and profit from cross-industry breakthroughs. According to Gartner, by 2027, more than 50 per cent of businesses will be utilising sector-specific cloud platforms to advance their commercial endeavours.

The Sixth and Last Trend is the Heated Skills Competition

In I&O organisations, there is a rising need for a variety of skills as digital adoption spreads. However, there is a need for more personnel for high-demand professions like cloud, automation, and sophisticated analytics knowledge. In parallel, some organisations are establishing I&O jobs within business units, heightening the internal skills rivalry.

While the competition for new talents expands career options for I&O executives, it can also make it more expensive to fill talent gaps within an organisation and can pose problems with employee retention.

I&O executives must develop more sophisticated ways of thinking about the value that their teams provide. To lessen the danger of existing employees leaving for other business units or rivals, consider technologies to identify future skill requirements and novel training methodologies.

Hybrid work and the constant move to the cloud have boosted SASE adoption. SASE increases administration efficiency and enables secure user connections to apps. SASE I&O teams should give single-vendor solutions and an integrated strategy top priority.

According to Gartner, who coined the term SASE, single-vendor SASE means the provider owns and provides all crucial SASE components, software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), network firewall, and zero trust network access (ZTNA)] using a cloud-centric architecture. The service is designed to solve the flaws in earlier approaches to safeguarding access to corporate resources.

In a recent report, Gartner stated that the growth of cloud, edge computing, and work-from-anywhere programmes has drastically changed access requirements. For most enterprises, external users, devices, apps, services, and data increasingly outnumber internal ones. A hodgepodge of vendors, policies, consoles, and sophisticated traffic routing has resulted from attempts to secure anywhere, anytime access using traditional perimeter-based approaches, making things difficult for security administrators and users.