The shift to remote work is taking on an increasingly permanent look, and enterprise IT is now shifting their priorities to address infrastructure management to shore up complex multi-cloud environments. Many of the areas that stalled out during the early months of the pandemic, such as internet of things (IoT), software-defined networking (SDN), and artificial intelligence (AI) are now getting more attention.
A New Focus on Infrastructure Management
An emerging trend around data centers is the focus on technology and services for the support of hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure management. With the acceleration of the migration to these environments, IT teams are finding that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
It is expected that there will be an ongoing decline in cutting-edge technology spending. While there was a large outpouring of investment in adaptations to accommodate COVID-19-related remote work in 2020, teams are pulling back in a need to rationalize each investment moving forward and determine the long-term impact on operations for each new solution.
In addition, the uncertainty around IT budgets and the broader economy will have enterprises easing up on the ambition for implementing experimental projects.
Enterprises operating within hybrid strategies are seeing that moving forward, multi-cloud will be the preferred approach, causing new challenges around operations and infrastructure management.
The use of multi-cloud occurred not in strategic boardroom sessions but as a response to pandemic conditions and the need to address data residency requirements, disaster recovery, and resilience. When integrating ad hoc applications to meet the needs of remote workers, many enterprises became multi-cloud almost by accident.
The priorities among enterprise IT are likely to shift to a focus on implementing a more intentional strategy for technology infrastructure. Beyond day-to-day concerns, they will also consider how augmented and virtual reality solutions can replace and augment travel and field service moving forward and how those are best supported by infrastructure.
Increase in Cloud Investments: A survey by Gartner reveals that over 50% of data will be created and processed separate from the data center or cloud, a jump from just 10% in 2019. This indicates a new level of complexity facing enterprise IT at a time when data value is critical.
The challenge for IT is that when infrastructure becomes more complex, infrastructure management also adds complexity. This causes IT to again take a maintenance position, a “keeping the lights on” mentality that is forced to prioritize daily continuity over a strategic approach to IT initiatives. This is occurring just as IT professionals are getting a chance to return their attention to innovation projects they were forced to set aside in the pandemic.
The result is that, in the foreseeable future, there will be more attention on on-premise and network infrastructure to accommodate the cloud solutions and their performance requirements. This will occur by implementing new tools, better visibility, and an increasing investment in services. There are more solutions and services emerging for management, integration, support, and monitoring for enterprises struggling to handle complex multi-cloud environments.
Is your enterprise facing new complexity in your infrastructure management? Whether you arrived to a multi-cloud environment by accident or by strategic initiative, contact us at Cloud Source for assistance with your digital transformation plan.