Gartner’s Four Trends for 2023
- By CDOTrends editors
- May 24, 2023
According to analysts Gartner, four main trends are impacting cloud, data center and edge infrastructure in 2023 as infrastructure and operations teams pivot to support new technologies and ways of working.
At Gartner’s Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference in Sydney in May, Paul Delory said that while in the current climate, IT infrastructure may not be the biggest problem facing organizations, “I&O teams, however, will be impacted by economic and geopolitical forces and will have a vital role to play in ameliorating their effects.”
“This won’t be a year to realize grand ambitions, but it marks a moment to refocus, retool and rethink your infrastructure,” said Delory, a vice president analyst at Gartner.
“In every crisis lies opportunity, and in this case, the chance to make positive changes that may be long overdue.”
Delory outlined the top four cloud, data center and edge infrastructure trends:
- Optimizing and refactoring cloud infrastructure
- New application architectures demanding new kinds of infrastructure
- data center teams will adopt cloud principles on-premises
- Successful organizations will make skills growth their highest priority
Delory said that while public cloud usage is almost universal, many deployments are ad hoc and poorly implemented. This year, I&O teams have an opportunity to revisit hastily assembled or poorly architected cloud infrastructure to make it more efficient, resilient and cost-effective.
He said I&O teams are continually challenged to meet new and growing demands with 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. Gartner predicts 15% of on-premises production workloads will run in containers by 2026, up from less than 5% in 2022.
Data centers are also shrinking and migrating to platform-based colocation providers. Combined with new as-a-service models for physical infrastructure, this can bring cloud-like service-centricity and economic models to on-premises infrastructure.
According to Gartner, 35% of data center infrastructure will be managed from a cloud-based control plane by 2027, from less than 10% in 2022. I&O professionals should focus this year on building cloud-native infrastructure within the data center; migrating workloads from owned facilities to co-location facilities or the edge; or embracing as-a-service models for physical infrastructure.
Delory said the lack of skills remains the biggest barrier to infrastructure modernization initiatives, with many organizations struggling to hire outside talent.
Gartner predicts 60% of data center infrastructure teams will have relevant automation and cloud skills by 2027, up from 30% in 2022.
Image credit: iStockphoto/jamesteohart