Key Takeaways

• Secure Access Service Edge (SASE): “SASE is a single-vendor product sold as a service that is a more efficient way to connect and secure the modern digital enterprise. It connects and secures users, devices and locations as they access applications from anywhere.”
• Sustainable technology: “While sustainability is not a new trend, it now goes beyond a single dimension of IT sustainability and involves leveraging technology to achieve both enterprise and customer sustainability.”
• Platform engineering: “As software continues to be an increasing focus, more I&O functions and processes need to be managed like software. This leads to the need for a platform organization that enables user-driven self-service infrastructure deployments.”
• Wireless value innovation: “The capabilities of next-generation wireless will extend business disruption opportunities beyond connectivity.”
• Industry cloud platforms: “Industry clouds represent an appealing alternative to having to buy a variety of cloud offerings by providing a pre-integrated solution that aligns to specific vertical market needs.”
• Heated skills competition: “To get things done in I&O it is essential to have the right skills, and the battle for those finite resources is at a peak.”

Learn more in the Gartner press release, “Gartner Identifies the Top Trends Impacting Infrastructure and Operations for 2023.” 

Key Takeaways

• “The continued adoption of application delivery will have to be matched by an increase in both the automation of the infrastructure delivery to support those applications, and in the automated operations of those applications and associated infrastructure.”
• Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70% of organizations will complement the continuous delivery of applications with continuous infrastructure automation to improve business agility, which is a significant increase from fewer than 20% in 2021.
• “When developing your automation metrics, start with measures of operational efficiency. The reduction of toil in the I&O workforce is an inward-looking measure of success, but the returns are direct, easy to understand, and easy to communicate.”
• “As you build up automation credibility, expand metrics to include productivity gains. Communicate how automation has led to faster delivery of more and higher-quality work.”
• “I&O leaders tend to give the most energy and attention to the foundational metrics where they have the most visibility and control. Don’t let your automation strategy get in the way of delivering business value.”
• “Designing your automation strategy to adapt to change is foundational.”

Key Takeaways

• “Sustainable IT can be broken down into three areas: buying from vendors that are sustainable, running the IT estate in the most efficient manner possible, and disposing of the IT in the most sustainable way.”
• “Oversizing is probably the biggest enemy of sustainability. Buying the biggest, most powerful piece of hardware just because we have the budget isn’t the way forward.” 
• “The most typical way of buying is over-provisioning and buying excess capacity to grow into it over time. This means that we have hardware just sitting around doing nothing, which from a sustainability point of view is not great, and even worse if it’s powered on.”
• “When considering the sustainability of data centers, server rooms and the cloud, consider factors such as where the vendors are located and where they’re getting their energy supply, data center and hardware efficiency and the materials being used.”
• “At the data center level, one of the biggest power consumers is the air conditioning. Using the cold air effectively via hot aisle/cold aisle designs is one of the most important things we can do to increase energy efficiency.”
• “Start measuring power usage and then tracking utilization, and then look for ‘zombies’ – those devices which are powered-on but aren’t doing anything useful.”
• “It’s estimated that less than 18% of IT equipment is properly recycled. Circularity minimizes the amount of waste that goes to a landfill by re-using, refurbing, disassembling or recycling the materials back into the supply chain.”