Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference 2024 Sydney: Day 2 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference 2024, taking place this week in Sydney, Australia. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference. You can read the highlights from Day 1 here.

On Day 2 from the conference, we are highlighting sessions on the future implications of generative AI on I&O; the top trends impacting I&O; and 9 principles for improving cloud resilience.

• Gartner Forecasts Australian Public Cloud End-User Spending to Reach $23.3 Billion in 2024
  
• Gartner Predicts 50% of Organizations Will Manage Hybrid Cloud Energy Consumption with Sustainability Monitoring By 2026
• Day 1 Conference Highlights

Presented by Cameron Haight, VP Analyst, Gartner

AI models have evolved to create human-like artifacts in areas of text, images, video and even code. While generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is a major AI advance, its implications for infrastructure and operations (I&O) aren't well understood. In this session, Cameron Haight, VP Analyst at Gartner, shared GenAI implications for I&O and outlined best practices for their effective usage.

• “While enterprise I&O organizational uptake to date has been modest, expectations are that GenAI will become a part of the I&O professional’s future toolbox, whether in a stand-alone manner or embedded within a technology provider’s product.”
• “There are two perspectives for GenAI in I&O - how I&O uses it to enhance processes and decision-making activities, while at the same time how I&O supports enterprise initiatives involving the development of proprietary large language models (LLMs).”
• “It’s important to develop a GenAI adoption model. Know what the stages are for ideation in terms of generating ideas and prioritizing the use cases that will have the most value or impact.”
• “Identify gaps in existing infrastructure, operational process and skills and create a plan to fill those gaps. AI will likely not replace I&O professionals  … but those who use AI will replace those who don’t!”
• “Designate an individual or small team to evaluate potential implications of GenAI on I&O, while also liaising with other senior technology leaders to understand the vision for GenAI across the organization.”

Presented by Padraig Byrne, VP Analyst, Gartner

Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must maximize the effectiveness of their actions by focusing on the trends that are most likely to impact them. In this session, Padraig Byrne, VP Analyst at Gartner, identified some of the top trends that will have the most impact on I&O and the opportunities they will provide.

• “Machine customers act on behalf of a human customer, organization or may stand alone. They provide new opportunities for I&O to support revenue, efficiencies and manage customer relationships.”  
  

• “AI Trust, Risk and Security Management (AI TRiSM) supports AI model governance, trustworthiness, fairness, reliability, robustness, efficacy and data protection. It protects organizations from AI-related privacy breaches, security incidents, bias and unintentional results.” 

• “An augmented-connected workforce is the intentional management and customization of technology services to support the workforce’s experience, wellbeing and ability to develop their own skills.”

• “A continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) program is an integrated, iterative approach to prioritizing potential treatments and continually refining security posture improvements. It provides an actionable security plan with business-based priorities.” 

• “Generative AI will enable the democratization of knowledge and skills by allowing the use of conversation and natural language. It will improve agility, adaptability and composability for I&O.”

Presented by Hassan Ennaciri, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Cloud failures often do not resemble traditional data center failures. I&O teams need to shift their thinking around resilience regarding both availability and disaster recovery to address the risk of cloud-related outages effectively. In this session, Hassan Ennaciri, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, outlined key principles I&O leaders must focus on to improve cloud resilience.

• “Align resilience requirements to business needs. Without this alignment on requirements, teams will fall short of expectations or will overspend.”
  
• “Take a risk-based approach to resiliency planning that extends beyond catastrophic events. Put more emphasis on the more common failures your organization has greater control to mitigate.”
• “For modern systems in cloud environments, embrace and limit the impact of failures by focusing on continuous availability, especially for mission-critical applications.”
• “Implementing fully (or near fully) automated disaster recovery (DR) provides the foundation needed to meet aggressive recovery time objectives and allows DR to be routinely tested."
• “Adopt resilience standards beyond architecture and DR. Resilient systems require greater focus on quality, automation and continuous improvement.”