Happy new year one and all. As the new year begins we put our prediction in place as to what will happen over the next 12 months. Let’s dive in…
Your storage costs will explode
Yes we could of said this last year, but if Forrester are to be believed 2019/2020 is the year of high storage demand. Key drivers include continued trends towards cloud/hybrid DR, back up and high availability applications. Combine this with the commercial recognition that AI, machine learning and the mechanics of which will all soon change our lives forever once we’ve managed to get our heads around how it’s going to happen! Storage needs to scale to support this trend, so there’s no doubt we cannot continue to deploy hardware (and the licensing it needs) without attracting escalating costs and in a world of software defined data centers and server hardware this simply will not be accepted by an increasingly tech savy board. Time to take a different approach to storage. Leverage your current hardware costs and emerging software defined and hyper-converged architectures.
Your CEO will want to talk to you about AI
The rate of adoption of AI continues to ramp up as pressure is put on main stream organisations to test their own projects as the trailblazers start to reap the rewards of early investment. As we start to see machine learning projects trigger results from real time and historic data, true AI project start to emerge and provide a return for those how managed to identify early projects. The rise in demand for AI will go hand in hand with the demand for more powerful IT infrastructures that can cope with the intensity of computing power that these projects demand.
Your CFO will want to spend less than last year
Again, no real revelation here. But spending more money on IT infrastructure continues to offer a P45 to those CIO’s that fail to offer alternative ways in which to provide an increase in service performance alongside a reduce in consultant and supplier dependence. IT continues to be an area of spending under scrutiny as the market continues to increase in its commoditization; but fear not, there is hope. Accurate software and hardware licensing can offer significant costs savings, in both cloud, on-prem and hybrid environments. Additionally, hyper-converged architectures and software defined storage adoption have reportedly reduced storage hardware by half!
Your HR manager will struggle to find experienced support staff
If you’re looking to retain your team this year good luck. Accredited IT infrastructure architects with experience of up to date product experience in a broad range of vendor solutions continue to be in high demand. The emergence of software defined and Hyperconverged solution to the marketplace only 12 months ago only adds to the lack of up to date skills in the market. This drought will play to the hands of outsourcers who have the ability to pay more and perhaps offer better career prospects in terms of training and individual support.
