Gartner Sights Top Trends Impacting I&O for 2023

December 9, 2022

Gartner, Inc. highlighted the six trends that will have significant impact on infrastructure and operations (I&O) over the next 12 to 18 months.

Gartner analysts presented the findings during the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference, which is taking place here through Thursday. 

“The changes that I&O teams face are shifting views of how to purchase, deploy, and manage technology solutions for optimal business results,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. “Furthermore, the rapid increase in solution complexity and deployment scenarios is challenging I&O leaders to approach skills, roles and career path management from a different perspective.”

Here are the top trends impacting I&O in 2023:

Trend No. 1: Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

SASE is a single-vendor product that is sold as an integrative service which enables digital transformation. This trend connects and secures users, devices, and locations as they work to access applications from anywhere. Gartner forecasts that total worldwide end-user spending on SASE will reach $9.2 billion in 2023, a 39% increase from 2022.

“Hybrid work and the relentless shift to cloud computing has accelerated SASE adoption,” said Hewitt. “SASE allows users to connect to applications in a secure fashion and improves the efficiency of management. I&O teams implementing SASE should prioritize single-vendor solutions and an integrated approach.”

Kelly Ahuja, CEO of Versa explained, "Advanced single-vendor SASE tightly integrates security and networking into a single platform that has a single pass scanning architecture and a unified policy, is configured via a unified console, and has a unified data lake. This is significant for organizations to continue to provide a consistent and assured user experience while protecting the users, devices, sites and data amid the rapidly evolving dynamics coming in 2023, including trends around hybrid workforces and hybrid cloud. Single-vendor SASE by its name delivers an integrated solution from one vendor with a single console that allows organizations to provision, configure and monitor networking and security services. This “single pane of glass” enables organizations to deploy consistent rules and maintain an overall vision of the level of service and security across all users, networks and locations."

Trend No. 2: Sustainable Technology

Sustainable technology encompasses sustainable IT within the context of a tech-enabled enterprise and customer sustainability. This trend involves four key aspects: environmental, social, governance (ESG) and economic. With a recent Gartner survey revealing that 87% of business leaders expect to increase their organization’s investment in sustainability over the next two years, I&O must embrace sustainable technology to support organization-wide ESG goals.

“I&O has an opportunity to be a key part of enterprise sustainability efforts,” said Hewitt. “From improving the sustainability of data centers and the cloud to embracing the IT circular economy for devices, I&O can promote sustainable technology by improving efficiency and performance of infrastructure assets.”

Trend No. 3: Platform Engineering

Platform engineering is the unity of management tools and various components of infrastructure technologies such as application resource management (ARM), application performance monitoring (APM), digital experience monitoring (DEM), and digital platform conductor (DPC) tools. This trend enables user-driven, self-service infrastructure and deployments that extend the principle of continuous integration and delivery, furthering I&O agility, speed, efficiency, safety, and compliance.

I&O can embrace platform engineering by determining what skills and competency gaps exist within I&O organizations and creating a plan to fill those gaps. Adopting practices such as automation can enable self-serviceability. 

Trend No. 4: Wireless Value Innovation

I&O can leverage multiple wireless technologies to extend business disruption opportunities beyond connectivity. Overlaps between various technologies including Wi-Fi, 5G, Bluetooth and high frequency (HF) facilitates connectivity solutions and creates innovation opportunities. 

“Wireless value innovation creates a scalable return on wireless investment and makes networks a strategic innovation platform,” said Hewitt. “However, there is significant complexity at play and several new skills that are required to achieve this innovation, such as wireless integration capabilities and wireless tracking implementation experience.”

Trend No. 5: Industry Cloud Platforms

Public cloud is not one-size-fits-all. Industry clouds are an alternative to enterprises purchasing a variety of cloud offerings, as they provide a pre-integrated solution that coincides with specific vertical market needs.

Industry cloud platforms are a combination of traditional cloud services with tailored, industry-specific functionality. Organizations looking to accelerate time to value, leverage composability to build differentiating digital products and services and benefit from cross-industry innovations are turning to these solutions. Gartner predicts that by 2027, more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives.

Trend No. 6: Heated Skills Competition

As digital implementation continues to grow, there is a greater demand for a wide variety of skills within I&O organizations. Yet, there is a limited talent pool available for high-demand skills, including expertise in cloud, automation, and advanced analytics. Simultaneously, some organizations are creating I&O positions within business units, which increases internal competition for skills.

“While competition for new skills creates more career opportunities for I&O leaders, it can also cause talent gaps within an organization to be more costly to fill and can create challenges retaining employees,” said Hewitt. “I&O leaders must become more sophisticated in their thinking around the value proposition of their teams. Consider tools to identify upcoming skills requirements and new training approaches to enrich the skills of existing employees, to reduce the risk of them moving to other business units or competitors.”