James Knapp, Chief Technology Officer, ViFX delves deep into the heart of IT infrastructure, outlining its benefits for New Zealand businesses.
As disruption continues to stamp its mark across most industries the pressure for IT departments to adjust to the new business world is building.
We’re increasingly hearing from our customers that they need more flexibility to incorporate new technologies, development approaches and services, and they need this done with speed.
Their IT infrastructure has to be nimble so the organisation can move quickly and capitalise as opportunities arise.
Just as quickly as industries are experiencing change, so are the technologies and platforms being deployed to get infrastructure firing on all cylinders.
And because that rapid speed of change doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon, it’s imperative we all adapt with the times.
Now is the time to take advantage of new approaches to infrastructure, which are transforming IT from a reactive role, to one where it is serving as a strategic partner to the business.
Here are some of the IT infrastructure trends we believe the high-performers in business will be adopting or placing an increased focus on in 2016 so they can stay ahead of the pack.
Software Defined Everything
The virtualisation of servers was only the beginning. Now the value of a software-defined approach is dictating the play in the infrastructure game by bringing the benefits of virtualisation to all the domains of the data centre - the storage, the network and the server.
This move from a static to a dynamic infrastructure model enables automation which results in greater speeds in developing and provisioning applications, greater efficiencies and lower costs.
According to IDC, companies across Asia, Pacific and Japan will avoid almost $100 billion in capital expense with a software defined approach to managing IT.
Adaptive Security Architecture
Digital business is the new standard, but comes with obvious risks. The face of cyber-attack is changing as a “Hacker Industry” grows. It’s now an adapt-or-die mentality for enterprises.
According to Forbes, cyber-attacks are costing businesses $400 to $500 billion a year, and that figure doesn’t include the large number of unreported incidents.
As organisations turn to cloud-based services and use open APIs to enable customer and partner integration with their systems, the door is opened to even greater security vulnerabilities.
To combat this, the security mindset surrounding IT infrastructure has to shift to a proactive one, employing measures such as application self-protection and user and entity behaviour analytics, alongside the traditional methods to protect business.
Bimodal IT
Keeping things running smoothly while exploring new technologies to enhance the business - these are the two polar priorities IT has traditionally been caught between.
However, moving forward we believe organisations will adopt a bimodal approach (see the Gartner definition here) which will see them supporting both the traditional and agile modes of IT solution delivery.
The goal here is to ensure companies don’t become reliant on the traditional IT mentality (change averse) and disregard the importance of innovation (change nonchalant).
If you are not prepared for the future of IT, you are risking the future of your business.
This post was originally published on the ViFX Blog - for more information click here
James focuses on the cloud technology landscape, developing cloud strategies for clients, as well as being a regular conference presenter on new IT service delivery models.