They're in no particular order, and most are not new -- they're just more
relevant in 2015 given the long lead time for mass corporate adoption of new
technologies, practices, and thinking despite what industry pundits get excited
about and predict.
Continued cloud
adoption, with growth in hybrid cloud
In 2015, IT organizations will continue to move IT services to third-party
cloud service providers. Security will continue to be a cause for concern --
especially as the media's frenzied coverage of data breaches continues -- but
integrations and service availability will rise to be two very practical
concerns for enterprise cloud adoption.
The hybrid cloud, defined by analyst firm Gartner as "a combination
of private, public, and community cloud services," will rise in popularity
during 2015 as companies look to get the best benefits from the private cloud
such as cost savings, flexibility, or scale and from public cloud such as cloud
cost savings while still meeting internal or external governance requirements.
From an IT management point of view, companies will continue to seek out
people with the ability to manage suppliers and cloud service delivery over the
technology itself.
Increased automation
There's no escaping that people costs -- by that I mean the people who operate
a corporate data center and its services -- continue to be a big part of total
IT costs. The increased use of cloud services will continue to reduce people
costs, but there's still a need to reduce human touch points, and the
associated costs within corporate data centers and operational environments
with speedier delivery and fewer human errors as benefits. In 2015, we'll see
even more adoption of automation tools like Puppet and Chef by corporate IT
groups under pressure to reduce costs and show business value.
The BYO epiphany and
mobile pervasiveness
This is where corporate IT organizations will finally wake up to see that
Shadow IT, BYOD, or BYO-anything are not being driven by consumer IT and cloud
service providers, but by the IT organization's inability to meet stakeholder
and user expectations across usability, cost, service, and agility.
The 10 years of "consumerization of IT" talk, with a focus on
consumer gadgets, has thus been a red herring -- hiding the true root cause of
customer discontent with existing IT supply. With this epiphany, corporate IT
organizations will need to change quickly by placing more emphasis on how IT
services are consumed and the expectations of the service experience.
Additionally, improvements in and demand for anytime, anywhere, any device
access to data and services will require better mobile apps, and most likely
the continued use of personal devices for work purposes.
Not only will this dictate the need for better service and app design and
delivery and more intelligent approaches to BYOD, but also the need to
(re)consider the security implications of mobility such as data segregation
issues -- with personal and business data and applications isolated from each
other on the same device.
The need to manage more
complex IT supplier environments
This will happen as enterprises exit outsourcing deals that have failed to
deliver against expectations of service improvement, cost savings, and
innovation. In 2015, the need for service integration capabilities, often
called service integration and management (SIAM) or multi sourcing services
integration (MSI), will come to the fore.
And this will happen not only for larger companies replacing previously
outsourced scenarios across different suppliers, but also smaller organizations
needing to manage a portfolio of third-party -- often cloud service --
providers. During 2015, SIAM will require companies to invest in people and
skills, new or revised processes that manage third party services, and
technology that enables this.
Big data insights
While there will continue to be big talk about big data, the real big data
issue for 2015 will be the availability of big data people, and
their big data skills, rather than big data technology itself. Companies will
need big data people with analytics skills and also skills for building the new
data architectures required to handle unstructured data and real-time input.
Other advances will be required in areas such as product innovation, customer
insights, internal decision-making, or IT service availability as the focus on
large data sets continues to disrupt business and IT operations.
And finally...
Unicorn chasing will
continue
Whether it's the large-scale use of cloud technologies or more DevOps
strategies, enterprises in 2015 will continue their fascination with the IT
operations of technology giants such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
Business leaders will also continue to ask why their IT organizations
can't match these technology giants for unit costs, service levels, service
experience, customer support, and agility. Thus, they'll continue to chase
these unicorns, but I'm not sure that 2015, 2016, or even 2017 will be the year
anyone catches them. But this won't stop business stakeholders from having
elevated and probably unrealistic expectations of their IT peers.
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