According to 451 Research in their report “2020 Preview: A Dozen Tech Predictions for a New Digital Decade,” enterprise IT has entered a new reality of digital transformation in which an organization’s ability to embrace and exploit technology, while simultaneously minimizing the risk, is critical to the organization’s success. Technology has become an integral part of all aspects of modern life and will continue to be increasingly pervasive, contextual, intelligent, and automated. This comes with challenges, concerns, and opportunities for data center professionals as they navigate the trends and increasing complexity of modern data center environments.

Here are 5 of 451 Research’s tech predictions for the next 10 years:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) will experience significant and sustained adoption. New approaches to data processing, data management, and analytics are fundamental to executing on digital transformation strategies. Yet, nearly half of enterprises report that their current AI infrastructure will not be able to meet future demands. As such, AI and machine learning is one of the top areas of new investment by enterprises. Deploying modern Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software will be necessary for managing AI workloads to improve efficiency without sacrificing performance. Data center managers need DCIM for total visibility into all their data center resources, allowing them to protect against cost overruns from poorly managed power and compute resources.
• The data-driven experience presents a multibillion-dollar opportunity. The influence of the empowered consumer is exerting increased pressured on businesses to deliver differentiated and consistent experiences across the entirety of the consumer experience. The changing economics and relationships between brands, retailers, and consumers are driving a new approach to engagement models that emphasize loyalty-building and retention. Organizations will deploy digital tools in transformative ways to capture and unify disparate sources of consumer data to improve the customer journey and, ultimately, improve business growth. This massive volume and variety of data requiring significant compute and transactional data center resources is one of the key drivers of second-generation DCIM, which improves on legacy data center management tools with functionality for modern, complex data center environments.
• Edge computing matures. Edge data centers continue to be one of the largest trends in the data center industry have become a driver of data center demand with benefits such as improved security, reduced volume of data transmission, and lower storage costs. Edge computing deployments will increase in the coming years with use cases including autonomous vehicles, telemedicine, smart cities, and content delivery, but managing edge data centers remotely presents unique challenges and requires a different skillset than traditional data center management.
• A growing need for diversity in the data center. It’s no secret that the data center workforce is predominantly male. 16% of IT departments report having no women on the team at all and almost half of IT departments report that women make up less than 25% of the entire team. This is a problem and is bad for business. Research suggests that organizations with strong female representation in IT are more likely to view IT as more strategic and are further along with their digital transformation initiatives. In the coming years, there will be more organizations like Dell Technologies who have set a goal to achieve 50% women in the workforce and 40% women managers by 2030 to be a better reflection of their customers.
• Successful digital transformations depend on navigating access to talent. In an industry characterized by continuous innovation, skills shortages are common, but the talent gap is widening, particularly for skills in cloud platform expertise, information security, AI/machine learning, and data science and analytics. Organizations will turn to managed services firms to provide specialized skills, and those firms in turn will need to improve their cost-effectiveness and performance in such services to be competitive. Data center managers who are looking to fill the data center skills gap may also address the issue by developing talent internally, hiring external talent (including contractors), improving cross-functional collaboration involving different teams, and deploying easier-to-use data center management tools.

For the full 451 Research report with 7 more trends and additional insights, download ”2020 Preview: A Dozen Tech Predictions for a New Digital Decade.”

With so many trends to stay on top of, data center managers need to be ready for changes in how they manage their data centers. Now is the time to consider how DCIM software can help you prepare for the next digital decade.

To learn more about how Sunbird’s industry-leading second-generation DCIM software can help you overcome the top challenges of data center management, take a free test drive today.