INVISIBLE INFOSTRUCTURE
O’ Infrastructure, Where Art Thou? The odyssey towards a truly invisible IT infrastructure may still be ongoing, but progress is made. For many organizations, the pandemic era accelerated a move towards the public cloud; a signpost of increasing “invisibility.” It is now the default choice amid a diverse range of cloud deployment options. To keep up with the pace of a Technology Business – or rather, being its pacemaker – IT infrastructure needs to fluently adjust to changing needs and the whimsical ways of the time. A software- and AI-driven, nearly autonomous supply chain – with reliability engineered within – is key to that. It also deals with the scarcity of skilled experts and excess energy consumption. But IT infrastructure also expands its reach, integrating Operational Technology and “things” at the edges of central IT, showing yet again that “Infostructure” is not a spelling mistake.
Technology Business operations cannot be successful without up-to-date, reliable, and secure IT infrastructure operations. They are more or less one, inseparable by definition. This is evidenced by the “All Ops” movement (such as DevOps, DevSecOps, DataOps, MLOps, ChatOps), in which IT operations are fully integrated in business change and solutions development. Not as an afterthought, but by design. The quality levels, availability, and elasticity of such an IT Infrastructure platform can increasingly only be provided by the Cloud. It is not a surprise that our latest Digital Mastery research shows Cloud services are projected to more than double by 2023, growing at a five-year CAGR of 32%. For new solutions, Cloud is the de facto choice, but a diversifying range of deployment options – typically involving multiple providers and locations, including regional sovereign clouds, which – based on Capgemini’s recent research – will be adopted to ensure compliance with government regulations and standards, reduce exposure to extra-territorial laws and provide a trusted safe environment for data.
Software-driven configuration and execution, standardization, and simplification technologies such as containers, AI-driven intelligent automation, plus built-in cybersecurity and reliability, all add to the secret of having a scalable – always available – resilient IT infrastructure. One that makes IT infrastructure move and morph in exactly the same cadence as the business operations it enables. But there’s more to achieve. Our recent Sustainable IT research found that only 43% of executives are aware of their organization’s (often considerable) IT carbon footprint. So intelligently optimizing the use of available IT assets – and recycling them whenever possible – not only brings cost benefits and agility, but also raises the corporate ESG score.
Finally, as our latest Digital Mastery research report shows, 62% of organizations are already implementing Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in their operations. And, no longer is it just the Intelligent Industry realm in which innovations at the ‘Edge’ drive new business. Operational Technology fuses with Information Technology everywhere, creating an all-encompassing “Infostructure” that securely manages brand new loads of networking, compute, data, events, application services, and devices.
Dapo Adekola Expert in Residence
