Roy Illsley, chief analyst, IT operations, at Omdia, discusses which IT operations trends to watch in 2024, including GenAI's role in making AIOps simpler to use, the maturation of FinOps, the evolution of edge management, and the increased popularity of DCIM and platform engineering.
Check out the video below to hear Illsley's take on these ITOps trends in 2024:
The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Roy Illsley: Hello, I'm Roy Illsley. I'm chief analyst at Omdia, and this is the time of the year when we're talking about our trends to watch for 2024. In the IT operations space I've picked out five key trends, just to give you a view of what you can expect in ITOps in 2024.
#1: AIOps will incorporate GenAI to make it simpler to use.
The first one is related to generative AI. GenAI will become more pervasive. In tools like AIOps, they're going to start to use it to make it easier to interact with the domain-specific technologies. So you won't have to be a domain expert to be able to use and understand it.
That is going to democratize IT operations. It's going to enable IT operations to be able to do much more with the same number of people.
#2: FinOps will mature as a discipline needed in digital businesses.
The second trend I think you're going to see is FinOps. It's going to mature. Because the whole financial management of the cloud is where FinOps has emerged from, that's where it's predominantly still being used. But as FinOps becomes more mature, it's going to start to look beyond the cloud. It's going to start to look at on-premises. It's going to start to look at value.
So in essence, FinOps could become the value IT of many years ago, in a way of making IT costs much more directly relatable to business activities and outcomes.
#3: Edge management and optimization will evolve to become mainstream.
The third area is edge management. Edge is going to continue to grow. Management and orchestration of the edge is something that we're beginning to see vendors come out with solutions for now.
And so by the end of '24, I think you'll find there are a few vendors with specific … whether they call it CloudOps or whether they call it edge management and orchestration tools. These are likely to also expand from the cloud core to the edge, so you'll be able to control, monitor, and manage a good breadth of your corporate IT.
#4: Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) will gain relevance in carbon emissions reporting.
The fourth one is DCIM — data center infrastructure management. It's been a little bit of the forgotten part of the family, but I think that's because it was mainly an OT [operational technology] activity and not an IT activity, and what we're beginning to see now is the convergence of IT and OT. Through that convergence, you'll start to see DCIM become much more relevant particularly with environmental sustainability and carbon reduction tactics.
#5: Platform engineering will be adopted by more organizations in 2024.
And finally, the whole of the world seems to be shifting to platform engineering, so we're moving into supporting, developing, and deploying platforms that can support agreed-upon solutions and tools. So your developers can have the selection of what they want, providing it runs on that platform. Your users can have what they need, providing it runs on that platform.
So the IT operations team is managing the platform. They'll be becoming platform engineers, and the whole approach enables organizations to be much more agile.
Thank you for listening. You can find my trends to watch on Omdia's website, and you can find me on LinkedIn. Thank you very much.
