Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016.  Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Goran Garevski, vice president of engineering, Comtrade System Software and Tools

Increased IT complexity will drive rise in smarter, more automated solutions

After years of hype with little substance, hybrid workflow automation will finally enable the cloud to gain traction: IT gurus have been predicting the rise of hybrid cloud for years, but 2016 will finally be the year when hybrid cloud adoption becomes more prevalent and automated workflows are adopted in legitimately sizable numbers. In the past, even with the availability and affordability of the cloud, the lack of automation between on-premises and cloud environments made cloud computing a cumbersome choice for many businesses.

IT teams are as focused as ever on building continuous improvement despite ongoing budget constraints, and cloud computing is a powerful option to meet both of those needs. On-premises options will continue to maintain a solid footing due to the challenges of deploying full cloud solutions in verticals with high regulatory and security concerns, but hybrid workflow automation will bring a viable solution to many businesses in 2016.

Consumerization will add even more complexity to the increasingly complicated IT environment:  In years past, technology in the work environment was more advanced than in the home, and users  became educated on how they could leverage technology and become more efficient on the job.  Today, the home environment has changed end user expectations for technology. Consumerization and leisure IT will add more complexity to the increasingly complicated IT environment: Modern IT environments are hallmarked by new technologies that grow up around existing legacy components, and as end user expectations continue to rise, the entire ecosystem will need to be upgraded to serve the demand.

Consumerization and the mobile revolution present enormous challenges - the old world meets the new world, legacy systems and security meet the mobile employee. Enterprises are now struggling to offer the same service level to users for their working environment that they get from their leisure IT. There now exists a growing delta between the leisure IT environment and work environment. As users become more adept at leveraging their leisure IT, this outside influence is placing additional pressure on the IT department to reduce the delta and deliver a similar experience. IT teams will continue to struggle to manage mobility with the growing bring your own device (BYOD) trend and the prevalence of multiple devices. Understanding the various components of the system in itself is difficult, but to optimize an infrastructure of this complexity requires a new approach altogether.

Application-aware solutions will begin to emerge in the virtualized environment: Today, the majority of virtual computing concepts are more or less virtual machine-based, meaning applications are kept within the virtual machine boundaries in the context of provisioning, configuration and management, even though this may not be the best scenario for true operational efficiency. Because virtual machines are optimized more from a node/hypervisor perspective than a business application perspective, businesses have traditionally struggled to get the right value for their money when it comes to applications. In 2016, companies will continue to optimize their virtual environments, increasing the efforts to make hypervisor-based solutions more efficient in terms of computing and storage resources. Ultimately, the industry will address this limitation by introducing application-aware virtual computing solutions.

##

About the Author