
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.
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About the Author
Goran Garevski is
vice president of engineering for Comtrade System Software and Tools. Mr.
Garevski is a storage and data management industry executive with more than 20
years of experience. He has led and contributed to numerous breakthrough
projects that have influenced the storage industry, and he has extensive
experience in data protection, virtualization and cloud storage.