Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018.  Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Mike Fuhrman, Chief Product Officer at Peak 10 + ViaWest

Top IT Trends to Take 2018 By Storm

It's the most wonderful time of the year - the time when the enterprise IT world looks ahead to identify some of the biggest technology trends across the cloud, data center and virtualization spaces! While there has already been a great deal of hype around trends related to AI and IoT, there are a few upcoming developments that should have a real and lasting impact on the data center and IT space. 

Here are three main predictions we see making a splash in 2018:

1.       The Chief Digital Officer role will phase out

Simply put, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) title is outdated. By 2018, "digital" shouldn't be a separate entity from all other departments or some kind of special priority for an organization - it should now be the backbone to every business' IT operations and workflows. Despite some forward-thinking claims from analyst firms that CDOs would be the norm by 2020, the general industry consensus is that the title is dying. By 2018, we will begin to see companies getting to the other side of digitization. This, combined with a more business-savvy CIO having a "seat at the table," will lead to the demise of the CDO role over the near term. We will continue to see the CIO role grow in stature - both in terms of responsibility set and in having that proverbial seat at the table in making strategic, corporate decisions alongside the CFO, COO and CEO.

2.       Edge computing will take center stage

Enterprises and providers of all sizes will increasingly see the value of keeping their data and applications "on the edge" in the new year. Despite edge computing being a hot topic across the headlines this year, we'll see enterprises actually starting to consider and include edge computing into their IT strategies in the new year. This move to the edge will create a focused effort on secure and scalable connectivity between corporate and the dispersed infrastructure out at the edge.

3.       Outsourcing will be more common than not  

In 2018, corporate CIOs are going to more rapidly exit the business of managing their own workloads on premise. You'll see more and more large enterprises shut down their local data centers that they have built or operated themselves. Why is that? Enterprises and the executives that operate them are increasingly looking for ways to cut large expenses, and outsourcing their IT workloads to a third-party provider does just that. Plus, it lets IT teams focus on their own products and services.   

So that's it - my top predictions as we enter the year ahead. If things go as predicted, we'll see the industry moving towards technologies and practices that are much more efficient, automated and virtualized. I, for one, am thoroughly excited about it!

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About the Author

Mike is responsible for Peak 10 + ViaWest's product and service strategy, research and development, and internal IT initiatives, positioning Peak 10 + ViaWest to continue its growth trajectory and delivery of innovative solutions to customers. He joined Peak 10 in 2015 as the Chief Technology Officer.

Mike has over two decades of technical leadership experience. He spent much of his career at Cisco, where he was responsible for the delivery and scaling of all cloud-based services for the suite of Cisco security platforms.

Mike graduated from the Citadel with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and holds a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at San Antonio.