Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Bernd Greifeneder,
CTO and Co-Founder, Dynatrace
The 3 Trends That Will Define How Enterprises Conquer IT Complexity in 2020
AI and cloud
environment adoption has changed the game for IT over the past decade. These technologies
have opened the door for businesses to create compelling digital experiences. But
they have also come with a cost, introducing new levels of complexity into
enterprise technology stacks.
Now it's more difficult
than ever to understand your IT environment, let alone identify and resolve any
problems that may be occurring in that environment. That's why, as 2020 and a
new decade get under way, I'm predicting that these three trends will define
how enterprises finally rein in IT complexity.
1. CIOs will lean on
‘explainable AI' to bridge the gap between enterprise cloud needs and digital
transformation pressures.
Research shows that IT
organizations are struggling
to keep pace with the demands of digital transformation. The scale of
modern enterprise cloud environments has grown so complex that it's now moved
past the point where human beings can manage it alone.
AI and automation
balance the need to embrace an enterprise cloud environment with the complex
requirements of digital transformation. So, it's no surprise that we'll see
CIOs increasingly incorporate automation into their technology stacks in 2020.
But, taking it even a step further, this need for automation will also prompt
CIOs to demand greater levels of accuracy and transparency than they currently
get from the more statistical predictions provided by machine learning-based
AI.
That's why I see
explainable AI really starting to take off this year. An artificial
intelligence system must be able to identify performance anomalies and system
problems with precise, explainable insights into their root causes. It also must
automatically trigger self-healing actions that resolve those issues before
they affect end users. Explainable AI ticks off both of these boxes, making it
an increasingly necessary solution for IT's toolbox going forward.
2. IT organizations
will kickstart autonomous cloud transformations.
Ninety
percent of CIOs already believe that AI is critical to their ability to
master IT complexity and the accelerating pace of digital transformation. But
this has to go beyond just relying on explainable AI, and as such, I'm
expecting that enterprises will begin undertaking full autonomous cloud
transformations.
That starts with CI/CD
pipelines and autonomous, self-healing production operations. In bringing
together AI and advanced automation for both DevOps processes and cloud-native
environments, enterprises are better positioned to create continuous software
delivery pipelines that reduce the need for constant manual intervention from
IT. More than that, an automated approach empowers these dynamic environments
to resolve their own performance problems before they can negatively impact the
end user, all without needing to involve someone from IT first.
This change will spark
the beginning of a new era of autonomous cloud management in cloud-native
environments, completely redefining how both the developer and operations sides
of a traditional IT organization think, function and align with each other. And
that in turn will also create new responsibilities and opportunities for both
groups.
3. NoSOC will
redefine how IT thinks about security.
Finally, I think the next
big shift to follow explainable AI and autonomous cloud transformations will happen
in the security operations center (SOC). SOC teams today are simply subjected to
too many false positives to monitor and react to on a regular basis. This
distracts them from their actual job of securing enterprise services and
applications and safeguarding data privacy for the business and its customers.
The problem is made
worse by the dynamic nature of modern cloud environments and microservices. To
get all of this under control, IT organizations will need to move in a ‘NoSOC'
direction, automating the more tedious elements of security management in order
to achieve quicker and more precise insights, threat detection, analysis and
remediation. The less time SOC teams have to spend chasing down false
positives, the more they can put their time and energy into more meaningful
security and data privacy initiatives that actually require their unique input
and expertise - leaving the rest of the legwork to the AI.
A year - and decade
- for AI and the autonomous cloud
The 2010s were a decade
defined by AI and the cloud. But it also ushered in a new world of IT
complexity that enterprises are still struggling with.
In 2020, many of the
major change agents for IT organizations will have to revolve around
streamlining the complexities of enterprise cloud digital transformations, and making
their technology stacks easier to understand, monitor and manage. To that end, explainable
AI, autonomous cloud management and NoSOC processes should all be top of mind
for CIOs looking to finally get on top of their IT complexity problem and keep
up with both the competition and customer demands in the ‘20s.
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About the Author
Always driven by
what's just over the horizon, Bernd is taking Dynatrace solutions into a
brilliant future. He's a serial entrepreneur, Dynatrace being his third
successful venture. With more than 15 years of engineering leadership under his
belt, Bernd owns nine tech patents-including Dynatrace PurePath® technology and
the new Dynatrace platform, our new generation Software Intelligence solution.
He believes in paying his experience forward so, in his spare time, he advises
startup companies, speaks at entrepreneurial events and supports academic
technology research. An adventurous spirit, Bernd prefers alpine or oceanic
adventures to relaxing on a beach. He applies the same drive and determination
to keeping Dynatrace on the leading edge of DPM.