Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
What's in Store for ITOps?
By Nicholas Colyer, Staff Product Manager and Jay Goodman, Director of Product Marketing, Automox
In 2021, we saw digital transformation, automation,
cloud, and AI / ML as prominent themes across IT operations. As businesses plan
for another year of uncertainty, 2022 will be a case of "same but different."
Where 2021 was the year of automating complex business
tasks, automation will be both a catalyst and success story in 2022, driving
innovation, efficiency, and business strategy acceleration. Digital
transformation and cloud adoption will continue to be accelerated by
pandemic-driven remote work, which is now the prevailing model. More companies
will modernize their CX. And the complexities of cloud will continue to drive
innovation and adoption of better visibility / monitoring tools. Automation
will be a winning use case for AI/ML, as it will play a bigger role in
assisting teams by automating IT processes.
If this year has taught us anything, it's that
constant improvement, iteration, and evolution are the keys to continuity in
these uncertain times. With every business now being a digital one, everyone
must be online, everywhere, at all times. This has massively raised the stakes
when it comes to monitoring, analyzing, and securing IT infrastructure.
In 2022, these challenges will continue to unfold.
Labor shortages will continue to impact every industry, including essential IT
vendors and MSPs. Winning businesses will be those that can attract and retain
technical talent - but it needs to go a step further. Tech teams have a closer
seat at the table than ever before when it comes to determining long-term
business strategy and success. C-suites must empower - and listen to - these
tech teams to have a shot at keeping their heads above the rising tide of
ransomware, cloud outages, and beyond.
Automox's Nicholas Colyer and Jay Goodman outline some
key ITOps trends for 2022, including the ramifications of not investing
in ITOps technologies, rapid growth of MSPs, and cloud shifts in ITOps and
SecOps.
Supply chain
will see the impact of on-prem operational risks
The decision to manage legacy on-premise systems has
the overhead of scaling and lifecycle maintenance today; however, moving into
2022, organizations that don't invest in ITOps technologies could potentially
expose themselves to the operational risk of supply-chain uncertainties in the
forward-looking future. Political tensions in Asia, along with new COVID-19
variants, could continue to stretch supply vs demand. Cloud-native vendors
benefit from agreements with providers for preferred pricing and capacity
reservation, which means customers can rely on their service during troubled
times. - Nicholas Colyer, Staff Product
Manager
ITOps' strain
will be MSPs' gain
IT teams are already stretched thin, and with more and
more organizations both emerging and transitioning more to a digital world for
traditionally non-digital industries, we will see a massive shortage in IT
professionals globally. This will lead to highly competitive hiring and
dramatic growth in MSPs. MSPs have long been a tool to manage IT infrastructure
for organizations, and 2022 will be no different. The big shift will be an
increasing number of mid-commercial to mid-enterprise that begin to use MSPs as
an augmentation to their existing IT teams as hiring becomes a problem. Teams
will also take advantage of automation more than ever before as a way to cope
in the short term, while transitioning the way IT operations is done in the
long term. - Jay Goodman, Director,
Product Marketing
2022 will
further expose lack of employee mental health and safety solutions
Mental health and safety have become increasingly
top-of-mind for organizations, yet today there are few solutions that can offer
peer-reviewed, scientifically validated insight into employee mental health
status. Beyond immunization tracking tools for governmental mandates,
behavioral tracking solutions do exist but are mostly oriented toward employee
productivity, loathed by end-users as intrusive and an invasion of privacy. In
2022, this need will only continue to become more prevalent as the long-term
impacts of the pandemic are still largely unknown and variant-based risks
continue to be assessed. - Nicholas
Colyer, Staff Product Manager
SecOps will
complete the transition to cloud; ITOps is up next
Firewalls, CASB, web gateways, and other tools will
see a transition to cloud infrastructure, as SecOps teams wind down their
on-premise tools. As longer-term contracts for these tools come due over the
next 12-18 months, this will be the next big wave for consolidation and
transformation of tools to the cloud for SecOps. Once this is done, the focus
will turn in earnest to ITOps tools and how organizations can leverage them to
realize the gains seen from SecOps over the past 5 years. - Jay Goodman, Director, Product Marketing
##
ABOUT
THE AUTHORS
Nicholas Colyer, Staff Product Manager
Nick has 10+ years of experience in IT cybersecurity
across a diverse range of roles. His breadth of experience allows him to
connect with customers and drive successful outcomes.
Jay Goodman, Director of Product Marketing
Jay comes to Automox with 10+ years of experience
working in cybersecurity and competitive intelligence. With a background in
Economics, Jay can easily translate value into numbers.