Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022.  Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

The Trends Shaping Enterprises in 2022

By SolarWinds Head Geeks^TM

As organizations continue to digitally transform themselves and hybrid work remains a part of our new reality, we’re about to embark on another tumultuous year for tech pros.

While we may not be certain of what the new year will bring, we can try to forecast what may come to be better prepared to manage our next reality with confidence. Leveraging the combined knowledge and expertise of our subject matter experts, here are the trends we expect will drive IT industry developments in 2022.

Rethinking cloud investments in 2022

“The pandemic forced the hand of a lot of organizations to accelerate their digital transformation efforts and increase their cloud investments. However, it became clear pretty quickly that what worked for some businesses didn’t work for others. Each company has their own unique needs and business objectives, and their cloud requirements need to be personalized accordingly. This resulted in a lot of cloud investments, which didn’t bring the ROI many had hoped for. In 2020, the amount organizations wasted on idle cloud resources and overspending on the cloud reached $17.6 billion, according to third-party data. To avoid this happening again next year, we expect to see organizations start to think about better strategies for managing cloud costs. This may take the form of putting an individual from the IT/cloud/DevOps team in charge, or it may involve creating a dedicated team to manage cloud costs, depending on the tempo of cloud initiatives, architectures, and overall budget for the project.”

– Thomas LaRock, Head Geek

Hybrid work will trigger a new era of tools and processes

“As businesses continue to maneuver the new normal, tech pros will continuously be looking to implement new tools and technologies to maintain and support hybrid workplaces. However, in 2022 we expect to see this also involve re-evaluating existing tools and processes to stay ahead of the curve. The best way for tech pros to do this is to spend time thinking about what the end goal of a process or tool is. Whether it’s enhanced visibility or eliminating silos, it’s important to ascertain how well the tool is achieving your goal to determine if you should continue with it. When implementing new processes, focus on the value these changes will bring and make sure the team is fully trained up on the process, so the business gets the full benefit of the investment.”

– Liz Beavers, Head Geek

Tech pros will start to fine-tune their skill sets and focus more on nontechnical skills to enhance their career

“A balanced combination of nontechnical technical skills and professional certifications is critical for career advancement and new job opportunities, according to the SolarWinds^® 2021 IT Pro Day Survey. Such skills have the power to boost tech pros’ ability to achieve broader responsibilities, like project management and being part of decision-making, which 34% of respondents say will be their biggest opportunity at work in the next year.”

– Chrystal Taylor, Head Geek

Securing the enterprise in 2022 by normalizing risk aversion

“The SolarWinds IT Trends Report for 2021 details the level of enterprise IT risk exposure organizations experienced in the past year, with ransomware attacks and data breaches marking a new high point in cybercrime. As a result, it’s critical for organizations to adopt a mentality where even “medium” risk exposure is unacceptable. In response to the evolving threat landscape, we anticipate two trends in 2022:

1. As the rate of attacks increases, more tech pros and organizations will look to cloud service providers, managed service providers, and managed security service providers to supplement their own IT policies and keep pace with the new, more effective security measures.
2. By normalizing a sense of risk aversion, tech pros can better secure the enterprise, moving from accepting the current exposure to a mindset whereby any exposure is unacceptable. The first step in doing this is to understand how cyber hackers will deploy sophisticated attacks.”

– Thomas LaRock, Head Geek

DBAs will start to disappear 

“For traditional database administrators (DBAs), automation has changed the role and need for DBAs in recent years. Consequently, in 2022, the traditional DBA operation role will morph into something new: a database architect or database engineer. As automation allows them to perform higher-level, more proactive, and more creative work, their role will increasingly be centered on turning data into actionable insights which will be important for helping the business move forward. DBAs will also evolve from being a purely operational role to also serving as advisors in helping guide the organization on which databases are the most appropriate for their business. A number of organizations are already adopting NoSQL and open-source databases, with 33% of tech pro respondents ranking cloud database as a service (DBaaS) as the number one priority to adopt over the next three years according to the SolarWinds Query Report 2021: Database Priorities and Pitfalls.”

– Thomas LaRock, Head Geek

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