IDC FutureScape: Top 10 Predictions for the Future of Digital Infrastructure

NEEDHAM, Mass., Nov. 8, 2021 — International Data Corporation’s (IDC) top 10 predictions for the Future of Digital Infrastructure point to a digital infrastructure strategy that addresses resiliency and trust; data-driven operational complexity; and business outcomes-driven sourcing and autonomous operations. Organizations must invest in and foster a digital-first culture that leverages trusted industry ecosystems, generates profitable revenue growth, provides empathetic customer experiences, and demonstrates an ability to adapt operating models to complex customer requirements.

In the coming years, organizations will deploy, operate, and scale digital infrastructure to ensure consistent security, performance, and compliance across all resources, regardless of where and how they are deployed. These organizations will invest in more intelligent, autonomous operations and take advantage of flexible consumption and strategic vendor partnerships to promote agility and ensure that the business, and its digital infrastructure, can continue to perform in the face of a wide range of unexpected scenarios – social, geopolitical, economic, climate, or business related.

“Digital infrastructure spans compute, storage, network, and infrastructure software, including virtualization and containers, and the automation, AI/ML analytics, and security software and cloud services needed to maintain and optimize both legacy and modern applications and data,” explained Mary Johnston Turner, research vice president, Future of Digital Infrastructure. “IDC’s 2022 predictions for the future of digital infrastructure identify critical shifts in governance, operations, architecture, and sourcing that need to be factored into enterprise digital transformation strategies going forward.”

The top 10 predictions from the Worldwide Future of Digital Infrastructure 2022 report are:

• Prediction 1: By 2023, G2000 leaders will prioritize business objectives over infrastructure choice, deploying 50% of new strategic workloads using vendor-specific APIs that add value but reduce workload portability.
• Prediction 2: In 2023, over 80% of the G2000 will cite business resiliency to drive verifiable infrastructure supply chain integrity as a mandatory and non-negotiable vendor evaluation criterion.
• Prediction 3: By 2023, most C-suite leaders will implement business critical KPIs tied to data availability, recovery, and stewardship as rising levels of cyber-attacks expose the scale of data at risk.
• Prediction 4: By 2024, 75% of G2000 digital infrastructure RFPs will require vendors to prove progress on ESG/Sustainability initiatives with data, as CIOs rely on infrastructure vendors to help meet ESG goals.
• Prediction 5: By 2024, due to an explosion of edge data, 65% of the G2000 will embed edge-first data stewardship, security, and network practices into data protection plans to integrate edge data into relevant processes.
• Prediction 6: By 2025, a 6x explosion in high dependency workloads leads to 65% of G2000 firms using consistent architectural governance frameworks to ensure compliance reporting and audit of their infrastructure.
• Prediction 7: By 2025, 60% of enterprises will fund LOB and IT projects through OPEX budgets, matching how vendors provide their services with a focus on outcomes that are determined by SLAs and KPIs.
• Prediction 8: By 2025, 70% of companies will invest in alternative computing technologies to drive business differentiation by compressing time to value of insights from complex data sets.
• Prediction 9: By 2026, 90% of G2000 CIOs will use AIOps solutions to drive automated remediation and workload placement decisions that include cost and performance metrics, improving resiliency and agility.
• Prediction 10: By 2026, mid-market companies will shift 65% of infrastructure spending from traditional channels towards more app-centric trusted advisors.

These predictions are presented in full detail in a new IDC FutureScape report, IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Digital Infrastructure 2022 Predictions (IDC #US4744131), which is available for download at: https://www.idc.com/events/futurescape?tab=latest-research.

The Digital Infrastructure predictions were also presented in a webinar hosted by IDC’s Mary Johnston Turner, Ashish Nadkarni, and Susan Middleton. Details and registration for an on-demand replay of the webinar can be found at: https://goto.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1494479&tp_key=459af86cb9.

Finally, IDC has published a blog which further explores the implications of this year’s digital infrastructure predictions. The blog can be found at: https://blogs.idc.com/2021/10/27/idcs-worldwide-future-of-digital-infrastructure-2022-predictions.

About IDC FutureScape

IDC FutureScape reports are used to shape IT strategy and planning for the enterprise by providing a basic framework for evaluating IT initiatives in terms of their value to business strategy now and in the foreseeable future. IDC’s FutureScapes are comprised of a set of decision imperatives designed to identify a range of pending issues that CIOs and senior technology professionals will confront within the typical 3-year business planning cycle.

To learn more about the IDC FutureScape reports for 2022, please visit: https://www.idc.com/events/futurescape.

About IDC’s Future of Digital Infrastructure Research Practice

IDC expects the Future Enterprise will rely on an autonomous cloud-native digital infrastructure foundation to enable the development and delivery of resilient, secure digital business services and digital experiences. IDC’s Future of Digital Infrastructure research practice helps organizations optimize and gain competitive advantage from digital infrastructure investments and operations spanning dedicated on-premises, public cloud, and edge platforms for compute, storage, networking, AIOps, automation, security, virtualization, containers, and lifecycle services. To learn more about IDC’s Future of Digital Infrastructure research practice, please visit https://www.idc.com/promo/future-of-x/digital-infrastructure.

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC’s analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world’s leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights.

Source: IDC