Global IT Infrastructure Market: 2018 and the Future Roadmap
The year 2018 saw a considerable amount of spending in the IT infrastructure industry with a primary focus on data center servers and hosted & cloud collaboration.
According to research data, the aggregate vendor revenue was calculated at USD 125 billion, driven by a 13 percent increase in annual IT infrastructure spending among enterprises.
The report was compiled on the basis of the following six areas of enterprise infrastructure, including:
- Datacenter servers
- Switches and routers
- Hosted and cloud collaboration
- On-premises collaboration
- Network security
- Wireless LAN
Trends and the Percentage of IT Spending for Each Area:
1) Datacenter servers: This area held the largest IT infrastructure market share and also garnered a 26 percent growth rate in spending, double the average growth rate.
According to the research report, this growth rate was fueled by server configurations and an increase in average selling prices.
“There is huge growth in the amount of data that is available and having to be processed by enterprises and an associated increase in the scope and sophistication of apps to handle the data. This is helping to fuel a requirement for richer configurations of servers,” reads the report.
2) Switches and routers: This is the second-largest segment in the global IT infrastructure market, by enterprise infrastructure. However, it recorded a growth of a mere 3 percent.
On the other hand, network security and WLANs saw a modest increase in spending, settling as the smallest market sectors but undoubtedly among the significant ones.
As for vendors dominating the market, Cisco stood as the dominant enterprise vendor leading the market in most infrastructure areas. This was followed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell EMC, Huawei, Microsoft and Check Point who also held top positions among various infrastructure segments.
3) Hosted and cloud collaboration: Hosted and cloud collaboration registered a growth rate of 22 percent, positioning itself as the second-highest in terms of growth rate. This growth was contributed by decreased IT infrastructure spending on premise-collaboration products and increased investment in public cloud services.
“Despite the huge growth in public cloud services, enterprise spending on their own IT infrastructure is still pretty robust. “The numbers are big, and they’re not about to start heading south at any great speed,” said the data report.
Infrastructure & Operations in 2019
Paving the way forward for the Infrastructure and Operation (I&O) market in 2019, leading research and analysis firm Gartner has predicted several infrastructure trends.
“More than ever, Infrastructure and operations is becoming increasingly involved in unprecedented areas of the modern day enterprise. The focus of I&O leaders is no longer to solely deliver engineering and operations, but instead deliver products and services that support and enable an organization’s business strategy,” said Ross Winser, Senior Research Director at Gartner.
As Winser presented his paper at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference, he asked I&O leaders to prepare for the impacts of some key technologies and trends that will support digital infrastructure in 2019.
1) Serverless Computing
One of the important trends to watch out for is serverless computing. The term is a cloud-computing model that eliminates the need for infrastructure provisioning and management.
Therefore, I&O leaders must adopt an application-centric approach to serverless computing, managing APIs and SLAs, rather than physical infrastructures.
“The phrase ‘serverless’ is somewhat of a misnomer. The truth is that servers still exist, but the service provider is responsible for all the underlying resources involved in provisioning and scaling a runtime environment, resulting in appealing agility,” said Mr. Winser.
Serverless does not replace containers or virtual machines. So it’s critical to learn how best and where to use the technology.
2) AI Impacts
AI is growing higher in terms of the value it adds to I&O leaders with a focus on managing growing infrastructure without increasing the teams.
AI is already making strides in the IT industry and is at the center of most digital businesses. Owing to this growing popularity and the ability to drive organizational transformation, Gartner predicts that I&O leaders have a lot to look forward to from AI in 2019.
According to Gartner, the global AI-derived business value will reach nearly USD 3.9 trillion by 2022.
3) Network Agility
The network is the core of all IT operations including cloud computing services & Internet of Things(IoT), among others. With the entry of 5G technology, the demands pertaining to the network are set to grow further propelling the growth of cloud and several other IoT devices.
4) The decline of the On-Premise Data Center
By 2025, 80 percent of enterprises will entirely migrate away from on-premises data centers, predicts Gartner. Currently, the IT industry is shifting focus towards collocation – renting data centers, hosting and the cloud leading to the closure of traditional data centers.
Conclusion
With an assessment of the past and a roadmap to the future, IT infrastructure professionals are sure to employ these insights to their benefit and the overall organizational growth. IT infrastructure is shaping the very backbone of today’s digital businesses.
Have you already started thinking about realigning your company’s infrastructure? Contact Us today!