The FutureScape of IT

Information technology is growing faster and smarter – quickly. That’s the news in a nutshell from the latest IDC FutureScape study – Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure 2018 Predictions.

The latest FutureScape[1] study presents IDC’s top ten enterprise infrastructure predictions. For IBM Storage customers, the most important highlights include:

• NVMe will replace SCSI as the protocol of choice in enterprise-class storage arrays. By 2021, more than 25 percent of spending on all-flash arrays will derive from end-to-end NVMe-based systems.
• 50 percent of enterprise infrastructure will employ cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve enterprise productivity, manage risks and drive overall cost reduction.
• Spending on hybrid cloud data services for data protection, integration and orchestration, security and compliance and location optimization will total more than $60 billion.
• 65 percent of enterprises will be deploying universal encryption on server infrastructure to comply with data privacy, integrity and confidentiality.

The 2018 IDC FutureScape predictions offer strong validation of the vision that has been driving IBM Storage innovation for years:

• IBM was an early leader in the development and implementation of new memory-speed protocols such as NVMe and the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI).
• We not only offer AI as a service through IBM Watson, we are now integrating cognitive capabilities into our storage analytics and customer support.
• IBM storage solutions across the entire IBM Spectrum Storage portfolio provide hybrid cloud features and functionality.
• Today, nearly 80 percent of the world’s corporate data resides on or originates from mainframe computing platforms,^[2] and IBM Z now offers pervasive encryption with our DS8880 arrays and TS7700 tape systems uniquely supporting this level of data protection.

IDC FutureScape Studies are intended to provide information and guidance that helps enterprises thrive in the modern digital economy. Increasingly, organizations must leverage technology to forge new business models, customer experiences, and products with data serving as the foundation. For 50 years, IDC has been a premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the IT, telecommunications and consumer technology markets, helping IT professionals, business executives and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,100 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries.

Along with ten specific enterprise infrastructure predictions, the IDC study also identifies certain technology forces and innovation accelerators that both enable digital transformation and create disruption within established IT segments. These include the accelerating rate of technology and business change, the impacts of AI and automation, legacy systems constraining transformation, and the widening performance gap between leading organizations and the followers.

It is these forces that will drive CIOs as they embark on three imperatives: modernizing the IT foundation, enabling new products and services and developing future-looking, data-driven organizations.

In upcoming blog posts we’ll highlight some of the IDC FutureScape predictions that are most relevant to IBM Storage customers and explore in greater depth how IBM solutions can help your organization ride these technology trends to greater business opportunity. The 2018 predictions do make one thing perfectly clear – “Today, survival of the fittest is not linked to size or strength, but the ability to change.”

Read part two of this series here, and part three here.

[1] IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure 2018 Predictions, October 2017, IDC #US43137417

[2] Don’t Believe the Myth-Information About the Mainframe; Janet L. Sun, SHARE Inc., July 2013 http://www.share.org/p/bl/et/blogid=2&blogaid=234