Gartner Cape Town: 6 things to know about IT and Ops trends

The Gartner Symposium kicked off in Cape Town this week, and we were fortunate enough to attend a talk from the company’s Phil Dawson.

The talk, titled Top Ten Technology Trends and Their Impact on IT and Operations, was pretty self-explanatory, if a bit in-depth for most tastes. But there were some takeaways for more than just the average IT manager.

Switching to the cloud won’t automatically fix your problems

Dawson noted that issues you have won’t be fixed by simply moving to the cloud.

“If you virtualise a mess, it’s still a mess,” Dawson said. “Don’t assume it’s going to fix your problems.”

Be wary of buying extra storage

The Gartner representative cautioned against buying a ton of extra storage if you aren’t planning to fill it up quickly.

“People buy extra storage… because they expect to grow… Buying 40% more storage for future use is expensive,” Dawson explains, as the cost of storage continues to drop.

Internet of Things devices will be a nightmare to integrate

Dawson suggested that IoT devices have a “high cost of integration”, amid several other issues.

Gartner Cape Town kicked off this week at the CTICC in the city bowl

“…although the individual components  are fairly cheap, the sheer scale of the devices means you have to plan large, disruptive investment,” Dawson says. “Because it’s the amount of data that’s coming in… from these devices… you get too much data coming in from IoT.”

He also adds that IoT devices currently lack a complete solution. “Who offers the complete end-to-end solution? There is no end-to-end solution between the different IoT… providers.”

IoT is inevitable though

The presentation also delivered a few interesting insights into IoT statistics.

For one, there will be 20 billion connected things to be “bought, integrated and supported by 2020”. Six billion IoT devices will need support by 2018 and one million new IoT devices will be bought every hour of every day by 2021.

Prepare for new roles in IT

The field is constantly evolving, so you have to consider new roles in the industry.

“Your skills drive your core IT. But you need new skills to drive new IT directions,” Dawson elaborates.

Expect more/new roles related to IoT architecture, the cloud and strategy, among other IT fields.

Dawson’s recommendations

The Gartner representative concluded the talk with a number of recommendations.

These ranged from embracing business-driven IT to evaluating computing growth in general. However, Dawson also recommended that data centre strategies be re-evaluated due to the interconnected world that looms. Finally, he called for people to look at the data centre as a provider that delivers services.