[BreachExchange] Top Five IT Predictions for 2017

[Audrey McNeil]

http://www.datacenterjournal.com/top-five-predictions-2017-2/

Another year has drawn to a close. We often hear the phrase, “Where does
the time go?” when we look back on the year that’s gone. And why wouldn’t
we? The rapid changes across the technology industry certainly makes us
feel that time is going faster as every year passes, and 2016 was no
different. Major security breaches, the growing need for STEM skills, the
continuing dominance of hybrid IT and the increasing automation of systems
made 2016 a challenging year for IT specialists and end users alike. Taking
all this information on board, IT managers will now be finishing their
strategy for the year ahead and looking to the future. Every year is
becoming harder to predict, so managers are looking to take calculated
gambles. We have come up with our top five predictions for 2017 to make
sure the dice you roll will help you hit the IT jackpot.

1. Move Over SaaS: FaaS Gains Speed

2017 will see a new development in cloud computing: functions as a service
(FaaS). This new cloud-computing category allows customers to develop, run
and manage application functions without the headache of architecting and
overseeing the back-end infrastructure. It will allow IT professionals to
develop programs that perform specific tasks without the barriers that are
currently in place. The rise of a new chapter in cloud computing signals
the continuing maturity of the cloud market from its roots as
infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to PaaS, SaaS, FaaS and beyond.

We predict that in 2017, more-specialized services (such as FaaS) will
continue to proliferate given the targeted efficiency that leads to both a
better experience and an improved pricing structure. The ability to run
nearly any type of application or function, with zero infrastructure
administration on the IT professional’s behalf, is tremendously appealing,
and new services will likely focus on these benefits.

2. To Blockchain or Not to Blockchain

Blockchain technologies—peer-to-peer ledger technologies that began with
Bitcoin—have been on the minds of financial institutions for a number of
years, but in 2016, the technology expanded beyond the bounds of finance.
At a time when companies are finding it difficult to deal with data
management and security, blockchain provides a seemingly perfect solution.
Supply-chain applications, for example, are now being tested and
implemented to ensure the safety, security and integrity of the information
associated with these processes.

In 2016, a multitude of companies—banks in particular—began to test
blockchain technology in labs, yet few are using it in practice. One of the
roadblocks is agreeing on a common protocol, which has yet to take place.
The other, of course, stems from a lack of proven security practices,
especially for financial organizations.

We predict that in 2017 that blockchain technology will gain steam as a
buzzword and much more research will go into it, although it’s unlikely
that any effective new capabilities can be readily implemented. But 2018
will prove to be much more action packed in terms of companies figuring out
how to take advantage of data-ledger technology to solve their
data-management problems.

3. Be Aware of the “New” Security Experts

Data breaches are not a new phenomenon, and the topic will again be top of
mind in 2017. Over the last year we have seen many stories of data
breaches. Just this past month, it was announced that in 2014, Yahoo fell
victim to the biggest data breach in history, losing nearly 500 million
accounts’ worth of personal user data to attackers. This trend shows no
sign of slowing.

We predict that in 2017, there will be exponential increases in both the
volume and visibility of data breaches, particularly for large
corporations. Simultaneously, this increase in data breaches will force
organizations to weigh the implications of potential data loss against the
expense of hiring security experts. In many cases, businesses in 2017 will
choose to take a calculated risk about what they can “afford to lose”
rather than what it costs to prevent data loss entirely. This response will
be especially true in the case of ransomware attacks, for which it’s nearly
impossible to guarantee that hackers won’t leak or reveal stolen data, even
after receiving the ransom payment.

Finally, corporations and IT professionals must become hyperaware of
attackers’ increased ability to take advantage of automation. The speed and
ease with which an automated network breach can take place is new and will
ultimately aid in making corporate data breaches even more commonplace in
2017.

4. Shifting IT Roles

As traditional, siloed IT roles—network administrators, storage
administrators, systems administrators, database administrators and
more—continue to include new responsibilities, such as working with
cloud-service providers in hybrid environments; implementing containers,
microservices and other new technology; and acting as an IT liaison to
business leaders, 2017 signals the return of the age of education and
certification.

The ability to quickly learn new IT concepts and skills will be more
important than being an expert in any one technology. Although siloed
experts who managed disparate parts of the infrastructure and application
stack played a fundamental role in the traditional IT department, the
modern data center is more interconnected than ever. As a result, IT
generalists—who know a little bit about everything, have a holistic
understanding of the application stack and can make quick, informed
decisions about new technology—will be particularly successful in 2017 and
beyond.

5. Hybrid IT: Not Just a Concept, but a Reality

There’s no doubt that hybrid IT is the reality for most organizations today
and in the foreseeable future. And not only that, the center of technology
is becoming increasingly hybrid. IT professionals must start thinking about
management in a hybrid context. But what does it actually look like in
practice?

In 2017, IT and business leaders will decide on specific solutions as they
implement hybrid IT. For example, they may choose to Office 365 and Skype
for Business while hosting the identity-management solution Active
Directory Federated Services on premises. Alternatively, the cloud has
proven to be the best platform for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI),
delivering organizations the required flexibility and elasticity to
provision and deprovision virtual desktops in bulk. By moving this workload
to the cloud, an organization can relieve its IT professionals of the need
to manage that infrastructure directly and refocus their efforts on other
projects.

Over the next several years, IT departments must exercise their growing
responsibility to act as a technology liaison for business management by
staying informed and making smart decisions when it comes to cloud, even if
the decision is to do nothing in the near future because there is no
immediate need for change. The key is to build a hybrid-IT roadmap that
integrates cloud adoption on a per-workload and per-application basis to
achieve a more agile, available, scalable and efficient data center.
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