By Alexis Wierenga | December 07, 2023
Executive Insights from Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference
AI, automation and edge infrastructure are among the many technologies and operational areas creating strong skills demand within I&O. However, a shortage of critical technical skills and high rates of employee attrition are affecting organizations’ ability to meet these demands. Mark Margevicius, Gartner VP Analyst, detailed what to consider when creating an action plan to respond to these challenges.
“At this very moment, more than a third of your employees are looking for a job outside of your organization, so there’s no time to waste here. We need to invest in our workforce.”
Mark Margevicius, VP Analyst at Gartner
To ensure your team has the skills to succeed:
Support autonomy. Emphasize that team members are personally responsible for their careers by creating consistent opportunities to grow and learn.
Prioritize skills needs in your I&O strategy. Identify gaps between available and needed skills.
Create a team of versalitists. Broaden soft and hard skill sets across domains to make team members more valuable to the organization — and increase their career opportunities in the process.
Networks used to be visibly simple with a definite demarcation between network and compute. Now, vRouters, vSwitches, service mesh and more have blurred those lines. Gartner Director Analyst Karen Brown dove into DevOps and AI, two key areas of evolution in networking, and what actions to take to advance automation in your organization.
“By 2026, 30% of enterprises will automate more than half of their network activities, an increase from less than 10% of enterprises in early 2023.”
Karen Brown, Director Analyst at Gartner
To evolve your organization’s network operations:
Invest heavily in automation. Look at platforms, tools or a combination of the two, and share your findings to fuel discussion of skills and cultural changes.
Test AI networking. Start small and iterate by testing functionality in a proof of concept before moving into production.
Managers can make or break DEI strategy, but few truly excel in this important role. Lisa Pierce, Gartner VP, Advisory, shared what the best managers are doing differently to help translate their organizations’ DEI strategies into real outcomes.
“One in two candidates who experience bias in their interactions with hiring managers discontinue their application process.”
Lisa Pierce, VP, Advisory at Gartner
To drive DEI outcomes as an evolved manager:
Take ownership for addressing systemic bias. Identify existing biases in talent recruiting processes and get involved in employee resource groups.
Advocate for underrepresented talent. Educate managers about the emotional toll of being treated differently than one's peers and how being constantly on guard impacts employee well-being and productivity.
Successful automation is imperative for I&O leaders to meet expectations for service quality and sustain the pace of operations. Gartner Sr Director Analyst Chris Saunderson covered how leaders can address these challenges and deliver cost improvements by strategically planning for automation.
“By 2027, heads of I&O who focus on enterprisewide automation delivery will double the value delivered by service quality and cost improvement efforts.”
Chris Saunderson, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner
Embed these principles in your organization to adopt an automation-first approach:
Treat automation as a product. Practice iterative development and rapid innovation, and test, release and validate with your customer — even if you are your own customer.
Develop a phased strategy. Pilot cross-domain I&O automation, communicate the value returned and continue to deliver.
Sense and adapt to changes in customer needs. This is how you ensure you’re delivering value to your customer and spending resources wisely.
Be value-focused: Identify the value and the beneficiary of an automation activity, then confirm that the product you deliver generates that value.
As generative AI and platform engineering practices promise to accelerate decision making and enable an adaptable infrastructure. Gartner Distinguished VP Analysts Thomas Bittman and Dennis Smith and Sr Principal Analyst Autumn Stanish shared how to empower your team with the capabilities needed to transform your I&O future.
To embrace generative transformation:
Use GenAI. Build a plan with skills development at the forefront to multiply the productivity of your staff and transform how they do their jobs.
Apply infrastructure platform engineering principles. Treat users as customers, leverage software engineering practices and invest in automation and orchestration skills.
Foster a generative mindset. Hire for capabilities, facilitate creative skills growth and build a culture of experimentation.
“Generative transformation is about continuously transforming; continuously improving performance, efficiency, and service delivery; and continuously adapting to new technologies to meet new business objectives — all at the speed of business.”
Thomas Bittman, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner
To enable growth, you must help scale initiatives throughout the enterprise, even amidst significant external and internal challenges. In this session, Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Nathan Hill highlighted the key issues and trends impacting I&O and outlined leadership actions for success in 2024 and beyond.
“The goal is not balance between supply and demand. The goal is to meet the most profitable and mission-critical demand with the resources available.”
Nathan Hill, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner
Take these actions to meet challenges, prioritize resources and align to top business priorities:
Use resilience to manage technical debt. Increase reliability, tolerability and recoverability to minimize debt in new services and remove it from existing ones.
Attract and retain top talent. Attend to overlapping attraction and attrition drivers while upskilling employees, especially when it comes to their critical thinking.
Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference brings IT infrastructure, IT operations and cloud leaders together to embrace agility and enable scalable, secure and resilient platforms that empower anytime, anywhere workplaces.
Learn more about Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference and what’s in store for 2024.
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Thomas Bittman is a Vice President and Distinguished Analyst with Gartner Research. Mr. Bittman has led the industry in areas such as cloud computing, virtualization, and edge computing. He was an early pioneer for the concept of private cloud computing and invented the term "real-time infrastructure" in 2002 (a precursor to private cloud computing). Mr. Bittman served for three years as a member of Gartner's Senior Research Board. In 2005, he earned Gartner's Analyst of the Year Award. He has served as Gartner's Lead Analyst covering IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. His primary focus of research is edge computing and the future of infrastructure.
Dennis Smith is a Distinguished Vice President, Analyst in the Infrastructure and Operations organization. He is responsible for research in the areas of cloud computing, infrastructure platform engineering and container technologies.
Autumn Stanish is a Director Analyst with Gartner in the Digital Workplace I&O group. Her research addresses IT sustainability and the role of I&O in corporate ESG initiatives. In addition to sustainability, she also supports IT leaders with employee device trends and procurement strategies, including DEX tools, persona creation, lifecycle planning and vendor selection.
Nathan Hill is a Chief of Research with Gartner's Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) Research. He researches and sets the direction and framework for research across all I&O domains, including Cloud and Edge Computing, AI & Machine Learning, Automation, Infrastructure Agility, Continuous Operations, and DevOps, Digital Workplace I&O, and IT Service Management. He has been the Global Conference Chair for Gartner I&O events (physical and virtual). He frequently works with and advises executives, globally, in large and small enterprises, investors, governments, technology and service providers.
Chris Saunderson covers automation and orchestration methodologies at Gartner, with a primary focus on the life cycle of systems from build to run to retire. Mr. Saunderson has 10 years of experience as an automation architect, architecting task and process automation solutions to address IT needs. His coverage includes the impact of automation and orchestration on the I&O organization. He has an emphasis on improving the programmability of infrastructure elements, and the improvement of system availability and maintainability.
Lisa Pierce is a Research Vice President providing coverage on Network as a Service (NaaS), U.S. broadband infrastructure and remote work connectivity, managed WAN, LAN/WiFi and SD-WAN, NFV/uCPE, 4G/5G mobile and WAN services (US and European MPLS, Ethernet, Internet); public and private WAN-cloud connectivity (SDCI, cloud hubs); UCaaS and SIP trunks. During her tenure at Gartner, Ms. Pierce has served as the Managing Vice President of the Enterprise Network Systems and Services research team, and of the Enterprise UC, Network Systems and services team.
Karen Brown is a Director Analyst at Gartner Research, with a background wide-area networking subjects focused but not limited to U.S. carriers and associated vendors. Her coverage includes WANs, enterprise networking (Ethernet, MPLS, DIA and various access technologies), voice and unified communications, wireless-wireline convergence and SD-WAN.
Mark Margevicius is a vice president and research director in Gartner Research, where his research covers Infrastructure and Operations Leadership, skills development, organizational measurement, IT Score for I&O, operating models, strategy creation, organizational structures, technical debt, and organizational maturity. He helps Heads of I&O and I&O Leaders in all facets of their operating model. In addition, Mr. Margevicius covers DevOps and helps customers move from Project-based initiatives to Product-based initiatives. He is also knowledgeable in the areas of AI, Desktop Virtualization, VDI, desktop as a service (DaaS), server-based computing, end-user computing trends, and client computing architectures. Common client inquiry questions (but not limited to) include : "What skills are needed in my I&O team?" "How should I staff for cloud operations?" "How does my team compare to other organizations?" "What are the best ways to manage and reduce technical debt?" "How do I measure my I&O team? "What org structure makes sense today?" "How can I be a better leader for my team?" "How do I change the culture within my I&O team?" "How do I make I&O more strategic to the business?" "How do I engage with my internal customers?" "What are the key skill competencies that drive I&O success?" "How does DaaS compare to VDI?" "What are the key considerations when evaluating client computing/end user computing architectures?" "What are the key considerations when evaluating DaaS?" "Does moving from Projects to Products make sense for my organization?" "How can I successfully support DevOps initiatives?" "How do I initiate Infrastructure Platform Engineering in I&O?" "What are the best ways to support the CIO and other leaders?" "How do I change the perception of I&O from being viewed as a cost to value?" "How can my I&O organization embrace AI?" "Where does AI fit in I&O?" "How do I create an I&O strategy?" "How can I support organizational digital transformation efforts?"
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