Annually, IT market research firm and consultancy Gartner puts out its list of the strategic technology trends for the coming year. You could guess that the list includes such things mobility and the Internet of Things (it does). You might also guess that the list includes something to do with clouds. It does, but frankly, this year I wasn’t so sure it would. After all, cloud has been showing up on Gartner’s list of strategic technology trends for a while.
So what does Gartner have to say about cloud now? Something every IT leader should be considering: that enterprises should be designing “private cloud services with a hybrid future in mind and make sure future integration/interoperability is possible.” You can read more about this hybrid cloud design and the rest of Gartner’s list in this in this Gartner news release.
I couldn’t agree more with Gartner’s assessment. As companies develop their cloud environments, they need to stay away from proprietary solutions and instead leverage open, industry standard solutions such as OpenStack. In this way, companies can future-proof their clouds so they can leverage existing software and hardware while planning and building out next-generation IT. A cloud built on OpenStack lets them collaborate with a large ecosystem of partners and developers and ultimately control how and when they consume technology. Proprietary solutions, however, lock companies in.
Gartner goes on to talk about IT as a service broker. I talked to Red Hat CIO, Lee Congdon who said IT is chiefly a service organization.
Meanwhile, what do you all think about open, hybrid clouds? Is this the way of the future? Should it be?
Read Lee's article, "The competitive business benefits of (nearly) everything as a service."