Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference 2023 London: Day 1 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference, taking place this week in London. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference.

On Day 1 from the conference, we are discussing how infrastructure & operations (I&O) leaders can empower their people to limitless growth and transform their company’s I&O future, exploring the future of cloud and sharing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) use cases for I&O.

Key AnnouncementsGartner Opening Keynote: Empowered People and Groundbreaking Innovations Deliver Your Future

Presented by Thomas Bittman and Dennis Smith, Distinguished VP Analysts and Autumn Stanish, Sr Principal Analyst, Gartner

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and platform engineering practices promise to accelerate decision making, simplify operations and enable an adaptable infrastructure. In this session, Gartner analysts Thomas Bittman, Dennis Smith and Autumn Stanish, shared how infrastructure & operations (I&O) leaders empower their people to limitless growth and transform their company’s I&O future.

Key Takeaways

• With GenAI, I&O leaders have a powerful tool for generative transformation.

  1. “Decide your ambition, from improving the Everyday, to Game-Changing.

  2. “Keep skills at the forefront. And remember that GenAI is about staff augmentation, not replacement.”

  3. “Establish guardrails to protect your data and mitigate risks. Distrust and Verify what GenAI delivers.”

  4. “Finally, build and execute an adaptable plan. Start now with the Everyday improvements, but aspire for the Game-Changing.”

  
  

• “Infrastructure platform engineering is your future. It is the second important ingredient in your generative transformation.” 

• Platform engineering transformation focuses on four principles:

  1. Platforms need to be delivered as products.

  2. Start with the thinnest viable platform.

  3. The platforms need to be demand driven.

  4. Platforms should provide easy, paved roads for users.

  
  

• “Empower your teams not just with new tools and skills, but with a generative mindset.”

• [p"Start by shifting to outcome-based hiring that focuses on capabilities, not jobs. Encourage existing staff to explore new skills. Finally, create an inviting culture where failure is an acceptable part of the learning process"[/p]

The Future of Cloud in 2028: From Technology to Business Necessity

Presented by Dennis Smith, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

In 2028, cloud computing will not just be needed for competitiveness but for business survival. In this session, Dennis Smith, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, shared some key predictions on the implications of multicloud, industry clouds and sovereign cloud deployments to help infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders navigate the evolving cloud computing landscape.

Key Takeaways

• “Cloud computing continues to evolve, progressing from being just a technology disruptor, to where, in 2028, it will be a necessity.”

• “By 2028, more than 50% of enterprises will not get value from their multicloud implementations.”

• “By 2028, cloud-native platforms will serve as the foundation for more than 95% of new digital initiatives — up from less than 50% in 2023.”

• “By 2028, modernization efforts will culminate in 70% of workloads running in a cloud environment, up from 25% in 2023.”

• “By 2028, more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives.”

• “By 2028, over 50% of multinational enterprises will have digital sovereignty strategies, up from less than 10% today.”

• “By 2028, the percentage of Global 2000 companies prioritizing sustainability as a part of vendor procurement will rise to over 50%, up from less than 25% in 2023.”

• “By 2028, the adoption of AI will culminate in over 50% of cloud compute resources devoted to AI workload, up from less than 10% in 2023.”

The Future Implications of ChatGPT and Generative AI on I&O

Presented by Arun Chandrasekaran, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

AI models have evolved to create human-like artifacts in areas of text, images, video and even code. While generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is a major AI advance, its implications for infrastructure and operations (I&O) aren’t well understood. In this session, Arun Chandrasekaran, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, shared GenAI implications for I&O and outlined best practices for their effective usage.

Key Takeaways

• According to a Gartner webinar in April 2023, 19% of IT executives are already piloting or producing GenAI and 70% are in the investigation stage.

• “As more businesses deploy private language learning models (LLMs) or deploy retrieval augmented generation (RAG) architectures or fine-tune models, I&O needs to curate a next-gen infrastructure for it.”

• “GenAI will also be impactful in helping I&O run more resilient and efficient IT Ops.”

• “GenAI models and applications require significant investments in specialized training infrastructure due to their massive size. This is increasing the amount of infrastructure required for initial training, retraining and inferencing.”

• To consume GenAI capabilities, I&O leaders can follow five main approaches:

  1- Consume GenAI embedded in apps

  2- Embed GenAI APIs in a custom app frame

  3- Extend GenAI models via data retrieval

  4- Extend GenAI models via fine-tuning

  5- Build custom models From scratch

Tune back in tomorrow for more updates from the conference.

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