SolarWinds have put together their annual tech predictions for 2019 by the SolarWinds Head Geeks.
Below are some of their predictions for 2019:
The battle for the cloud: The scramble to engage enterprise customers As public cloud adoption becomes more mainstream, cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google will likely find themselves in a "mad scramble" to gain additional enterprise/on-premises customers. Now, enterprises are in the midst of migrating applications into the technology stack, both in the cloud and on-premises.
With this trend, tools that help facilitate app migration and detangling will be a focus in 2019. Some providers, such as AWS, have already begun leading the charge, offering their own proprietary software to handle and automatically monitor app migration.
In 2019, public cloud providers will begin implementing new strategies and tactics to gain enterprise customers, reintroducing cloud and the tech it offers as they pursue enterprise markets.
Prediction by Patrick Hubbard
The year of DataOps and the rise of data-driven, data-first organisations
All DevOps strategies have universal goals: agility, faster deployment, increased end-user experience, and "smart" operational decision-making. With DevOps transitioning from a hype to a standard practice in agile IT departments, technology and operations professionals striving to add value to their businesses should consider the next step in enhancing their departments: DataOps.
In today's increasingly digital world, data cannot be excluded from the agile decision-making process. In fact, we predict that 2019 will be the year that data is recognised as a key business driver. "Data Culture" will become increasingly implemented in tech environments, and organisations will become data-driven and data-first.
This shift will also give rise to DataOps as traditional admins start to understand that their days of tuning indexes are ending, one page at a time. Operations teams must adopt a "data mindset" to discern the type of data that exceeds their department and can be polished into something that adds value to the business overall. With DataOps, organisations can begin to transition their IT team into a data science team, as they adopt a data-firstof mind.
DataOps can help the C-suite operate their businesses more effectively by extracting and analysing the most pertinent pieces of data and distilling and crafting them into a compelling and "business-digestible" narrative that can be easily understood across the organisation.
Companies will begin to actuate on this data, not just report and track in Excel—they will start using valuable data to make more informed decisions. The ability to share this actionable, business-digestible narrative may even earn tech pros a seat at the strategy table.
Prediction by Tom LaRock
State of security: SMBs and MSSPs
As we approach 2019, the security landscape is more tumultuous than ever. DDOS attacks are on the rise, based on individually hijacked machines, and it's safe to assume hackers are sitting on a wide array of personal data accessed from any one of the number of breaches in 2018.
In 2019, the ever-changing security landscape will pose the greatest threat to small and mid-sized businesses, while simultaneously creating greater opportunity for both Managed Service Providers and Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs). Here are the predictions:
While we don't see breaches slowing down, we are predicting that small and mid-sized businesses will be the easiest targets in 2019. With weaker security, a lack of user education, and fewer trained professionals, these factors dramatically simplify the opportunity for breaches. Hackers will easily be able to access their data and target SMBs for more money.
MSPs are seeing the opportunity to expand their businesses to include security services; however, we can expect that many will lack existing security resources and as a result look for partnered assistance from Managed Security Service Providers.
The benefits of the MSSP model include the ability to quickly scale capacity and security expertise while MSPs build their own internal capabilities.
As a natural effect of the previous prediction, Managed Security Service Providers will see an uptick in the next year. In addition to MSPs driving demand, MSSPs will be on the rise due to the lack of properly trained security professionals at smaller businesses and the growing need for organisations to rely on a third party for true security support and defence.
Prediction by Destiny Bertucci
