IDC FutureScape: Top 10 Predictions for the Future of Digital Infrastructure

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International Data Corporation's (IDC) top 10 predictions for the Future of Digital Infrastructure point to a digital infrastructure strategy that addresses resiliency and trust; data-driven operational complexity; and business outcomes-driven sourcing and autonomous operations. Organizations must invest in and foster a digital-first culture that leverages trusted industry ecosystems, generates profitable revenue growth, provides empathetic customer experiences, and demonstrates an ability to adapt operating models to complex customer requirements.

In the coming years, organizations will deploy, operate, and scale digital infrastructure to ensure consistent security, performance, and compliance across all resources, regardless of where and how they are deployed. These organizations will invest in more intelligent, autonomous operations and take advantage of flexible consumption and strategic vendor partnerships to promote agility and ensure that the business, and its digital infrastructure, can continue to perform in the face of a wide range of unexpected scenarios – social, geopolitical, economic, climate, or business-related.

"Digital infrastructure spans compute, storage, network, and infrastructure software, including virtualization and containers, and the automation, AI/ML analytics, and security software and cloud services needed to maintain and optimize both legacy and modern applications and data," explained Mary Johnston Turner, research vice president, Future of Digital Infrastructure. "IDC's 2022 predictions for the future of digital infrastructure identify critical shifts in governance, operations, architecture, and sourcing that need to be factored into enterprise digital transformation strategies going forward."

The top 10 predictions from the Worldwide Future of Digital Infrastructure 2022 report are: 

Prediction 1: By 2023, G2000 leaders will prioritize business objectives over infrastructure choice, deploying 50% of new strategic workloads using vendor-specific APIs that add value but reduce workload portability.

Prediction 2: In 2023, over 80% of the G2000 will cite business resiliency to drive verifiable infrastructure supply chain integrity as a mandatory and non-negotiable vendor evaluation criterion.

Prediction 3: By 2023, most C-suite leaders will implement business critical KPIs tied to data availability, recovery, and stewardship as rising levels of cyber-attacks expose the scale of data at risk.

Prediction 4: By 2024, 75% of G2000 digital infrastructure RFPs will require vendors to prove progress on ESG/Sustainability initiatives with data, as CIOs rely on infrastructure vendors to help meet ESG goals.

Prediction 5: By 2024, due to an explosion of edge data, 65% of the G2000 will embed edge-first data stewardship, security, and network practices into data protection plans to integrate edge data into relevant processes.

Prediction 6: By 2025, a 6x explosion in high dependency workloads leads to 65% of G2000 firms using consistent architectural governance frameworks to ensure compliance reporting and audit of their infrastructure.

Prediction 7: By 2025, 60% of enterprises will fund LOB and IT projects through OPEX budgets, matching how vendors provide their services with a focus on outcomes that are determined by SLAs and KPIs.

Prediction 8: By 2025, 70% of companies will invest in alternative computing technologies to drive business differentiation by compressing time to value of insights from complex data sets.

Prediction 9: By 2026, 90% of G2000 CIOs will use AIOps solutions to drive automated remediation and workload placement decisions that include cost and performance metrics, improving resiliency and agility.

Prediction 10: By 2026, mid-market companies will shift 65% of infrastructure spending from traditional channels towards more app-centric trusted advisors.