As the year winds down it’s a good time to take a quick look ahead at what the new year might bring in order to be better prepared to make smart decisions.
Nowhere is that more important than in IT, where the choices enterprise leaders make will have implications not only for themselves and their customers, but also for the overall economy, which depends more and more on corporate networks delivering business-critical services reliably.
Here, we take a look how some of the most critical technologies will fare in 2020.
What’s hot for Cisco in 2020
Cisco is expected to continue its cloud, security, and SD-WANefforts in 2020, but there are hurdles to overcome. “Overall, I think it’s clear that Cisco needs to get into the cloud in a more effective way,” said analyst Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. “I think their recent reorg shows they understand that. Cloud Interconnect is a sideshow. What’s needed is infrastructure-independent development and deployment, which would relegate Cloud Interconnect to nothing but a network gateway.” (Read more.)
Data centers in 2020: Automation, cheaper memory
It’s that time of year again when those of us in the press make our annual prognostications for the coming year. Some things we saw coming; the rise of the cloud and the advance of SSD. Others, like the return of many cloud migrations to on-premises or the roaring comeback of AMD, went right by us. We do our best but occasionally there are surprises. So with that, let’s take a peek into the always cloudy (no pun intended) crystal ball and make 10 data-center-oriented predictions related to, among others, the impact of IoT, NVMe over fabrics, and cheaper storage-class memory. (Read more.)
IoT in 2020: The awkward teenage years
Much of the hyperbole around the Internet of Things isn’t really hyperbole anymore – the instrumentation of everything from cars to combine harvesters to factories is just a fact of life these days. IoT’s here to stay. Yet despite the explosive growth – one widely cited prediction from Gartner says that the number of enterprise and automotive IoT endpoints will reach 5.8 billion in 2020 – the IoT market’s ability to address its known flaws and complications has progressed at a far more pedestrian pace. That means ongoing security woes and a lack of complete solutions are most of what can be safely predicted for the coming year. (Read more.)
SD-WAN in 2020: 6 trends to look for
The market for SD-WAN remains white hot with distributed organizations widely deploying the technology to solve WAN bandwidth limitations, provide reliability/resiliency and improve quality of user experience for cloud-based applications. Dozens of suppliers are rapidly innovating and maturing their SD-WAN products with innovations in cloud onramps, support for leading SaaS applications, security and management/automation platforms. (Read more.)
5 disruptive storage technologies for 2020
For decades, storage technology progress was measured primarily in terms of capacity and speed. No longer. In recent times, those steadfast benchmarks have been augmented, and even superseded, by sophisticated new technologies and methodologies that make storage smarter, more flexible and easier to manage. Next year promises to bring even greater disruption to the formerly staid storage market, as IT leaders seek more efficient ways of coping with the data tsunami generated by AI, IoT devices and numerous other sources. Here’s a look at the five storage technologies that will create the greatest disruption in 2020, as enterprise adoption gains ground. (Read more.)
5G in 2020: Still just a private party
To hear the major mobile carriers talk about it, 5G is here. They’ve deployed it, it works, and it’s ready to start changing the world just about right away, with ultra-fast connectivity, low latency and a dramatically improved ability to handle huge numbers of different connections at once. Eventually, that will all be true – but, according to experts in the field, it isn’t yet, and most of it won’t take place within the coming calendar year. The 3GPP standards that will underpin all new-radio 5G technology are still not yet finalized, although that is expected to happen in early 2020, which means the much-touted 5G deployments in the U.S. are based partially on pre-standard technology. (Read more.)
Gartner crystal ball: Looking to 2020 and beyond for the top IT-changing technologies
Forecasting long-range IT technology trends is a little herding cats – things can get a little crazy. But Gartner analysts have specialized in looking forwardth, boasting an 80 percent accuracy rate over the years, Daryl Plummer, distinguished vice president and Gartner Fellow told the IT crowd at this year’s IT Symposium/XPO. Some of those successful prediction have included the rise of automation, robotics, AI technology and other ongoing trends. (Read more.)
Gartner: Top 10 strategic technology trends for 2020
The pace of technology change is accelerating rapidly, augmented by factors that IT pros need to study-up on, things they never had to deal with before like hyperautomation, multiexperience, and human augmentation that Gartner says will have a significant impact on enterprises. “It’s been 50 years since the first message was sent across what became the internet. In 50 years we’ve seen technology transform our enterprises, our relationships, and society itself,” said Val Sribar, senior research vice president at Gartner. “The next five years may bring as much change as those last 50.”
This article originally appeared on NetworkWorld.