It will be interesting to see if one technology gains a more
solid market footing over the other as the year progresses.
The Rise of OpenStack
OpenStack is a free and open-source cloud computing
software platform, and users primarily deploy it as an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects that control pools of
processing, storage, and networking resources throughout
a datacentre—which users manage through a web-based
dashboard, command-line tools, or a RESTful API.
As traditional vendor cloud solutions become ever-pricier,
expect more and more IT managers and CTOs to consider
making the switch to OpenStack as a way of putting the
skids on increasing costs whilst maintaining control of the
enterprise’s cloud resources.
Mobility
The ever-increasing amount of mobile devices is set to
place increased demands on networks and latency, as
bandwidth and traffic flow continue to rise.
“Mobile proliferation is driving IT a little bonkers in some
areas,” says Chris Spain, vice president of Cisco’s Enterprise Infrastructure and Solutions Group. “It’s driving a huge
refresh of the Wi-Fi network, which in turn is driving the
need to upgrade your wide area network [WAN] because of
where that traffic is actually going.”
The Internet of Things / Everything
Possibly the biggest buzzword of 2014, the Internet of
Things / Everything (IoT/E) is only going to get more
relevant as technology progresses towards the increasing
integration of the internet with everyday life.
Cisco ACI
This obviously has a massive impact on networking
as potentially billions of
devices connect and talk to
each other, raising questions of whether current
networking technologies
will be able to cope with
the additional demands
placed upon them as they
deal with millions of new
devices coming online.
Continued Security
Breaches
All-Flash Arrays
The flash storage and solutions market has really made
advances in recent times, no doubt helped by inclusion in
storage product portfolios by industry giants like IBM.
All-flash arrays boast ultra-high performance, storage and
cost efficiencies, and services such as enterprise-class
availability, reliability and quality of service. In addition to
speed and storage efficiencies, IDC says enterprises can
see cost savings as well.
Solid state is a more expensive storage media compared
with hard disk drives on a dollar-per-gigabyte basis ($/GB)
but can be significantly more cost effective on a $/IOP basis. When solid state storage is intelligently integrated into
a system with storage optimisation technologies, storage
vendors are frequently able to lower the acquisition cost
and total cost of ownership (TCO).
Look to see flash continue to make inroads into areas previously dominated by traditional disk storage
throughout 2015.
A scourge upon the
modern IT landscape, security breaches are not going
away. The complexity of modern networks often mean that
several antivirus and malware systems may exist on one
network, yet are often not able to ‘talk to each other’ or
leave vulnerabilities in certain areas, exacerbated by the
need to continually and hastily evolve to be one step ahead
of cyber-criminals.
The Increasing Prevalence of Wireless in Enterprise
With the explosion in mobile ]