Dell APJ

Third Platform technologies have become more mature over 2015. Mobility, cloud, and big data are entrenched in the enterprise today, not only because of customer demand, but because there is real value to such implementations. Dell’s   second   annual  Global  Technology  Adoption   Index (GTAI) reveals that organizations see business benefits in adopting these technologies. Those actively using Third Platform technologies, specifically bring-your-own-device programs experience up to 53 percent higher revenue growth rates than those that are not. "A converged platform pre-integrates compute, storage, hyper visor and networking resources and helping enterprises to better manage infrastructure."

The CIOs responsibilities have become more complex over the same period. While CIOs still have to ‘keep the lights on’ technology-wise they are also expected to invest in technologies that will help their employers to survive in an environment where industries can be disrupted very quickly.

In the year 2016 will see the adoption of trends based on the Third Platform to prepare enterprises for an unpredictable future. The future-ready enterprise has to be more strategic, agile and scalable than before. It must embrace open technologies that can help businesses innovate and transform in response for changing environments. Here are the top enterprise technology trends that for 2016:

Hybrid clouds gain momentum

Enterprises are now more familiar with cloud computing, part of the Third Platform, and they want the best of both private and public cloud worlds through adopting hybrid models. IDC predicts that 65 percent of Asia Pacific enterprises will commit to hybrid cloud architectures in 2016 while the GTAI revealed that 55 percent of organizations had globally already use more   than   one   type of cloud. Yale-NUS College in Singapore  is  one  such  hybrid  cloud  pioneer  The  college has a private cloud for data that needs to stay on-site for legal and latency issues, with interconnectivity to cost-effective public cloud services. It enjoys large amounts of public cloud capacity at low cost, and can support breakthrough research on the private cloud.

In 2016, there will be more support for specific public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and AWS and for cloud financing . We will see more solutions to address cloud security which was highlighted as a barrier to cloud adoption by GTAI respondents.

The rise of the workload-ready solution

Enterprises will continue to look for ease of deployment, manageability and cost-efficiency in the technology they invest in, and a new converged solution to fit the bill. A converged platform pre-integrates compute, storage, hypervisor and networking resources and helping enterprises to better manage infrastructure. New converged solutions are deployed more quickly, can offer better performance, and are typically more compact, reducing requirements for data center space, power and cooling.

The Fujian University of Technology’s Smart City strategy is for instance driven by a cloud platform that relies on converged compute and switching resources to increase manageability in addition to performance, reliability, and scalability.

Looking   out   for converged solutions that bring high performance computing to the mainstream, as well as domain-specific designs that are already tuned for specific workloads interest in converged solutions is high. According to a 451 Research survey 40% of respondents plan to increase spending on   converged   infrastructure over the next 90 days.  Markets and Markets   forecasts   that   the   global   converged   infrastructure    market   will   grow   from   US$11.53 billion  in  2014  to  US$33.89 billion  by 2019, at  a compound  annual  growth  rate (CAGR) of 24.1 percent.

We expect to see more reference architecture which offers cost savings, faster time-to-value and quicker access to insights than an open-source, do-it-yourself solution. These end-to-end blueprints cover more use cases than converged solutions, and are pre-validated for fast, reliable deployment.

Both virtual- and software-defined-ready / Looking beyond virtualization

Some enterprises will be starting on their journey to the cloud by  visualizing in 2016 and enabling them to enjoy the productivity increases and cost savings that better resource utilization can bring Others will be pushing the performance envelope with software-defined architectures, which complement virtualization with software-based techniques to reduce complexity and boost flexibility.GMO Internet, a Japanese hosting provider has already seen benefits from software-defined storage and estimates to cut costs by up to 70 percent and increase agility with more storage and data backup options as a result.

By 2020, Gartner predicts that software defined data centers  will  be  considered  a requirement for 75 percent of Global 2000 enterprises that seek to implement a develop approach and a hybrid cloud model Yale-NUS College also implemented a SDDC in addition to the hybrid cloud, simplifying cloud management, and allowing the college to accommodate changing workload requirements  quickly  for  cutting  application  deployment  times  by 80 percent .

CIOs who are looking for the enterprise technology investments for strategic, long term success will have much to choose from in 2016.Whether it is hybrid cloud, virtualization, software-defined architectures or converged platforms, the industry is moving towards future readiness: reaping the traditional benefits of improved total cost of ownership and productivity, but also fulfilling new requirements for enhanced business agility and scalability.  2016 looks to be the year when the different paths leading towards a future ready enterprise converge strongly and offer faster returns on investment too. It will be an exciting time.