What’s Coming Next in Enterprise IT?

Flexibility, accessibility and mobility. The “walled fortress” era of enterprise computing is fading fast and being superseded by a multitude of new and dynamic work-modes and devices. From GPS systems, home automation and even traditional enterprise IT services, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to contemplate products, services or even business processes in which the concepts of flexibility, accessibility and mobility are not part of the architecture.

And the backbone of these infrastructures will run predominately on Linux. So, what’s next for the major trends in enterprise Linux this year? We see converged IT, clouds (in many forms) and demand for big data to drive the omnipresence of Linux and open source.

Cloud

This will be the year of OpenStack deployment reality, and the project’s incredible momentum will drive real-world success. For many, the tire-kicking and proof-of-concept phase will be over. CIOs will initiate full-on implementation projects aimed at developing the next generation infrastructure and data management capability required to align IT agility with the dynamics of their fiercely competitive markets. Full production private clouds will be deployed complete with capabilities like orchestration for automated management and telemetry for measuring utilization. The OpenStack community and vendors will support this next phase with mature training, best practices and standards-based certification programs.

Big Data

Back in 2011, an IDC study found that the volume of digital data was growing 40-50 percent year over year. Extrapolating from that, the study predicted that the 40 trillion gigabyte digital universe of today will explode by a factor of 50 by 2020. This 50x growth also applies directly to the amount of information managed by enterprise data centers. Though still a broad term, “big data” is not just hype, and for many enterprise organizations it is fast becoming day-to-day reality. Like cloud, big data solutions in their many forms (Hadoop clusters, in-memory DBs, etc.) are building on Linux and harnessing the incredible power of the open source model across a whole range of open source projects to deliver innovation at an unprecedented pace and scale.

Converged IT

According to Gartner research in 2012, many enterprises began embracing new technologies focused on the convergence of social, mobile and cloud systems and infrastructure – including the massive amounts of related data. Now, two years later, that early adopter phase is over, and for many enterprises the reality of business simply requires a customer-centric approach built on this convergence. Linux and open source leads the way here as well, providing the rapid innovation and flexibility required to transform the hype of convergence into enterprise solutions built on open industry standards.

Conclusion

2014 is about breaking down traditional IT barriers and practices in order to drive real business growth and customer value with Linux and open source-powered innovations and technologies that have moved from hype to reality over the last year.