Sebastian Krueger argues that we need to monitor digital waste, IT talent shortages and the convergence of IT and Operational Technology.

As the complexity of the IT landscape continues to grow in the Cloud, more specialized solutions that provide deep insights into clearly defined areas will be crucial.

Centralized management is expected to be vital, and the way to achieve this across even the most complex IT landscapes is to focus on monitoring solutions that are as broadly based as possible, and that are able to monitor organizations across all silos of the business.

As digitalization rages on around the world, it is going to be essential for organizations to ensure that tools are in place to monitor IT infrastructures and to help IT teams manage the ongoing digitalization of the sector and their increased responsibilities.

Digital waste to become more important

At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), calls to add digital waste to the agenda had highlighted a growing awareness of the issue. Organizations worldwide will have to consider how they can reduce their digital waste, and IT monitoring will play a huge part in this endeavor.

Monitoring can help enhance the lifecycle of a digital product, ensuring that all equipment are running at optimal levels. By doing so, organizations can reduce the demand for new products and decrease the surge in digital waste.

To manage IT waste, teams in charge need to be well-informed: therefore businesses should focus on monitoring strategies to ensure equipment maximization and longevity. IT teams with the necessary data at their disposal will be able to reduce digital waste in the long term, subsequently helping organizations achieve environmental targets.

Other areas for improved monitoring

  • Networking: The development of cloud technology means that AI is now more present than ever before, and this trend is expected to grow. When it comes to network monitoring, AI plays an important role as it collects large amounts of data , analyzes it, and recognizes patterns.

    AI can spot anomalies and improve root-cause analysis, providing organizations with valuable insights to identify trends and leverage predictive maintenance. Moving forward, organizations will have to seek not only cloud-based monitoring solutions but those that apply AI.
  • IT skills shortages: While the implications of this talent drain are huge, there is no quick fix available, and the world will continue to feel this pinch. Therefore, it will be more important than ever to automate as many IT processes as possible, and leave human intervention only for the top business priorities. This will free up IT teams to focus on business growth as opposed to executing mundane tasks.

    Furthermore, the skills shortages also mean that organizations will need to turn towards high-level Managed Services Providers (MSPs). The demand for vendors with a professional team that can remotely monitor the end user enterprise IT environment is higher than ever. Thus, it is likely that we will see MSPs try to further specialize their offerings.
  • IT/OT convergence: The growth of Industry 4.0, the retrofitting and associated networking of IT and OT, will also require enhanced monitoring. Only a central, higher-level monitoring solution can secure cross-departmental and cross-team processes in planning and production, and be able to uncover interrelationships. The challenge here then is adapting it to the increasing amount of software being used.

    IT and OT functions must work together, which is becoming even more significant due to the accelerating digitalization. Strategic partnerships need to be formed between major IT and OT vendors to deliver a holistic solution to reduce integration and deployment costs.

    Also, to support autonomous operations, organizations will need to increase their investments in data governance, digital engineering organizations, and digital operations technologies.

In the years ahead, digitalization and remote-working arrangements will continue to remain relevant. Monitoring decentralized infrastructures will continue to be a challenge that many organizations will have to contend with.