What IT trends will matter in 2016? Hitachi Data Systems CTO Hu Yoshida gives us a sneak peek, expecting a major transformation to happen in IT and in the vendor community.

Businesses today have to contend with a new wave of innovative technology start-ups that are able to move quickly to capitalize on changes in the external environment.

There are two major disruptions happening:

• First the most obvious is that software and services businesses that use the Internet and cloud are more agile than brick and mortar businesses.
• The second disruption is on the customer side. The consumer that used to book a standard room at a hotel, is now a “pro”sumer, who is empowered to book whatever, where ever, and at any fee that he chooses.

To compete, traditional businesses will have to change their operating model to become more agile and connect with customers who are more sophisticated and empowered.

Business will need to look to IT as the Information Technology experts for innovation and competitive advantage.

In line with this, 2016 will see businesses shift their IT focus from infrastructure to application enablement, with more of the IT budget going to application development, analytics and big data.

This sets the stage for some of the key IT trends that we see emerging in 2016.

A greater focus on application and analytics

1. IT Skills Undergo Transformation

To meet the challenges of IT transformation, IT must off-load the grunt work that ties their staff to infrastructure management and operations and start to develop specialist skills in areas such as cloud enablement, analytics, DevOps, mobile and business solutions.

This transformation of IT skills will involve a change in culture and will require the commitment of both business and IT leaders.

2. DevOps Adoption Accelerates Application Delivery

DevOps is a software development methodology where operations and development engineers work together throughout the application cycle, resulting in high IT performance.

Companies with high IT performance are twice as likely to exceed their profitability, market share and productivity goals.

3. Data Warehouses Transition Into Data Lakes

Big data analytics involves the processing of large amounts of heterogeneous data derived from multiple sources and across multiple knowledge domains.

Data lakes enable this by bringing together data sources in their original state which can then be analyzed by applications that are brought to the data.

They must also be able to incorporate existing data warehouses to leverage the investments that have already been made.

4. IT Takes Control of Provisioning Analytics Platforms

Business leaders will look to IT to make investments in analytics platforms, acknowledging the fact that IT has a better understanding of security, data privacy, integration and the service level requirements of the business.

This will reverse the shadow IT trend of business units acquiring their own analytics platforms and tools and creating their own data silos.

Infrastructure technologies drive efficiencies

5. Converged Solutions Replace Reference Architectures

Instead of providing reference architectures detailing best practices for application enablement, vendors will begin to deliver these best practices as templates implemented through converged solutions.

The converged infrastructure offers a more evolved platform for deriving greater cost efficiencies and time savings by allowing IT resources to be managed more cohesively.

6. In-memory Databases Gain Traction

The move to in-memory databases will gather momentum as faster reporting and analysis deliver a clear competitive advantage in today’s real-time business environment.

Developments such as the consolidation of SAP’s business suite onto the HANA in-memory database with S/4 HANA, and the emergence of converged solutions and cloud service providers, will help simplify IT and facilitate this migration.

7. Flash Devices Begin To Replace High Performance Disks

The availability of multi-terabyte flash devices will enable flash to compete with high-performance 15K RPM disk drives on a capacity-cost basis.

As a result, the majority of storage systems delivered in 2016 will contain a percentage of flash to boost response times and reduce the cost of managing storage performance.

IT leadership drives innovation

8. Businesses Prepare For Next Gen Cloud

According to a study by The Economist, some of the best practices that will help business leaders make the most of their cloud opportunities.

This includes improving supplier selection; choosing the right cloud service for the right task; making better use of integrators to connect cloud services to existing IT infrastructure; and considering factors such as cloud’s potential to improve business operations and boost employee efficiency.

9. IT Infrastructure Companies Will Be Disrupted

As IT begins to focus more on application delivery, analytics and the Internet of Things, pure-play infrastructure companies will try to cope with declining revenues by splitting off some parts of their business, acquiring new infrastructure companies or merging with other infrastructure companies to drive economies of scale.

However, in the longer term, they will have to be able to integrate IT with operational technology to deliver solutions around the Internet of things that matter, in areas such as public safety, transportation, health and life sciences.

10. IT Plays Leadership Role In The 3rd Platform

IT will play a more proactive role in leading businesses through the transformation driven by social, mobile, analytics and cloud, collectively known as the 3^rd Platform.

Contrary to the view that IT no longer plays a dominant role in driving enterprise technology spending, we believe that the compelling value of IT lies in its ability to implement 3rd Platform technologies in accordance with corporate requirements for security, data protection, availability and collaboration.

If IT does not step up to this leadership role, the result will be silos of information and duplication of processes that will inhibit business growth.