Making predictions is a tricky business at the best of times, but especially after a year that turned the world upside down. Even so, we have decided to talk to the IT leaders and discover what we should get ready for in 2021. 

With technology development, COVID-19 impact, and the new cybersecurity issues happening in the world, the IT engineers responsible for the IT infrastructure monitoring should be always ready to adapt to the new challenges. Let’s see what industry experts have to say about the 2021 monitoring trends and beyond.

1. The complexity of distributed or hybrid cloud environments. 

According to the survey of 200 IT decision-makers made by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), hybrid clouds and applications are becoming pervasive. Only 8% of organizations using multiple cloud service providers (CSPs) have no interest in hybridizing their applications, while a full quarter of respondents report multiple production applications utilizing a hybrid model. To ensure security, compliance, and performance of the complex infrastructure companies need to leverage the advanced monitoring tools.

“High-performance IT infrastructure for accessing business resources aren’t just standard user expectations, they are business necessities. Increasingly complex IT infrastructure can make obstacles to availability and performance more difficult to pinpoint and address. True infrastructure performance management requires an end-to-end view of infrastructure” – Nisar Ahmad, MyVirtualJourney.com.

2. Monitoring of the multi-cloud environment

Multi-cloud adoption grew by 70% year over year. Rather than selecting which cloud solution is the best why not benefit from the most attractive features from each provider thus enable a multi-cloud strategy. One of the challenges with implementing a multi-cloud strategy is the risk of downtime, infrastructure problems, performance issues, malware, and online attacks, and more. Choosing the right monitoring solution should be a part of your multi-cloud adoption strategy. 

“In recent months, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we could notice significant changes to the current work model. Many of them will remain forever, others will evolve. We can also notice the increasing importance of edge computing infrastructure. 

The growing interest in multi-cloud environments will result in the emergence of solutions facilitating the monitoring of applications operating on the basis of this model, as the tools provided by cloud providers will prove insufficient.” – Piotr Masztafiak, Virtual-IT.pl.

3. Choosing the right metrics to measure

Metrics help you understand what’s going on with your whole infrastructure. With the number of metrics available on the monitoring solutions today it’s important to choose the ones that are essential for your business. Make sure you have customized your monitoring solution based on your organization’s needs.

“Measure what matters – Monitoring characteristics are almost bespoke to each application within an enterprise. One needs to make sure that the monitoring system is looking at relevant metrics” – Chris Williams, Multicloud Consultant at World Wide Technology

4. More tools for monitoring means more toil

In a world of emerging data, IT engineers need to find a way to manage infrastructure easily and keep an eye on everything. The solution is simple – you need to find a good monitoring tool, so you can focus on your main job. Check our guide on how to find the best monitoring solution. 

“One of the main challenges IT leaders will face in 2021 and beyond – more tools for monitoring means more toil” – Nisar Ahmad, MyVirtualJourney.com.

VirtualMetric is an easy to use all-in-one monitoring solution that can be customized based on your business needs. Don’t take our words for granted, start your free trial now. 

5. Server Sprawl 

Server Sprawl – is a situation in which under-utilized servers are covering up more space and resources. Virtual machine sprawl is a common issue for many IT departments. The ability to quickly create virtual machines results in having multiple machines created without approval and not being properly managed. This leads to an enormous waste of resources. 

“Now that we can spin up systems in seconds, we need to ensure that all of these new resources are audited and monitored in accordance with the processes and procedures standardized by a companies operations team.” – Chris Williams, Multicloud Consultant at World Wide Technology.

6. Greater emphasis on cybersecurity and compliance

Most probably you have heard about the recent US cyber-attack, which caused one of the biggest known data breaches in the world. This case has shown us one more time how important cybersecurity is and how vulnerable our data can be. When using the read-only monitoring solution you don’t transfer any data to a 3rd party and reduce the possibility of being compromised by the cyber-attack. 

“Cybercriminals are quickly adapting to the changes and using any pending opportunity to gain access to valuable corporate data.  Thus, there is a need for solutions that allow even more thorough monitoring of all kinds of incidents and irregularities in network traffic, which will allow you to quickly react and eliminate potential threats”. – Piotr Masztafiak, Virtual-IT.pl.

“We can expect big changes in security in the upcoming years. Keeping the good guys in, the bad guys out, and business critical information secure becomes more difficult without good automation of design, infrastructure and monitoring. Humans make mistakes and nefarious actors rely on those mistakes”. – Chris Williams, Multicloud Consultant at World Wide Technology.

7. Distributed teams and cross-team collaboration

COVID-19 global pandemic has sped up the growth of remote work. For most companies that were an unexpected scenario that brought a dramatic amount of new challenges, they had to adapt. One of such is organizing the remote teamwork with the same or even higher efficiency comparing to the work from the office.

Remote teams that work on dependent projects together started facing resource crunches and delays. When several teams work on the same project the chances are high that they will soon end up at the point where they will have to wait for the outcome from another team, which causes delays and negatively impacts the results.

“In 2021 companies will need to overcome cross-team dependencies that cause a delay resolving customer-impacting issues” – Nisar Ahmad, MyVirtualJourney.com.

To overcome this challenge companies have to implement a multi-tenant solution to make software deployments, testing, and development work seamlessly, no matter how big or small their teams would be. Check out our brief guide on how you can make the best use of multi-tenancy for increased productivity and efficient workflow in your team. 

What should you focus on to ensure high infrastructure performance in 2021?

Use solid-state Memory arrays and block flash memory

“Companies expecting high performance should focus on the use of solid-state memory arrays and block flash memory. These storage solutions provide stable IOPS and predictable latencies that are within application-specific latency thresholds”  – Piotr Masztafiak, Virtual-IT.pl.

True infrastructure performance management requires an end-to-end view of infrastructure.

“Creating an integrated high-performance IT infrastructure requires skills and experience that most organizations don’t have. One of the best ways to address that gap is to design, build, and deploy a customized solution that meets the exact needs of a business” – Nisar Ahmad, MyVirtualJourney.com.

Implement forecast solution

“Make sure you use a forecast solution for your infrastructure to uncover what’s going on with your infrastructure. Taking control of your resources and knowing how it is consuming, helps you to prevent possible disasters or lack of resources before they occur” – Augusto Nieto, IT Consultant.

Good architecture and a solid design

 “Performance” is subjective depending on what your application requirements are. Once you have captured those requirements with a good architectural review, you can design and build an adequate environment.” – Chris Williams, Multicloud Consultant at World Wide Technology.

What will be the biggest change IT companies will face in the next decade?

AI and Machine Learning are one of the trends that are dominating now and continue to do so for many years as the technology evolves. 

“The biggest changes that IT companies will face in the next decade are AI and machine learning where the increasing ability of machines to learn and act intelligently will transform the world” – Nisar Ahmad, MyVirtualJourney.com.

“As the complexity of environments grows, an increasingly important role in monitoring will be played by solutions that use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to respond faster to changes, prevent and react to anomalies.” – Piotr Masztafiak, Virtual-IT.pl.

Wrap Up

Monitoring solutions are no longer just a tool, but an advanced solution, that helps IT leaders to resolve business challenges. We can see that the complexity of the IT infrastructure will continue increasing and so will do the importance of using the right monitoring tool.

Make sure you are ready for the challenges that may occur in 2021. Leverage the power of the technology to simplify the monitoring process.