New applications are developed to cloud native principles based on standardized platforms, runtimes and integrated orchestration. Enterprise Infrastructure is still being bought, built and operated largely on client-server principles, with limited integration and automation, making adaption to changing business needs long, complex and costly. Businesses are becoming increasingly Digital, with IT covering not just back-office processes and employee productivity but increasingly shaping and supporting Manufacturing & Service Delivery, Supply Chain, Go-to-Market, Logistics and Customer Experience. Application delivery, resiliency and flexibility will be the hallmarks of successful Digital Infrastructure. Change is the only certainty in IT, and to be ready to cope with change, future Digital Infrastructure will need to be able to identify, analyze and respond to shifting requirements with minimal or no human intervention, in order to deliver at scale.
Digital Infrastructure will be software defined, with the ability to plug additional hardware that is automatically discovered and used according to real-time workload need. It will have fully-featured Cloud stacks to provide predictable and standardized platforms for deployment of Cloud-native workloads with as minimal integration or porting work. Workloads will automatically take advantage of hardware assists, with higher level code targeted to different hardware execution resources based on cost and performance requirements.