With apologies to Mel Tormé, it’s the time of year when kids look forward to opening presents and adults look forward to reading IT forecasts for the coming year. Tech industry prognosticators have been busy crunching numbers, reading tea leaves, and peering intently into crystal balls, and our intrepid team has been busy compiling some of the most intriguing expert guesses for 2022.

AIOps

Yes, we’re biased, but AIOps is top-of-mind with a lot of enterprises these days, especially as they grapple with an ever-expanding IT footprint and increasing complexity of their infrastructure, services, and applications. Gartner says that the worldwide market for AIOps will grow at an annual rate of 43.7% and reach $3.12 billion by 2025. That growth will be fueled by trends affecting every aspect of technology adoption, so let’s dig a little deeper.

Digital Infrastructure

Some interesting predictions taken from IDC’s 2022 Worldwide Future of Digital Infrastructure Predictions. According to that august firm:

• By 2026, 90% of Global 2000 CIOs will use AIOps solutions to drive automated remediation and workload processes to improve cost and performance metrics, and improve resiliency and agility.
• By 2026, mid-market enterprises will shift 65% of infrastructure spending from traditional channels to app-centric trusted advisors.
• By 2025, 60% of enterprises will fund IT and line-of-business projects through OPEX budgets, focusing on improving SLA compliance and KPI outcomes.
• In 2023, over 80% of Global 2000 enterprises will invest in verifiable infrastructure supply chain integrity to support business resiliency.

• By 2023, Global 2000 leaders will prioritize business objectives over infrastructure choice, and half of new strategic workloads will use vendor-specific APIs.

• By 2023, in response to scaling cyberattacks and data breach risks, most C-level executives will implement business critical KPIs tied to data availability, recovery, and stewardship.

Digital Transformation

There’s a lot happening in the realm of digital transformation as enterprises continue to invest in and rely on technologies to run their businesses more efficiently. Gartner experts are among those weighing in on what the future may hold. Here are some of their predictions for 2022 and beyond from a wide-ranging ZDNet article on digital transformation trends for 2022:

• 80% of technology products and services will be built by non-IT professionals, shifting emphasis to low-code/no‑code and AI‑assisted development tools by 2024;
• 41% of non-IT professionals currently customize or build data or technology solutions;
• 77% of business technologists will rely on automation, integration, application development, and data science/artificial intelligence tools as a routine part of their work;
• 80% of users believe data and tech discoverability, and available packaged business capabilities (PBCs), are key to rapid project delivery; and,
• 86% of organizations believe availability of secure low-code/no-code development tools would lead to improved business outcomes.

On a related note, Deloitte says that 97% of IT managers are planning to take a best‑of‑breed, hybrid approach to distributing workloads across multiple clouds to boost resilience and support regulatory requirements.

IT Automation

In 2022, Deloitte believes that enterprise investments in robotic process automation (RPA) to improve efficiency and productivity will spur the market to grow 24% from 2020, and that, by 2023, 93% will be using RPA.

Gartner says that, of the enterprises it surveyed, 54% will turn to automation in 2022 to improve operational efficiency, 49% to improve productivity, and 41% are investing in automation to create “better-connected experiences.”

When it comes to the adoption of automation, consulting firm McKinsey believes that, in 2022, enterprises’ automation priorities will be improving operational efficiency (54%), improving productivity (49%), and creating better-connected experiences (41%).

Cloud Computing

The cloud—public, private, and hybrid—is a topic of great interest to us and to our customers, so what does the near future hold for that corner of the IT market? Here are more stats to consider, as compiled by TechJury:

• Gartner says public cloud revenues will reach $331 billion by 2022.
• According to IDC, the top three reasons companies adopt cloud are
  • Speed improvements (71%)
  • Greater flexibility (63%)
  • Improved customer support (57%)
• IDC also believes that cloud adoption will result in $55.7 billion in IT infrastructure spending.
• Consulting firm Accenture believes the market for cloud monitoring will increase by nearly 23% to $4.5 billion.

IT Budget Allocation

According to CompTIA, IT organizations will spend their 2022 budgets on:

• 30% innovation
• 23% Collaboration tool upgrades
• 16% IT staff hiring

Infrastructure focus will be:

• 50% Networking
• 50% Cloud computing
• 43% Storage
• 36% Server Administration

Remote Work (2021-2022 sentiment comparison)

• Nearly all onsite 2021 19% / 2022 18%
• Mostly onsite w/some remote 2021 17% / 2022 36%
• Even split 2021 29% / 2022 28%
• Mostly remote w/some onsite 2021 25% / 2022 12%
• Nearly all remote 2021 10% / 2022 5%

Speaking of remote work, McKinsey estimates that more than 20% of the global knowledge worker workforce will be primarily remote in 2022.

Artificial Intelligence

Some key trends in AI according to Analytics Insight Magazine:

• Enterprises will have adopted 35 AI initiatives by 2022;
• Gartner says 40% of I&O teams will adopt AI-augmented automation to boost IT efficiency by 2023; and,
• IDC predicts global spending on AI will reach $500 billion in 2024

DevOps

Via DZone DevOps Predictions for 2022: Key Trends:

• The DevOps market will grow to $10.31 billion by 2023 (up from $2.9 billion in 2017) according to Markets & Markets;
• IDC says that, by 2022, 80% of companies will have mechanisms in place for adopting cloud-centric applications and infrastructure twice as fast as before the pandemic.

If we’ve learned anything from history it is that many of these forecasts and predictions will be obsolete by the time the ball drops on Times Square, but they do offer an interesting window into what the experts are thinking. Our recommendation is to throw on an ugly sweater, warm up a mug of wassail, and make sure to plan for the circumstances your organization faces. And be prepared to adjust your plans when the unexpected happens.