Cloud, Virtualisation, Unified Fabric: Top IT Trends

Cisco has announced the final installment of the Cisco Connected World Report, an international study about the behavioral trends of workers in accessing information anywhere, with any device, and the ability of information technology (IT) professionals to address their needs.

The latest results focus on datacentre, virtualisation, and cloud computing trends, and evolving IT roles, in the context of increasingly mobile and distributed workforces. The study found that global IT professionals are creating new job opportunities by increasing collaboration among teams in the datacentre, and adopting new technologies such as virtualisation and cloud computing, but they are also struggling to maintain security and data governance as employees demand more offsite access to networks and information.

Across the 13 countries in the global study, 52 percent of the IT professionals stated they use or plan to use cloud computing, while much higher cloud adoption rates are predicted in Brazil (70 percent), China (69 percent) and India (76 percent). Across the world, respondents rated the following as their top datacentre priorities for the next three years: improve agility and speed in deploying business applications (33 percent), better manage resource capacity to align demand and capacity (31 percent), increase datacentre resilience (19 percent), and reduce power and cooling costs (17 percent).

The announcement adds to the initial survey results, which revealed that workers want flexible access to corporate information from any mobile device, anywhere, anytime, which revealed disconnects in worker expectations around information access, IT policies and employee awareness of policies. The latest survey results examine how IT managers are evolving their data centers and taking advantage of new technologies, while working to accommodate trends in the workplace like social media, device proliferation, video and an increasingly mobile workforce.