Infrastructure & Operations Priorities 2024

Approach innovation and change with realism and responsibility.

2024: Responsibly embracing change

Each year, Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) leaders must negotiate the art and science of prioritizing the next year’s initiatives. These choices are influenced by not only the responsibility for maintaining and administering existing systems but also the obligation to demonstrate how I&O, and IT more broadly, delivers value to the business. In practice, determining priorities is often influenced by factors outside of one’s control, as past decisions continue to influence what is and is not possible. However, by balancing systems maintenance and administration with project work, and by supporting the evolution of I&O roles and skills as workloads migrate to the cloud, Infrastructure and Operations teams do the nuts and bolts work that allows IT to support and generate value for the business. That doesn’t change.

What can change is the form this work takes and the external pressures and opportunities that arise. I&O practitioners are certainly accustomed to change. The past year presented the specter of change in many ways, but the biggest headlines were probably those related to the impact of generative AI. Indeed, Info-Tech’s Tech Trends 2024 report goes in depth to discuss bleeding-edge Gen AI trends and their implications for IT. IT leaders are indeed interested in dipping their toe into Gen AI technology to find sustainable ways to benefit the business. In our survey, we found 60% of Infrastructure respondents are currently exploring these tools but asking employees to wait for professional tools with oversight to be deployed. Another 18% have identified a couple of clear use cases for Gen AI (n=50).

What does this mean for Infrastructure and Operations? This report will explore the I&O implications of the need to steward and support the data needed for Gen AI initiatives. However, Gen AI is not the only priority on the roadmap. I&O is also impacted by the economic landscape and the need to control costs, along with the ongoing implications of being in the cloud and the perennial need to ensure one is operating securely. These are the broad themes taken up in this Priorities report, the purpose of which is to help you come to a reasonable understanding of your own priorities and communicate those priorities to your stakeholders.

Rate your business interest in adopting text (e.g. ChatGPT) generative AI applications

Welcome to the Info-Tech 2024 I&O Priorities Report.

Data in this report represents respondents to the Future of IT online survey conducted by Info-Tech Research Group between May 11 and August 16, 2023. It reflects 894 total responses with 496 completing every question on the survey. This report also reflects data from in-depth CIO interviews, along with analyst opinions and secondary research. Additionally, this data is supplemented with insights from Info-Tech’s IT Diagnostics Program between November 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023.

The five priorities identified in this report are bound together by themes of realism and responsibility. When thinking about these priorities, consider to what degree they are relevant for your 2024. At the end of the day, your priorities are your own. Use the ones in this report as a jumping-off point or as context, come to a consensus with your team, and leverage the included template to present priorities that will resonate most with your stakeholders in 2024.

Use the linked Info-Tech research to dive deeper into these topics and help turn the roadmap into reality.

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Priorities

Five forward-looking priorities for the next year.

Focus

Activity to help select which priorities are relevant for you.

Actions

Actionable Info-Tech research and tools to help you deliver.

Demographic info

Info-Tech’s Future of IT Survey 2024 collected data from a range of industries, roles, and seniority levels (n=848):