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Gartner: Infrastructure & Operations Must Shift Focus from Efficiency to Adaptive Resilience

In a world where constant change is becoming routine, Gartner said that infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must shift their traditional focus from efficiency to one of adaptive resilience.

"I&O leaders must re-imagine how they manage their talent, their platforms and operations, if they want to dynamically and quickly exploit new opportunities," said Dennis Smith, Research VP at Gartner.

I&O Leaders Must Retain, Attract and Evolve Talent

In a world where being adaptable is paramount, talent management plays a more critical role than ever for I&O organizations. A Gartner survey showed that talent availability is the most significant adoption barrier to 64% of emerging technologies. This dynamic — combined with a fiercely competitive labor market — are putting more pressure than ever on I&O leaders.

I&O leaders must learn how to retain the talent they have, attract new talent, and evolve everyone's skills along the way. By embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion's best practices, organizations can build the right resources over time and use agile learning methods to adapt and evolve skillsets as needed.

Gartner analysts predict that by 2026, 50% of large organizations will use agile learning as the upskilling/reskilling method.

I&O Leaders Must Build Adaptive Platforms

"With over 40% of organizations' staff now acting as business technologists, we have a wider variety of users depending on IT departments today than ever before," said Douglas Toombs, Research VP at Gartner. "The rapid growth of "citizen IT" business technologists, paired with the vast array of public and private infrastructure choices available in the market, has placed more pressure on I&O to perform than ever before."

By building adaptive platforms that are loosely coupled, but tightly integrated, I&O can empower creators of all types of systems throughout the organization.

"As hyperautomation is a critical path to achieve growth and operational excellence, I&O leaders must make automation a first-class discipline in everything they do," said Toombs.

By embracing hyperautomation strategies, I&O can pave the way for intelligence systems, such as AIOps and incident response automation, that play a key role in the day-to-day operations of IT.

Gartner estimates that by 2025, 60% of I&O teams will use AI-augmented automation across their organizations, up from 1% in 2020.

I&O Leaders Must Co-Create with the Business

"No matter how good your technologies or solutions are, no matter how talented your staff is, I&O leaders must align I&O with the way the business works to continuously adapt in a world of constant change," said Julia Palmer, Research VP at Gartner. "I&O leaders will have to learn to work towards adaptive operations to focus on multiple business models, and rethink how I&O engages and partners with the business."

I&O leaders must help their organization grow adaptively by sensing and responding to business changes. Embedding I&O closer to the business with the use of fusion teaming will enable leaders to quickly adjust plans, forecasts, budgets, and resources as business environments change.

"This is not about growing I&O. It is about I&O enabling the growth of the business," Palmer concluded.

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Gartner: Infrastructure & Operations Must Shift Focus from Efficiency to Adaptive Resilience

In a world where constant change is becoming routine, Gartner said that infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must shift their traditional focus from efficiency to one of adaptive resilience.

"I&O leaders must re-imagine how they manage their talent, their platforms and operations, if they want to dynamically and quickly exploit new opportunities," said Dennis Smith, Research VP at Gartner.

I&O Leaders Must Retain, Attract and Evolve Talent

In a world where being adaptable is paramount, talent management plays a more critical role than ever for I&O organizations. A Gartner survey showed that talent availability is the most significant adoption barrier to 64% of emerging technologies. This dynamic — combined with a fiercely competitive labor market — are putting more pressure than ever on I&O leaders.

I&O leaders must learn how to retain the talent they have, attract new talent, and evolve everyone's skills along the way. By embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion's best practices, organizations can build the right resources over time and use agile learning methods to adapt and evolve skillsets as needed.

Gartner analysts predict that by 2026, 50% of large organizations will use agile learning as the upskilling/reskilling method.

I&O Leaders Must Build Adaptive Platforms

"With over 40% of organizations' staff now acting as business technologists, we have a wider variety of users depending on IT departments today than ever before," said Douglas Toombs, Research VP at Gartner. "The rapid growth of "citizen IT" business technologists, paired with the vast array of public and private infrastructure choices available in the market, has placed more pressure on I&O to perform than ever before."

By building adaptive platforms that are loosely coupled, but tightly integrated, I&O can empower creators of all types of systems throughout the organization.

"As hyperautomation is a critical path to achieve growth and operational excellence, I&O leaders must make automation a first-class discipline in everything they do," said Toombs.

By embracing hyperautomation strategies, I&O can pave the way for intelligence systems, such as AIOps and incident response automation, that play a key role in the day-to-day operations of IT.

Gartner estimates that by 2025, 60% of I&O teams will use AI-augmented automation across their organizations, up from 1% in 2020.

I&O Leaders Must Co-Create with the Business

"No matter how good your technologies or solutions are, no matter how talented your staff is, I&O leaders must align I&O with the way the business works to continuously adapt in a world of constant change," said Julia Palmer, Research VP at Gartner. "I&O leaders will have to learn to work towards adaptive operations to focus on multiple business models, and rethink how I&O engages and partners with the business."

I&O leaders must help their organization grow adaptively by sensing and responding to business changes. Embedding I&O closer to the business with the use of fusion teaming will enable leaders to quickly adjust plans, forecasts, budgets, and resources as business environments change.

"This is not about growing I&O. It is about I&O enabling the growth of the business," Palmer concluded.

Hot Topics

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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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