AI is climbing up the ranks in terms of the value it will serve leaders in infrastructure and operations who need to manage growing infrastructures without being able to grow their staff.

This is according to Gartner which adds that AI-derived business value will reach nearly US$3.9 trillion by 2022.

"AI has the potential to be organisationally transformational and is at the core of digital business, the impacts of which are already being felt within organisations," the company stated.

The company highlighted key technologies and trends that I&O leaders must start preparing for to support digital infrastructure in 2019.

At its IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference in Las Vegas this week, Ross Winser, senior research director at Gartner said: "More than ever, I&O is becoming increasingly involved in unprecedented areas of the modern day enterprise. The focus of I&O leaders is no longer to solely deliver engineering and operations, but instead deliver products and services that support and enable an organisation's business strategy. The question is already becoming 'How can we use capabilities like artificial intelligence (AI), network automation or edge computing to support rapidly growing infrastructures and accomplish business needs?'"

Gartner also listed serverless computing, network agility, death of the data centre, edge computing, digital diversity management, SaaS denial, talent management becomes critical, new roles within I&O and global infrastructure enablement as key trends to keep a look out for in 2019.

The company said edge computing "is another trend that does not replace the cloud, but augments it. The critical time frame for organisations to adopt this trend is between 2020 and 2023."

According to Gartner, IT is increasingly taking on the role of supporting cloud services in terms of aggregation, customisation, integration and governance.

"A big challenge with cloud services is keeping costs under control, and the business expects I&O to be doing just that. Rather than focusing solely on engineering and operations, I&O must develop the capabilities needed to broker services; these will require different roles to the I&O of old," said Winser. The critical time frame for this trend starts immediately in 2019.

"SaaS itself is becoming a level of complexity that IT shops aren't yet coping with as they should. The shift to SaaS must be accompanied with I&O support, all the way from ensuring visibility is maintained of what is in use, through to supporting compliance requirements and enterprise integration needs. Leaders must start this now as the pressure will be on through 2021 and beyond," Winser added.