As 2022 draws to a close, it's time to look ahead at what's next for the IT monitoring industry. Paessler, the Germany-based IT infrastructure and network monitoring specialist, offers the following predictions:
Digitisation will continue to create new responsibilities for IT professionals: Whether it is on factory floors, in hospitals, energy sources or data centres, previously analogue devices and systems that were isolated from the IT world are now generating data compatible with digital systems, expanding the limits to which we can analyse and interpret data.
While industries are clamouring to address all the challenges that have come with the rising convergence of IT and OT (operational technology), it is also equally important to consider the monitoring of the ecosystem. A major challenge here is to bring these multiple metrics and their different monitoring systems into a single view.
There will be an increased focus on IT monitoring tools that will enable organisations to track changes in the ecosystem and provide a consolidated view of data collected, simplifying the data analysis and decision-making process.
DATA CENTRE HOTSPOT
Monitoring solutions will keep playing a vital role in data centres: As more multinationals relocate their data centres to Southeast Asia, the region has become a hotspot for data centre investment.
In the second half of 2022, the Singapore government lifted its moratorium on data centre construction. And under the Satu Data Indonesia (SDI) 2022-24 action plan, the Indonesian government is also focusing on this expanding sector. The Thailand data centre market, meanwhile, is expected to be worth $1 billion by 2027.
With data centres -- and the subsequent infrastructure and devices that are often spread over multiple locations -- comes the challenge of monitoring them. Because data centres have become essential infrastructure, their failure means that businesses are often left unable to function.
In order to ensure efficient operation, it is paramount to keep a constant eye on technical equipment, operational facilities and security, in order to minimise data centre downtime.
Remote monitoring from the cloud will be on the rise -- but will need differentiation: Organisations are increasingly turning to the cloud with 76% of Asia-Pacific businesses planning to increase their cloud services in the next 12 months. An important aspect of cloud migration is strengthening cloud-first strategies by ensuring that various applications and IT processes can be incorporated into a cloud computing environment.
Additionally, more monitoring services are being offered from the cloud. This is applicable to monitoring cloud-based components such as websites, cloud services and cloud-based applications. When it comes to on-premises monitoring, monitoring solutions from the cloud may face some issues as they depend on a superfast and reliable internet connection to avoid false results due to time lags in data transmission. It's important to take this into account by having the right mix of cloud-based and on-premises monitoring tools.
A renewed focus on improving security in the IoT environment: Given the significant rise in data breaches, ransomware attacks and other cyber-attacks, businesses across the globe are turning their attention to further strengthening their cybersecurity initiatives and strategies. However, one noticeable gap is the Internet of Things (IoT) security gap.
The adoption and capabilities of IoT technology have skyrocketed over the past few years. By 2025, IoT spending in Asia Pacific is predicted to reach $437 billion. Any device that is connected to the internet is susceptible to some form of cyber-attack.
Apart from the fact that IoT devices inherently have very little built-in security, and that patch management can be difficult because of their physical nature, the interconnectedness of these devices, and the complex environments in which they exist, pose grave security threats across the network.
FIREWALLS AND BEYOND
Monitoring is a vital part of every security strategy, ensuring that all classic security tools like firewalls, unusual detection systems or privileged access management (PAM) tools work flawlessly. But especially in the IoT world, monitoring has another important task: Suitable monitoring solutions can ensure physical security by integrating door-locking systems, security cameras, smoke detectors or temperature sensors into central monitoring.
Distributed architectures will continue to become the new normal: With concepts of hybrid working, remote offices and working from home becoming common, organisations are storing data in the cloud instead of having centralised data infrastructures, thereby moving towards networks using software as a service (SaaS) and software-defined wide-area networks (SDWAN). With distributed architectures gaining prominence, it is critical to have the right distributed monitoring strategy in place.
Given this scenario, there will be a high demand for solutions that will give organisations a unified overview of multiple IT infrastructures, providing benefits such as end-user view of network performance, troubleshooting, simplifying the transition to the cloud and reducing bandwidth requirements.