IT Infrastructure Predictions and Trends for 2023 and Beyond

Update: Hear TBR’s 2024 predictions for the IT infrastructure industry in this January 2024 video with TBR Principal Analyst Angela Lambert

Strategic investments will combat impending headwinds

Top 3 predictions (and emerging trends) for IT Infrastructure in 2023

1. The storage market will remain extremely competitive as vendors invest to provide the most flexible platforms
2. User consoles are the OEM frontier for establishing an edge-to-cloud ecosystem
3. Managed services are eyed as a profit preserver

Building a diverse ecosystem is key to maintaining relevance and protecting against share losses

In a continuation of a multiyear trend, the go-to-market efforts of the IT infrastructure have focused little on the infrastructure itself and increasingly on becoming an integral piece of organizations’ edge-to-cloud strategy. Infrastructure vendors are honing their ability to deliver outcome-based solutions in hopes of being seen as solution providers rather than transactional sellers. While the vision appears to be relatively straightforward, the successful execution ultimately relies on significant investment in engineering operating systems and management platforms to function across edge, data center and cloud environments, plus investments in engineering joint solutions with cloud vendors and ISVs that can satisfy a broad range of customer needs.

Executing on the ecosystem strategy is critical to infrastructure vendors for three key reasons.

1. The burden on IT organizations to manage infrastructure has only increased since the pandemic, necessitating new solutions to automate and offload operational tasks.
2. Volumes of data generated continue to grow, with significant activity happening outside of centralized data centers in edge locations, warranting new strategies for deploying and managing infrastructure and integrating it with other solutions.
3. Preserving revenue growth and profitability will require a revenue diversification strategy that emphasizes solutions and services that add value beyond the hardware itself, which will be particularly important as customers pull back on infrastructure spending in 2023 over economic concerns.

Competition among infrastructure vendors will be stiff as ever going into 2023 as the market navigates revenue challenges driven by cautious enterprise spending, leaving vendors hungry to increase their relevance and value to customers outside the traditional data center.

TBR’s 2023 Predictions is a special series examining market trends and business changes in key markets. Covered segments include cloud & software, devices, digital transformation, IT infrastructure, professional services, federal IT services and telecom.