The last couple of years have seen significant changes in the way many organizations have managed and provisioned high availability. Cassius Rhue looks ahead to 2023 and considers what developments we can expect in this area.
As we look back on the past two years, many companies have struggled, yet coped, with numerous issues: including lack of human resources, brought by the unprecedented world-changing COVID-19 virus. With the help of technology, organizations have moved their systems to the cloud, automated operations, and implemented application-aware high availability and disaster recovery solutions to protect their systems from unpredictable threats.
Looking ahead to 2023, the future remains unclear. Companies will need to keep adjusting operations and methods to maximize business continuity with limited resources. The key to success is to create a thorough business plan at the beginning of the year.
Here are a few predictions to consider when setting an action plan for the coming year:
Data democratization drives the need for high availability of applications, databases, ERPs, and stored data
Advancements in virtualization, and continued adoption of cloud computing and cloud storage have enabled companies to make more data available to more users than ever before. This data democratization trend has been growing for several years, giving non-specialists the ability to access and analyze more data from more sources - potentially enabling better informed decision-making and increased efficiency companywide.
In 2023 the ongoing trend of data democratization will continue - driving increased usage of applications such as SQL Server, Oracle and SAP HANA and creating a heightened requirement for high availability for these databases and their associated applications and data storage. In 2023, more companies will invest in advanced clustering and disaster recovery solutions to protect these systems from downtime and disasters.
Innovations in high availability
New predictive application monitoring tools, simulation tools and modeling techniques, based on the wealth of logs, data, and interconnected devices will combine with robust HA solutions capable of identifying threats to availability, predicting and mitigating impending outages, and providing IT administrators with greater diagnostics for unexpected incidents. These innovations will drive reductions in downtime and faster root cause analysis by combining HA solution expertise with the power of data, learned behavior, and self-learning technology.
Cloud migration and repatriation will continue and bring new demand
Many companies fast tracked their cloud adoption journey due to world-changing events in the last 2+ years and traded on-prem data centers / centres for the cloud. This cloud migration will continue, and at the same time, many companies will realize that migration itself was not a one size fits all solution nor a panacea for issues of ‘application’ availability. Needs for high availability of stateful applications in the cloud will prompt companies to use clustering software. Repatriated systems will leverage solutions that minimize churn, and the need for multiple application availability vendors.
Site reliability engineering increases the need for high availability for critical applications
With large organizations now managing many hundreds of servers and cloud VMs, all requiring increased availability, incorporating HA into site reliability engineering principles will become a standard part of DevOps projects. Using SRE, DevOps teams will standardize on HA tools that are capable of decreasing complexity, increase availability and reliability, and automate application aware failovers. The vendors who have products that support multiple OS versions, clouds, applications, and databases will be baked into vendor best practices.
Wider adoption of ERPs in the cloud
Enterprise ERP systems, such as SAP and Oracle are common among large enterprises - particularly those in manufacturing, financial services, and retail industries.
Two trends are emerging for 2023: increased use of enterprise ERP systems in medium-sized organizations and migration of more ERP systems to the cloud. Enterprises have been slow to move ERP systems to the cloud due to concerns about added cost, complexity, and risk of downtime. However, as the use of advanced clustering software and added features in cloud computing have evolved, the cloud is becoming the de facto platform for ERP applications.
Cloud-based ERP systems are now making ERP systems accessible and feasible for smaller organizations in a wider range of industries.
New best practices emerge that ensure both high availability and security
Security and operations teams are often at odds with one another. Steps to ensure security can impede high availability recovery processes. HA in turn, can limit security steps. In 2023, companies will implement complementary security and HA clustering solutions that resolve these conflicts.
The author
Cassius Rhue, VP, Customer Experience, SIOS Technology
Cassius Rhue leads the Customer Experience team at SIOS Technology responsible for customer success spanning pre-sales, post-sales and professional services engagements. With more than 22 years of experience at SIOS and a keen focus on the customer, Cassius’ significant skills, and deep knowledge in software engineering, development, design, and deployment specifically in the HA/DR space are instrumental in addressing customer issues and driving their success. Cassius is a frequent blogger and public speaker on high availability and disaster recovery.
