The speed at which transformations in IT infrastructure occur demands that companies keep up to date with technological advances to meet their needs, maintain their competitiveness, and provide superior service to their customers. According to a report published by Gartner in 2023, buyers in Spain identified the inability to adapt quickly to changes in market trends as the main barrier to achieving their goals in the digital business environment. Andrew Walker de la Flor, sales representative for Ynvolve in Spain, Portugal and Italy, emphasizes that in a sector like information technology, where innovation is constant, it is essential to stay flexible and understand both the present and future of the industry.
Cloud Services Penetration
Spanish companies still have room for improvement in introducing cloud computing into their infrastructure, which allows for the virtual connection of hardware and software to manage data, servers, or networks more agilely, securely, and automatically. According to the latest Eurostat data, in 2021 only 31% of companies in Spain used cloud services, while the EU average reached 41%. Compared to other countries, Italy records 60% and Finland and Sweden lead with 75%.
“The adoption of cloud, whether through public or private solutions, has been increasing in Europe in recent years. Therefore, there is enormous potential to grow the use of cloud in Spain in 2024,” says Andrew Walker de la Flor. “European digital sovereignty is a key factor in encouraging companies to collaborate with local providers that control their entire value chain rather than with hyper-scale giants based on another continent. The creation of European ecosystems that include hardware providers and software developers is essential to help drive cloud computing adoption in Spain.”
Decentralization of Infrastructure Management
According to Canalys, there is currently an average of seven partners involved in an IT outsourcing agreement, which means that companies are more willing than ever to hire managed service providers (MSPs) to delegate their IT needs and, in this way, invest more time and resources in innovation. “IT departments used to manage business infrastructure alone, but now they are decentralizing this service because all areas are involved in IT; it is no longer an exclusive matter of specialists. In this sense, it is expected that managed service provider revenues will continue to increase as they expand their service portfolio by partnering with other providers and creating ecosystems,” explains Walker de la Flor.
Popularization of Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a unified system that, due to its combination of intelligent hardware and software, stands as an alternative to traditional infrastructure. For 2024, Spanish companies will pay special attention to this system for its scalability, which offers greater performance, productivity, and profitability. Currently, HCI is often used in virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI), private cloud deployments, and other scenarios where streamlined infrastructure management is a priority. “Generative artificial intelligence is another example of why IT companies will need to adapt their infrastructure with high-performance computing servers that include multiple CPUs and GPUs. In this way, they will be able to manage the intensive computational tasks involved in AI training and inference,” adds Andrew Walker de la Flor from Ynvolve.
Increased Focus on Sustainability
In 2023, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) came into force, obliging around 12,000 large companies to report on their ESG reports with 2024 data. Similarly, next year the due diligence regulation comes into force, aiming to eliminate voluntariness and compel companies to incorporate sustainability into their activities. In light of this, and considering that data centers are on track to emit more CO2 than the entire aviation sector according to recent studies, companies must drive their IT infrastructures towards climate neutrality by developing good practices.