So, what’s ahead for the year in information technology?

It’s a serious question. Companies often have to engage in some guesswork when planning their technology budgets (which are, after all, not unlimited), and they need to be able to separate the hype from the solutions that will genuinely improve their operations and provide a good return on investment.

In this vein, IT management software company SolarWinds (News - Alert) has released its predictions for the IT trends and themes that are set to dominate in the year ahead. In 2024, enterprises are likely to further embrace artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and automation to meet their efficiency, service delivery and productivity goals, according to the company.

AI-powered automation is predicted to be one of the biggest trends for 2024 as IT teams embrace more automation to lighten workloads and save time and resources. This is particularly important as digital environments have become more modern and mature with the adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, making them infinitely more complex to migrate, monitor and manage.

“As AI becomes more sophisticated and its application more widespread—from consumer uses like ChatGPT to impactful enterprise implementations like automated service delivery and anomaly detection—it’s no longer the presence of AI that’s notable, but the application of it,” said Jeff Stewart, vice president of global solutions engineering at SolarWinds. “Thanks in large part to impressive strides in the advancement of AI and ML this year, enterprises are better equipped than ever to solve, or even avoid, costly hits to their systems, services, or bottom line in 2024.”

Specifically, SolarWinds has predicted:

Observability across the full tech stack will become a priority. Companies lose millions annually to brownouts or outages. Despite this, nearly half of IT professionals lack visibility into the majority of their organization’s apps and infrastructure. AI-powered observability solutions address this by collecting data to provide information on what’s not performing as expected and why.

Organizations will prioritize getting to the root of database issues. One-third of IT professionals surveyed manage upwards of 300 databases. In 2024, teams will embrace AI and automation to ensure the health, stability, and scalability of their services.

Organizations will embrace AI for IT Operations (AIOps). With AIOps, organizations can integrate data from across complex hybrid IT environments and receive the actionable, predictive intelligence they need to optimize performance, resolve issues quickly, and relieve pressure on IT teams.

IT Service Management (ITSM) will support faster, more successful IT outcomes. Research shows that organizations that adopted AI-powered tools to meet their ITSM needs were able to reduce system downtime by 21 percent and decrease time spent resolving incident and service requests by 23 percent. Features such as virtual troubleshooting agents and guided incident resolution will continue to support the workload of IT teams in 2024.