At the close of BMC Day in Boston, MA, Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman and Brian Gracely, Wikibon analysts and cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, weighed in on highlights from 2015 and projected what 2016 might bring.

Miniman reflected on his six years of observing the role of convergence and breaking away from silos, stating that in 2015 companies sought hyper-convergence. He commented on the importance of Dell’s EMC acquisition and how infrastructure is changing for the public cloud.

2015 was Gracely’s first year with Wikibon. He declared, “2015 was the year that public cloud reset the rules for IT.” Gracely added that Amazon’s numbers ($8 billion) “are forcing everyone else’s hand.” He explained, “Rules are being rewritten …” and companies are asking, “How do I play now?”

“We’ve seen for a decade now a slow-motion collapse of infrastructure, hardware and software pricing,” according to Vellante, who accredited it to two main factors: cloud and open-source software. “Business models are changing” and companies are “having to respond to that.” Vellante posited that the EMC/Dell acquisition and HP split were “inevitable” as part of “the way in which people leverage this digital fabric.” The Wikibon founder said the trick to most effectively leveraging is “taking advantage of all these technologies … not necessarily inventing them … it’s applying them and creating new business models.”

The second machine age

Miniman discussed the “second machine age” and growing automation in IT. He asked, “How much of the tech is going to run itself?” Miniman also said that question is “going to drive the business,” and the field is “no longer information technology; it’s business technology.” Building on the 2015 buzz phrase, “Infrastructure is code,” Gracely quoted some figures from the IT field. “40 percent of spend is going outside of IT …” and the “trend seen in 2015 is IT losing control. 80 percent of people are trying to go around IT to make decisions. 60 percent of people are trying to bypass it. 30 percent of applications are moving into the cloud.” Gracely surmised, “IT needs to either get on board or they are potentially in some big trouble. Open-source tech is available to help IT do that.”

Building on the 2015 buzz phrase, “Infrastructure is code,” Gracely quoted some figures from the IT field. “40 percent of spend is going outside of IT …” and the “trend seen in 2015 is IT losing control. 80 percent of people are trying to go around IT to make decisions. 60 percent of people are trying to bypass it. 30 percent of applications are moving into the cloud.” Gracely surmised, “IT needs to either get on board or they are potentially in some big trouble. Open-source tech is available to help IT do that.”

Miniman commented, “People want to consume [IT] as a service,” which was a new trend in 2015.

The analysts also evaluated IBM’s advances with Waston and its endeavors with Internet of Things. “At some point, they win,” posited Gracely. In addition, Vellante brought up Microsoft’s market relevance, which Miniman summed neatly by saying that although Microsoft had been the punch line in Silicon Valley jokes, the company is still number one.

2016: How fast will new applications take off?

Looking forward to 2016, Gracely will be watching “how fast do those new applications take off, how big that market gets, who leads … Docker? Cloud Foundry?”

Miniman’s interest will be in architectural environment, all-flash array, and microns inside a whole lot of devices, as well as how Western Digital Corp. buying SanDisk Corp. will move them up in the market to almost tie with Intel.

Vellante’s 2016 motto will be: “Follow the value. [It’s] not about inventing but how you apply technologies within that digital fabric to create a business capability; that’s where differentiation” will appear.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of BMC Day Boston 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE