By Amit Gupta, Founder and CEO, Rapyder Cloud Solutions
The pandemic has brought digitization as a mandate for businesses to move forward and continue growth, stay relevant and to be on top of their game by being in touch with their customers constantly. Businesses have now definitely adapted to new technologies and are catching up every day as they focus on meeting the ever-evolving needs of customers. It’s imperative to stay connected to ensure customers are happy and satisfied and going digital makes this possible.
Rewinding back to two years ago, covid-19 compelled organizations and businesses to rethink their way of operating and grapple with issues like how to make working from home the new normal. Fast forwarding to 2 years, while the pandemic is still looming at a large, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are now faced with the challenges that require them to manage the acceleration of tech projects that follows a hybrid work approach – a mix of both home as well as at office and ensure the multi-cloud infrastructure supports the staff working in-house and remotely. In simple terms it means, the priorities have now shifted from addressing the demands related to pandemic to refocusing on strategic business initiatives.
So, what can we expect in 2022? What are the leaders foreseeing as top IT trends for 2022? CIOs have predicted the technology trends for this year based on their evaluation of the marketplace and organizations. Let’s have a quick look at them:
Explosion of Data
Data is expanding at an unprecedented rate and is likely to expand manyfold in the coming years. The astoundingly massive amount of data generated, consumed, stored, and copied by businesses and people however hasn’t found its utilization to its full potential as most of it remains as unprocessed. Hence, companies need to figure out how they can best leverage this data to their benefit. Many organizations find it challenging to determine how best to leverage this data and make informed decisions and not risk failing or left behind their competitors.
Automation allows these companies to convert unstructured data into structured and actionable data by making use of which they can gather useful insights. Intelligent Document processing solutions (IDPs) help companies by providing data-driven insights, that helps businesses stay ahead of their competitors and continue to produce extraordinary results for their customers.
Switch to Hybrid Mode
The plight of whether to work from the office or let employees stay at home hasn’t been completely resolved yet. However, due to the constant enforcement and removal of lockdowns, the current trend can be seen as a mixture of physical and remote work which is most likely to continue this year as well.
This approach that allows employees to work remotely gives rise to the adoption of cloud services. It also leads to the development of a computing environment. To make work enjoyable and effective for both the categories of people who prefer working from home and those who prefer going to the office, CIOs have been implementing Hybrid work policies and taking initiatives that will ensure smooth collaboration between the two.
For organizations to succeed in the hybrid approach to working, they need to develop hybrid business models, maintain employee engagement ensure collaboration and increase connections between employees as well as customers.
Growth of Cloud-based solutions
Owing to various benefits like ease of use, accessibility, scalability, and affordability, businesses have been relying on cloud-based services and technologies. Some of the technologies offered by the cloud that have made hybrid work and digital transformation way easier include digital employee experience tools, Unified endpoint management, and Desktop as a service. However, some concerns still need to be addressed by CIOs to maximize their efficiency. Once addressed, it would enable businesses to confidently rely on cloud-based solutions.
Infrastructure and operations leaders (I&O) are investing more in cloud-based technologies that can deliver services to employees wherever they are.
Security & AI stays as top tech priority
DevSecOps, security skills, security processes will be the key priority for the next 12 to 18 months for CIOs across the world. With the major focus being on Hybrid Environment, distributed infrastructure and enhanced threat prevention, AI will work as force multiplier that will enable security teams to not only respond faster than cybercriminals but help in anticipating the next move well ahead and mitigate risks.
AI’s innate ability to adaptively learn, detect patterns, accelerate the detection, contain it and respond eases burden on SecOps team and making platforms much more secure for businesses to move forward.
Companies focus on digital resiliency
The pandemic highlighted the way organizations responded, expanded over the last two years by moving towards digital resiliency. But now after two years of living with the pandemic, companies are now focusing on adapting to any business disruption and move ahead with least implications to business and adapting, preparing for a crisis on the go rather than anticipating it.
With the growing uncertainty and the accelerated process of digital transformation, CIOs will be focusing on creating strategies that would help businesses build on their digital resilience capabilities.
Impact of these Trends on Businesses
Data and what organizations do with it will determine the future. Automation, use of AI for better security, adoption of cloud-based services and focus on digital resiliency are among the top trends that will impact the organizations and their outcomes in 2022 and months ahead.
CIOs will be contributing significantly towards these areas for achieving the organizational objectives by implementing strategies in alignment with the evolving requirements. Finding the data and making these chunks meaningful for the benefit of organization through Hyper automation will propel the next few months ahead in terms of work and go beyond the quick-fix tactical options that helped businesses survive for the past two years.
