2021 Predictions for the Tech Industry

Developers will have more say in technology direction and data strategy of companies
We will see an aggressive “shift to the left” across all industries, where CIO’s will depend more on their development teams to guide the technical direction of the company. Historically, development teams have taken a top-down approach to move their data to the cloud, but – as have many things in the world – this changed with the pandemic with the reinforcement of cloud-based environments. In 2021, we’ll see DevOps teams continuing to have far more say in the data strategy process, and as a result we’ll see a greater increase in the mobility of workloads, correlating with an increase in cloud data management techniques.

A greater focus on protecting and managing work collaboration platform data in the cloud 
Distributed workforces were already on an upward trajectory but have been completely kicked into overdrive with the COVID-19 pandemic. With many companies extending work-at-home opportunities through mid-next year, reliance on cloud-based collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Slack, will only increase. This means even more teams will be looking to harness the power of the cloud to store an influx of data from collaboration platforms. In 2021, this will create more focus, awareness and need for data protection and management for collaboration software.

With the decline of hardware, software-defined models will become more prominent
Appliances will diminish in their attractive as we shift towards software-defined models. 10 years ago, appliances where these shiny new toys that everyone wanted to get their hands on, however they have not had the staying power we predicted they would. In fact, we’ve seen a shift towards backup-as-a-service and away from appliances. Remote work in the pandemic had a real impact on how we dealt with hardware in 2020 that will continue into 2021 as software-defined models take center stage.

Machine learning will become democratized in the cloud around data.
Already, we are seeing organizations recognize the unlimited opportunities available to them through data they have already collected. Data re-use will be a big trend we see organizations shifting to 2021, with many leveraging the power of machine learning to help them do this. This is still in the emerging stages; however, its adoption will increase as organizations recognize how it can help them analyze and re-use data that they already have. By leveraging machine learning in the cloud, organizations will ultimately become smarter.

Compliance regulation fines won’t see an uptick – they’re going to continue trending down. 
Data privacy and privacy regulations will continue to gain traction in 2021. In particular, I predict we will see the first proposed federal regulations around privacy in the New Year. However, compliance fines will continue on the downward trend we saw in 2020. We saw a massive jump in compliance fines in 2019, which solidified how seriously GDPR, CCPA and others needed to be taken. Now that this attention has been received and the awareness is there, the shift will be more towards more consistency of privacy regulations at the federal level.

IT spending will rebound after 2020 – security and hardware will be at the top of the list.
Despite the economic turbulence brought on by the pandemic in 2020, we’ll see a five to 10 percent increase in general IT spend in the New Year. Allocations will likely focus most on security, general system modernizations (backup, applications, cloud migrations, etc.) and refreshing hardware. In addition, organizations will take a look at what was on “hold” in 2020 to address IT spend that happens on an annual recurring basis. For example, hardware should be refreshed every three years, and if the pandemic halted an organization’s attention to hardware, it’s fair to say that will make its way to the top of the list in 2021.

This year, we will also be in the unique position to see an extra boost in IT spend and allocations following the U.S. presidential election. Elections tend to show historic slow downs in how dollars are allocated, due to the uncertainly of the results and the eventual candidate who will occupy the White House. After November, we’ll see dollars funneled in ways that reflect the outcome – similar to how other IT spend will stabilize as we see a true downturn on the pandemic or progress in a vaccine and a return to “normal.”

Developers will have more say in technology direction and data strategy of companies
We will see an aggressive “shift to the left” across all industries, where CIO’s will depend more on their development teams to guide the technical direction of the company. Historically, development teams have taken a top-down approach to move their data to the cloud, but – as have many things in the world – this changed with the pandemic with the reinforcement of cloud-based environments. In 2021, we’ll see DevOps teams continuing to have far more say in the data strategy process, and as a result we’ll see a greater increase in the mobility of workloads, correlating with an increase in cloud data management techniques.

Authored by Danny Allan, CTO, Veeam