Be Prepared for 2018

The message is to be prepared as we present IT industry influencers and leaders analyze the transformations we are witnessing and make their forecasts for the year ahead in a series of exclusive interviews

Over the last few years, the importance given to technology and innovation has grown at an augmented rate. On one hand we saw the emergence of digital native, cloud first start-ups eager to disrupt established business process, and on the other hand, we saw traditional businesses embrace transformational technologies at an overwhelming pace to help maintain their competitive edge. While most organizations have already taken the plunge and adopted digital tools, 2018 will witness their shift towards adapting to these solutions and making the most of them.

In addition, 2018 will see widespread adoption of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and advances in Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing.

Interestingly, just when many companies are finally beginning to move toward cloud computing, edge computing — driven by the sheer volume and speed of information produced by the IoT—is jumping to the forefront of the business scene. Edge computing moves computation and processing closer to the user/thing, or the ‘edge’ of the network.

At the same time, mass amount of information being created by IoT will revolutionize everything from manufacturing and healthcare to the layout and functioning of entire cities — allowing them to work more efficiently and profitably than ever before.

Further, AI will enhance decision making, reinvent business models and ecosystems, and remake the customer experience. Many organizations have already taken notice of this, with a recent Gartner survey indicating that 59 percent of organizations are gathering information to build an AI strategy, while the rest are piloting or adopting AI programs. With Gartner estimating that by 2020, almost 30 percent of CIOs will include AI in their top 5 investment priorities, now is the time to invest in data preparation, integration, algorithm and training methodology selection, and model creation.

Moreover, VR and AR are dissolving the boundaries between the digital and physical world. Now, mixed reality (MR), which merges and extends both AR and VR, is becoming the experience of choice. Combined with conversational platforms and the IoT, these technologies will usher in a fundamental shift to invisible, immersive, ubiquitous computing.

However, capabilities around analytics, AI, VR and AR are proving hard to emulate using traditional on-premise deployments for many businesses due to cost, complexity, and skill considerations. Businesses, therefore, will have to evaluate the capabilities of the cloud offerings alongside on-premise offerings and accordingly implement an environment spread across cloud platforms that best meets their capability and productivity goals.

In fact, most organizations will deploy cloud not just for cost savings but for the ability to make sense of the data using cognitive. Cloud as a technology needs to adapt, evolve, and learn to address changing business priorities which will be largely data-driven in the coming years.

In 2018, we expect businesses to overwhelmingly move toward a multi-cloud approach, taking advantage of the value of all models from public to private. Hence, as a next step, we will see the emergence of the ‘mega cloud’, which will weave together multiple private and public clouds to behave as a coherent, holistic system. The ‘mega cloud’ will offer a federated, intelligent view of an entire IT environment.

Overall, we believe that 2018 will be the year enterprises will work towards harnessing opportunities created by integration of new technologies. We see a huge surge in the adoption and usage of digital workspace technologies, which will create ripples in the earlier established organisational structures.

Please read on as we present exclusive interviews of CXOs of leading channel-focused IT companies where they elaborate on what lies ahead in 2018…