It is that time of the year when prognosticators come out of the woodwork to provide some guidance in terms of what they believe will be important concepts to consider as part of organisations’ strategies coming into 2023.
Digital transformation
For instance, in digital transformation, Sujith Abraham, SVP & GM for ASEAN at Salesforce, says with the economic headwinds we are facing, maintaining a durable, resilient business that can drive success now is increasingly challenging.
While he acknowledged not being able to predict everything that lies ahead in 2023, he remained certain that digital transformation will remain at the heart of ASEAN’s growth.
“We expect more businesses here to aspire towards becoming data-driven organisations, deploying more digital services to drive efficiency, profitability, and a competitive advantage.”
Sujith Abraham
Automation
On the topic of Automation, Abraham expects enterprises to move beyond isolated use cases of automation to accelerate digital transformation, drive growth, and achieve cost-savings to better navigate the disruption.
He opines that low- and no-code automation tools allow organisations to drastically condense their digital transformation timelines by empowering employees from non-traditional tech roles to automate processes and create new services through drag-and-drop digital capabilities without prior coding knowledge.
“In 2023, we expect to see more business technologists take up such tools to save valuable time and circumvent bottlenecks. The ability for anyone to contribute towards digital transformation initiatives, regardless of background, provides a strong upside for businesses to remain agile in these changing times.”
Sujith Abraham
Cloud
Cloud (migration) is often associated with digital transformation initiatives, usually under the guise of infrastructure modernisation – but it’s more complicated than that.
Sanjay Rohatgi, SVP & GM for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) at NetApp, says moving forward, more organisations will take a strategic approach that seamlessly connects a mix of clouds and on-prem environments.
“In the next phase of the evolved cloud, enterprises will turn to a unified control plane to remove management complexity, stay secure against evolving cyber threats, be sustainable, and cut costs through automation, whether their data resides on the cloud or on-prem. This will put organisations in a position to focus on innovation and drive their business.”
Sanjay Rohatgi
Integration
As should be expected, albeit hardly mentioned in digital transformation and cloud migration talks, Matthew Goss, SVP & GM for APJ at SAP Concur, says 2023 will see greater integration and connection between IT solutions. This is to help alleviate some of the strain being felt by both businesses and individual employees from current macroeconomic factors like inflation.
He believes the integration will create new efficiencies for traditional departments, like finance and HR, which will bring a ripple effect of benefits to employees and customers.
“For example, more integrated travel and expense (T&E) solutions will provide better visibility into company spending, create more efficient finance processes, and ultimately lead to faster expense approvals and reimbursements.”
Matthew Goss
Security
Breaches of IT infrastructure, whether by accident or intentional, are a staple of media coverage, the bane of the victims of attacks, and the yardstick by which regulators are reviewing technology-led innovations.
Rohatgi says the industry is already exploring how quantum hybrid models can help protect sensitive data more effectively and drive the development of new encryption protocols and algorithms.
“It is encouraging to see such forward-thinking, and stakeholders exploring a cloud-based approach to solve security issues that once seemed unsolvable,” commented Rohatgi
ICT Skills
The skills shortage and skills gap are universal worldwide. This is more so acute in the developing markets of Asia, in part because mobility has allowed what few skills a market natively must move elsewhere for greener pastures.
FutureCIO discussions with technology and business leaders reveal the upskilling and reskilling strategies organisations are taking to meet current and future needs. But some technology developments may not be adequately solved by merely reskilling or upskilling people. There are such things as field experience and domain expertise.
Rohatgi cautions that although upskilling is critical in narrowing the skills gap, enterprises need to recognise that hybrid multi-cloud architectures are highly complex. He posits that managing multiple clouds and on-premises environments together can be tricky and inefficient.
“Going into 2023, we expect more organisations to simplify and standardise their operations, reducing their need for the environment, cloud, and workload-specific skills.”
Sanjay Rohatgi
Vendor consolidation
For much of the decade, the quest to improve how work is performed has allowed for the proliferation of technologies and solutions. For anyone tracking any of the Gartner Hype Cycles, not all technologies survive. Some die of natural death, others in the aftermath of mergers and acquisitions.
On the topic of vendor consolidation, he predicts that in 2023 companies will prioritise vendor consolidation and reduce the complexity of their technology stack to give a simple 360-degree view of each customer.
He added that they will also rethink what it means to be efficient at every level, in every department. “Companies will need to commit to continuous innovation to solve customers’ problems, ensure seamless service from anywhere, and adapt to customers’ changing priorities. This in turn will provide opportunities for success in the long term,” concluded Salesforce’s Abraham.
Sustainability
Rohatgi opines that with the rising importance of ESG and focus on sustainability, enterprises will increasingly require their IT infrastructure to be green and able to support their sustainability initiatives.
He posits that IT vendors will need to work towards creating greener value chains and showcase solutions that can drive sustainable outcomes. They will have to get better at increasing energy efficiency with their facilities and on-prem equipment. This is in addition to providing improved methods for data categorization that enables buyers to look across their entire data estates and tier data, which is particularly effective in the cloud.
“When we consider that 68% of data is used once and then never again, we can see how moving this unused data to the cloud, where it can be tiered and moved to cold storage, is good for the planet,” he concluded.
