Technology disruption has become the norm, and businesses are looking at regulations from an enabling perspective. At present, the regulatory frameworks have design principles that instill prevention of misuse and as an enabler of responsible growth and increased trust. Sustained growth in the technology sector mandates competent capabilities in digital business applications, including big data, cloud, cybersecurity, and automation.
Technology is the key to the continuous strive of companies and building innovation-led solutions. However, innovations do not come without new challenges. Some of these challenges include
- Business Continuity:A challenge facing the technology industry is implementing measures to protect their business from disaster. Digital solutions can help resolve the challenge even as building resilience to compete in the digital business world. In addition, technology companies will increasingly focus on cloud adoption to build flexibility and agility.
- Security: Technology is integral to security infrastructure. However, as the tools for securing businesses evolve, attackers grow more sophisticated in breaching valuable systems and data stores. Over one-fourth of the technology executives said they witnessed a spike in the scope, number, and severity of cyberattacks. Passing through the new normal, companies need the right tools to prevent their business from malware, phishing, ransomware, and other attacks.
- Skill Gap: Companies achieve their goals efficiently when they adopt the right suite of technology for their business. However, it only turns out positive if they have the right skillsets to leverage them. Industry leaders need to identify and track down the talent necessary for maximizing the next generation of technologies.
- The Emergence of Robotics: Robotics and automation, like any opportunity in the technology industry, are like a barbed harpoon. Gartner estimates the end-user spending on RPA software to surpass 3.3 billion in 2023. Although RPA and automation are becoming highly valuable for business, companies
face problems in maintaining their business from the human side. Keeping genuine connections with their customers is indispensable for technology companies. With a proper strategy, they can ensure a sustainable balance between robotics and humans, particularly by making the most of the former to support the latter.
Albeit challenges, the technology sector is poised to grow, with digital transformation and the cloud as key enablers. Connected technologies and automation will streamline operations, provide greater speed to innovation, create less resource waste, and offer a seamless experience for end-customers. Let’s dive into key trends that will influence the technology sector in the foreseeable future.
Technology Industry Trends
Democratization
Democratization has made access to the technical domain easy for everyone, despite their location or profession. Data and analytics, knowledge management, design, and application development are four important facets of technology democratization. It facilitates developers to develop data models without gaining the necessary data science skillsets. However, the concern of people exploiting easy-to-use technologies and tools remains, and it is directly proportional to the technologies that will emerge in the coming years.
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) models serve as the engine for data mining, management, governance, and computation. It holds the key to churning out valuable insights from the data at an unbelievably fast pace, which enables businesses to leverage the market opportunities early. Hyper-automation, a big digital trend in the technology industry, offers businesses the ability to ensure the smooth functioning of operations, which is further extended by ML/AI. Another reason behind ML/AI being a key competitive edge enabler is the dire need among businesses to improve overall productivity by automating tasks for greater agility and efficiency.
Data Protection
The adoption of digital solutions has introduced the need to ensure data protection, and the technology industry is focused on developing and launching products with inbuilt security features. Data analysis is the centerpiece for organizations when it comes to continuous improvement in customer experience. It ensures transparency in the way they gather, store, and manage the data. As consumers grow aware of risks to their personal information, organizations need to develop policies, protocols, and breach prevention solutions that build trust between them and end-customers.
CSMA
Organizations get an integrated security structure for all their assets by implementing the cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA). CSMA empowers consistent maintenance of a resilient security posture on the cloud, on-premises, or in data centers. Eliminating inefficiencies and silos by establishing a robust security posture will help organizations simplify security complexities. CSMA integration significantly facilitates this.
Human-Centric Adoption of Technology
Businesses must look beyond cost and focus on attracting and retaining highly-skilled talent through flexible work plans and robust training programs. The technology industry can help them by enabling the development of simple applications and workflows using no-code or low-code platforms. Human-centric approaches are necessary for business operations. Building diverse teams to meet dynamic market demands, reinforcing the human side of the business lifecycle, measuring the ESG efforts, and integrating customer experience into operating models are some ways that can help businesses adopt technologies in a more human-centric manner.
Sustainable Technology
The technology industry is one of the key contributors to the global business carbon footprint but continues to focus on introducing sustainable solutions that
complement environmental conservation. Although companies are taking big steps, such as recycling ocean-bound plastic and investing in EV technologies, they are not enough to combat the climatic impacts of the industry. Therefore, becoming greener will be among the top trends, where both business-to-business and business-to-customer technology companies are highly likely to bring innovation in production. Such efforts from the industry will significantly promote sustainability and accelerate the journey towards a carbon-neutral technology business landscape.
Digital Transformation in Technology Sector
The technology sector has been making headways in digital transformation, and companies will continue to deploy innovative solutions to strengthen the efficiency of business operations. The technology sector has always led the change in the business landscape, and companies across domains have adapted by changing how they do business. Navigating and mitigating supply chain bottlenecks and enabling technology for a dispersed, remote workforce remains top of the mind for the industry.
To enable everything-as-a-service (XaaS) and spur innovation in AI capabilities, intelligent devices, and network architectures, the cloud has become the most preferred platform for technology companies. Most organizations are leveraging the multi-cloud and hybrid cloud models for making the most of best-in-class technologies, improving resilience, minimizing vendor lock-in, and optimizing costs. However, there is a need for a seamless way of integrating and coordinating multiple cloud-native applications and data solutions through a single dashboard. Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud deployments promise high flexibility and open doors to new opportunities for business innovation and growth.
Conclusion
Planning and implementing digital transformation strategies is one thing and measuring the results is another. The technology industry needs to develop new, more valuable customer insights by accelerating data analytics & management. In turn, it will help the companies unlock new revenue streams via go-to-market strategies. To build a connected enterprise of the future, technology companies
must focus on building a highly-skilled workforce while rethinking the balance between automation and human interaction.
