A new year is upon us. With that, experts of every kind drag out their crystal balls to come up with their predictions for the future. The world of enterprise IT is no different. Rapid changes in technology and within the industry bring a great deal of excitement and optimism, tempered by some uncertainty.
Let's have a look at 3 of the leading and most important predictions that may affect enterprise IT in the next 12 months.
Cloud Security
Security concerns regarding cloud services remain a top concern for most. It’s estimated that, by 2020, 95% of cloud security failures will be caused by the customer. But this does not absolve enterprise from its responsibility to provide better security and safeguards. The parts of the cloud stack that are controlled by the customer can result in widespread compliance and security failures if poor practices are used.
The recognition that a need exists in managing and closing security loopholes companies may have, has given rise to an increased number of security-as-a-service providers. Enterprise security is a multi-layered and complicated challenge. In the coming year, CIOs will be called upon to work with their vendors to develop better configuration standards, tools, and reference architecture to improve their ability to work in the cloud securely.
Big Data Will Demand Big Storage
Big data has been a hot buzzword for quite some time. Virtually every industry and field of human activity has the potential of being transformed by the application of big data. The drive to understand trends, behaviors, and almost anything else by analyzing large amounts of data is rapidly replacing trial and error, intuition, or wild guesses.
According to International Data Corporation, an IT market intelligence firm, only 1% of all apps currently use cognitive services. That number, however, is expected to rise to 50% within three years to facilitate convenience and functionality.
This expected boom of big data will place greater demands on storage solutions. Already, large cloud providers are prepared to pick up the slack. Google, AWS, Microsoft and IBM have all launched machine learning services with access to large data sets.
The Transformation of the Role of Corporate IT
In the coming year, digital transformation will be a key strategy for success in more and more enterprises. As such, the responsibility of IT will migrate from that of providing and supporting the infrastructure for an enterprise in the conduct of its business to that of driving how an enterprise does business.
This rising dependency on technology will increasingly call upon IT to develop proprietary apps that can, among other things tap into the power of big data. As the need for these increases, outsourcing to meet the need for proprietary apps will be a less viable option. The demand for skilled developers is likely to skyrocket as enterprise IT and tech companies compete for their share of a limited pool of talent.
With every passing year, IT continues to transform and reinvent itself. The best and most talented CIOs will remain at the forefront of innovation and thought leadership.
