The A-Z of 2021 technology predictions: A to D

Wide-ranging predictions for 2021 in the world of technology, from A to Z.

A is for analytics.

"Organisations must better access and integrate their data across geographies to create business insights that lead to real change. Smart and effective data analysis translates to actionable information and the common lens for business and IT leaders to shape their digital transformation.”

- Peter Hadley, ADP’s President, Asia Pacific.

"As demand for IT grows in a COVID world, self-serve analytics will accelerate. As the pandemic continues in 2021, companies will look to further reduce dependencies on IT functions with self-serve analytics. This will help them turn data into valuable, shareable assets more quickly. Remote workforces and online expansions are draining IT resources. Automated data preparation, curation, stewardship, quality controls, and machine learning tools will help to stem the tide of IT demands."

- Krishna Tammana, CTO, Talend.

"(There wll be a) greater emphasis on new software solutions for design, test and validation, as well as for the analysis and interpretation of those results, specifically for:

"- R&D measurements and analytics as more experiments and iterations need to be tested. Engineers will need in-depth analysis of data which will require richer automation capabilities beyond the basics.

"- Complex design and simulation as electronic packaging environments become more complex, requiring measurements of power flow, heat and assembly while validating prototypes to ensure that designs are working as intended."

- Keysight.

"As-a-service consumption is now table stakes – and enterprise customers are demanding more. In 2021, it will become clear that as-a-service models have to re-justify their value every single day, because it is so easy to sign up for a service and then discontinue it in favor of a different one if it doesn’t meet your needs. This means that customer service needs to formally extend beyond the point of purchase and become a more holistic customer experience.

"In the hierarchy of awesome customer experience: it's good to be responsive, it's better to be proactive and let a customer know that there's a problem, and it's even better to let a customer know there was a problem and you have already fixed it. The next year (2021) will bring greater clarity around the differences between “products on subscription” (i.e. lease) offerings and true “as-a-Service” solutions, which are about buying an outcome (i.e. service level agreements) and having a third- party deliver it.

"With as-a-service, you should be able to: start small, grow over time, and have complete transparency over pricing and related KPIs. The customer should never feel like they've bought something and now they are on their own – or locked into a service that offers little benefit compared to a traditional capital purchase."

- Matthew Oostveen, CTO, Asia Pacific & Japan, Pure Storage.

"We will see more application of artificial intelligence (AI_ and machine learning (ML) in analytics solutions being used to create platforms that interpret data automatically with easy-to-understand actionable steps. Prescriptive analytics platforms can recognise patterns and identify when abnormal behaviours occur to direct actions, avoiding errors, inefficiencies and improving operational outcomes.

"In 2021, actionable intelligence gathered and distributed across operations by prescriptive analytics platforms will be doing more than eliciting swift preventive actions or resolutions. It will help build trust across the workforce while empowering individuals to confidently propose and collaboratively execute positive changes across the entire business with simple actions that deliver results.

- Fang-How Lim, Regional Director for Southeast Asia, Zebra Technologies.

B is for budgets.

"IT teams will need to get even more creative with how they’re spending their money, with IT spending expected to decrease. Though organisations don’t need to put digital transformation on pause, there will be pressure for them to do more with less, leading them to focus on strengthening the tech already in place to optimise businesses. As a side effect, we’ll see further accelerated growth in cloud adoption in international markets like EMEA and APJ."

- Sascha Giese, Head Geek, Solarwinds. EMEA stands for Europe, Middle East and Africa; APJ for Asia Pacific and Japan.

C is for customers.

"Strong customer relationships will be more important than ever for businesses in 2021. Importantly too, more and more businesses will have the data to better inform their understanding of their customers, via increased customer communication, as well as newer forms of interaction, such as QR codes. The key will be to use information to better inform business’ customer relationships, while of course respecting customer privacy."

- MessageMedia COO Anushka Wijendra.

"With the continual uberisation of the service economy—accelerated by COVID-19 and the remote nature of service delivery, delivering quality customer experience will be the core foundation of any future-ready business. With growing consumer expectations for real-time responsiveness, organisations will need to reevaluate their digital strategies to ensure that they are able to leverage real-time data to transform customer engagement and create new revenue streams.

"The key is to create a strong digital backbone and different tools that can connect all customer events through choreography, eliminating any siloes between each touchpoint along the customer journey. It is important to recognise that the value of data diminishes exponentially over time. Future-ready businesses thus need to adopt an event-driven approach that allows large volumes of data to move between people, apps, sensors and systems, and is available for processing and analytics in real time to maximise the value of their data."

- Sumeet Puri, Chief Technology Solutions Officer, Solace.

D is for data storage.

"The pandemic is exacerbating the data growth challenge as more applications have been deployed to allow staff to continue to be productive, which also means more data being generated and stored. The problem of unconstrained data growth has typically been addressed by making storage larger, cheaper, and faster. However, scaling in such a manner is only workable for so long.

"We anticipate that more organisations will pivot to utilising intelligent storage. To implement such storage it will be important for us to have much more information about the data itself than we have traditionally been collecting. The future of unstructured data management depends on the creation and curation of quality information about the data itself.

"This is where identifying information, metadata, comes into play. Metadata remains with the data throughout its lifecycle and will provide the labelling needed to classify the data, provide context and enable better data management automation. Currently the options in the public cloud for metadata extraction are limited, but a few firms are already thinking past the basic framework of object storage to address the full potential of metadata as a management tool.

"Ultimately this would not only augment data storage, but a firm’s ability to derive value from their data."

- Pratyush Khare, APAC CTO, Hitachi Vantara.

"The reality is that we won’t be going back to the office anytime soon. What’s more, many companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Dropbox have announced that their employees can permanently work from home, even after a widely-adopted vaccine.

"As a result, companies need to manage and protect data at these edge locations effectively. Specifically, they will need to put greater emphasis on simple-to-implement, low-cost, cloud- based solutions that can effectively back up and protect data in remote environments.

"In the COVID-19 era, companies are generating more data than ever. Just think about all the Zoom calls that are now being recorded, shared, and ultimately stored. Many organisations don’t yet realise that video storage costs can run into millions of dollars annually. They will soon face a wakeup call as they outgrow their existing storage space and scramble to meet far greater data-storage requirements.

"The long-term impact of COVID-19 will be a perfect storm of video sprawl and runaway storage costs. Cloud storage costs that start at a few hundred dollars a month may well balloon to a few hundred thousand dollars annually in the course of a few short years. To succeed in this data- intensive reality, organisations need an efficient and affordable way to expand their storage needs while improving their data backup and recovery.

A new scale-out approach to storage will be essential. Such a system will enable organisations to purchase storage upfront at a reasonable price and then scale-out that storage cost- effectively over time."

- Leo Lynch, Director, Asia Pacific, StorageCraft.

This post marks the first of a four-part series covering the full A-Z of technology predictions for 2021.