Top 10 digital transformation trends in 2021
Business Chief North America looks at the top 10 digital transformation trends predicted for 2021
COVID-19 has truly shaken up business operations around the world. Whether it be positively or negatively, no industry or size of organisation has been left unaffected.
As we enter the final three months of 2020, Business Chief North America takes a look at the top 10 predictions when it comes to digital transformation in 2021.
Mainstream 5G
While the benefits of 5G are clear, the rise of remote working, video conferencing and digital collaboration has solidified the need for reliable connectivity and increased bandwidth. “businesses cannot afford to be disconnected, and 5G deployments have become a vital part of the solution. As we collectively continue to work and manage school from our homes, the value of 5G will become increasingly mainstream in 2021, ” noted Daniel Newman, Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research at CMO Network.
Customer Data Platforms
With IBM estimating that ‘bad data’ currently costs U.S. businesses around US$3trn a year, addressing the challenge of fragmented data has become a priority for organisations regardless of their size.
“CDPs help solve this problem by collecting data from all available sources, organizing it, tagging it, and making it usable for anyone who needs access to it. Companies like Adobe, SAP, Oracle, Treasure Data and Microsoft are already heavily invested in providing the market with powerful new CDPs,” added Newman.
Hybrid Cloud
As COVID-19 increasingly drives organisations into the cloud to manage their remote workforce, Newman predicts a rise in hybrid cloud strategies to help organisations achieve the right balance for their individual cloud infrastructure needs.
“Over the past year, we have seen major investments in hybrid from large public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Google, IBM and Oracle. We are also seeing OEMs like HPE, Dell (VMware) and Cisco increasing investment in building tools that enable simpler connectivity between on-premises data centers and cloud. These investments are all about meeting the customer where they are at the moment,” commented Newman.
Cybersecurity
Whilst cybersecurity is always of high importance, with the impact of COVID-19, the importance has only been emphasised. “Hackers have exploited the coronavirus pandemic to expand their campaigns of attacks against businesses worldwide. A 238% rise in attacks on banks, and a 600% increase in attacks on cloud servers was observed from January to April 2020 alone,” commented Newman, who believes that artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning will be important for combating threats.
“I expect software, cloud and hardware makers to all be amplifying efforts to make their products and services more secure to deal with certain growth in threats that we have seen throughout 2020.”
Privacy
“Another approach to shoring up cybersecurity, particularly when addressing communications and data privacy, is confidential computing,” commented Newman. The confidential computing approach is the encryption of the entire computing process, not just the data. This creates additional layers of security for sensitive information. While the technology is still relatively new, Newman expects to see confidential computing begin to become mainstream in 2021.
Custom shopping experiences
With research indicating that 86% of businesses believe their customer acquisition costs have increased in the last 24 months, Newman expects to see the rise of ‘headless tech’. Which means that businesses can separate their front-end presentation layer from their back-end data functionality to create custom shopping experiences.
As a result organisations need to “maximise the ROI of their net new customer acquisition costs,” and “focus on customer development and retention. By moving beyond the omnichannel experience to connect everything from warehouses to storefronts to online services, companies 2021 could become more efficient, more streamlined, and possibly get a leg up on competitors if they adopt it a little faster than they do.”
Working from home
Workers have been clamoring for increased work flexibility for a long time, and a company deciding to allow remote work at scale was usually radical enough to warrant a headline or two,” commented Newman. With COVID-19 forcing organisations worldwide to adopt the only viable option to maintain business continuity, he expects to see many organisations extend their work from home policies into 2021, and/or maintaining the flexibility option.
“Part of what made this possible has been the rapid deployment and development of smart work from home technologies. Sure, we have heard a lot about Zoom, Webex and Microsoft Teams. Those platforms, and others in the category have seen explosive growth in use and development to make them both easier and more secure.”
Artificial intelligence (AI)
With the COVID-19 pandemic triggering the acceleration in the democratisation of AI and data. Newman has witnessed overnight companies, governments and agencies needing to work together to create a fast solution to stop the spread of the virus. “Data, AI, and machine learning were the tools that they naturally turned to. The work that was begun in 2020 will continue into 2021, and will likely expand to a breadth of pressing opportunities that these types of groups are now uniquely equipped to tackle, like solving global and market problems faster, better, and at scale.”
Devices
“With a new focus on being always connected, customers want devices that are lighter, smaller, more connected than before, but also versatile,” commented Newman, who is seeing a rise in consumer demand for hybrid devices, instead of carrying several.
“2021 will see the return of folding smartphones, only these will be able to provide the same high quality and connectivity as non-folding phones. Aside from fitting more snugly in a pocket, the idea is also to allow phone form factors to unfold into small tablets when a user needs a bigger screen, then fold back into a smaller form factor for storage or basic phone use.”
Mainstream quantum
“Quantum computing may not be on your radar yet, but we have seen unprecedented growth in this field, in great part thanks to IBM and Honeywell, among others,” stated Newman.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, quantum computing has been front and centre in efforts to maintain the spread of the disease, as well as developing therapeutics and vaccines.
“We will likely see more use cases in other industries as people realise the power that quantum computing has to offer: the ability to easily query, monitor, analyze, and act on data at scale, from any source at any time,” concludes Newman.
For more information on business topics in the United States and Canada, please take a look at the latest edition of Business Chief North America.
