As more workloads move to the cloud, technologies that allow portability, like container orchestration and cloud workload management, will increasingly emerge on CIO radars
This is an exclusive interview conducted by the Editor Team of CIO News with Michael Keriakos, Head of Information Technology at noon
As CIOs focus on enabling their businesses for the future, these key technologies will be front and centre in 2022 and beyond.
Keeping on top of the latest new thing is fast becoming a tall order. At the same time, IT and enterprise success have never been more important. More than 68 percent of IT leaders told IEEE that determining what technologies their company will require in the post-pandemic future will be difficult.
There are several emerging technologies or new applications of existing technologies competing for attention as CIOs turn their focus to enabling their businesses for the future. However, those that get on will need to “help address a problem, improve effectiveness and efficiency, or provide a competitive advantage.”
Looking at 2022 and beyond, CIOs are charged with outfitting hybrid workplaces, enabling more resilient and flexible supply chains, and continuing the digital transformation, with multiple new capabilities in concert. Rather than single technologies, CIOs will have to focus on the confluence of these to drive transformation.
Technology for IT leaders:
The following are some of the new technologies and capabilities with broad applications across companies and sectors for 2022 and beyond.
Hybrid workplace enablement tools
As the impact of COVID-19 persists and continues, new and better tools to enable the mixed environment may emerge. Nearly all technology leaders (97%) surveyed by IEEE agree that their team is working more closely than ever before with human resources to implement workplace technologies and apps for office check-in, space usage data and analytics, COVID and health protocols, employee productivity, engagement, and mental health.
Cloud simplification technologies
“As more workloads move to the cloud, technologies that allow portability, like container orchestration and cloud workload management, will increasingly emerge on CIO radars.”
“Cloud orchestration technologies make multi-cloud adoption and hybrid workload management possible. This ensures portability and avoids lock-in.” Cloud workload management solutions help monitor load and performance, allowing you to either switch off unused virtual machines or start additional ones dynamically based on rule-sets.
Looking forward, IT leaders will be looking at cloud-native technologies and platforms to take full advantage of the cloud’s core capabilities for greater innovation at speed and scale. It is predicted that cloud-native platforms will serve as the foundation for more than 95 percent of new digital initiatives by 2025 (up from 30 percent of workloads in 2021).
Cloud control planes
The combination of accelerated cloud adoption and the digitally distributed workforce and enterprise has created some big ol’surfaces for cyber-attacks. As a result, CIOs are rethinking how they protect their organisations in this new normal.
Due to the new normal driving a borderless workforce, it has become important for CIOs to rethink the enterprise network and if it is even meaningful in this new context, to embrace the concept of “internet as a network” and plans to put a control plane in place from which IT will provide role-based access to applications.
So we will be able to shrink the traditional enterprise network significantly and all the threats associated with giving access to the network the air traffic control for applications. A control plane provides management and orchestration across an enterprise’s cloud deployments.
Smart space technology
“As private 5G further evolves, I expect clients to adopt it to transform their industrial operations, which will require investment in newer infrastructure and engineering solutions.”
This will be augmented with smart space technologies that help in building intelligent physical spaces such as manufacturing plants, retail stores, and sports stadiums. According to IEEE, implementing smart building technologies that benefit sustainability, decarbonization, and energy savings has become a top priority for 82 percent of surveyed IT leaders.
Automating automation
Many organisations found themselves digitising and automating critical customer-facing applications in the early days of the pandemic. What they need to do now is create roadmaps for automating more of the business processes for greater efficiency and resiliency in the long term.
Companies are increasingly looking to robotic process automation (RPA) for this task. “RPA tools are becoming easier to use in automating repetitive administrative actions or business processes based on programmable logic.” One of the big artificial intelligence (AI) trends CIOs will be keeping an eye on is the maturation of process discovery technologies, which can provide an intelligent way to boost the RPA pipeline.
Collaborative data platforms
The ability to share data beyond organisational borders to create new insights is becoming increasingly important. The ability to create data ecosystems will be a top priority for enterprises in 2022. Organizations applying insights from data belonging to their partners or suppliers have twice the market capitalization, according to real-time cloud-based data exchanges. Along with solution providers that enable collaboration based on data without the actual sharing of the granular data itself, these are key enabling technologies here.
The ability to create data ecosystems will be a top priority for enterprises in 2022.
Blockchain applications
The enterprise use cases for open-source distributed databases and ledger technology are becoming clearer. The four most important use cases cited by IT leaders surveyed by IEEE will be secure machine-to-machine interaction in the Internet of Things; shipment tracing and contactless digital transactions; keeping health and medical records secure in the cloud; and securing connecting parties within a specified ecosystem.
Generative AI
The world is abuzz with the promise of generative AI from natural-language generation models that can write computer code to algorithms that produce deepfakes.
It’s not all hype. Some meaty enterprise applications for generative AI are far more dynamic than the machine learning currently used in most organizations.
“Generative AI refers to models that analyse various forms of data (text, video, sound, imagery) and produce novel content. More productive applications are possible in business. Imagine a model that tests and creates a highly optimised marketing plan or one that can formulate likely vaccine candidates during a worldwide pandemic in a matter of weeks.”
Next-generation EDR
As ransomware continues to rile organizations, next-generation endpoint detection and response (EDR) is emerging as a key cybersecurity capability for the new normal, providing increased visibility into threats with machine learning detection for faster response.
“Next-generation EDR solutions have the attention of CIOs because they combine behaviour analysis, anomaly detection, and real-time updates from threat engines to provide breach protection.”
Sectors include:
- Agtech
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning
- Cloudtech and DevOps
- Enterprise health and wellness tech
- Fintech
- Foodtech
- Information security
- Insurtech
- Internet of things
- Mobility tech
- Retail health and wellness tech
- Supply chain tech
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