2020 IT Trends to Watch In and Across Business Sectors
Keeping a close eye on trends demonstrating staying power gives partners a good idea where business is headed.
December 30, 2019
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“In 2020, greater democratization will help to package tools and technology using open-source libraries and framework; for example, look into the library of tools and frameworks that Microsoft, Google and Facebook are pushing – from TensorFlow to PyTorch, from NLP to video mining to AR & VR,” said Lawrence Latvala, Senior Partner of Financial Enterprise at Teradata.
“Leaders will connect large, disparate data sets such as clickstream, retail journey, social and IoT and leverage AI and ML to orchestrate and ease customer journeys across touchpoints. Focus will be on product and service curation, and localization across offers, purchase, setup, service and support. If they build trust and avoid being creepy, companies will find customers willing to exchange information in return for better experiences,” said David King, industry consultant at Teradata.
“The full total cost of operating open-source environments – including the workload of patch-maintenance, an army of specialized DBAs and tool specialists – is becoming apparent. The promise of ‘free’ is resulting in enormous extraneous expenses, work and headaches. Dare we coin the term ‘Hadoop Hangover?’” said Bonnie Holub, managing partner/practice lead, data science, Americas, at Teradata.
“On the heels of Nike’s ‘Reuse-A-Shoe’ program and Adidas’ partnership with Parley for the Oceans, companies will start moving away from the old-school “take, make, and throw away” model, and will shift toward “supply chain loops” that cut down on costs and create less waste. Instead of producing one-time-use products, companies are refurbishing used parts or melting down products to transform them back into their raw material for,” Ron Volpe, VP of apps business development at Tradeshift.
“Automation will see big advancements in the next 12-36 months — particularly around inspections/forensics and robotics in the field,” said Nathan Zenero, senior industry consultant at Teradata.
“B2B marketplaces were all the rage in the 1990s, but they were largely unsuccessful because they were too rigid and didn ’t provide benefits in cost and agility. With the rise of digitized networks, today’s B2B marketplaces can offer a wider selection of buyers and sellers, and more dynamic pricing models. In 2020, we’ll start to see a resurgence of marketplaces as they drive efficiencies and bring down cost structures,” said Roy Anderson, chief procurement officer at Tradeshift.
“More organizations are turning to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and edge computing to capture data at the source of creation, specifically to support high-performance use cases, such as AI. The implementation of HCI and edge computing in AI will see the industry reduced form factors, since HCI allows for technology to operate within a smaller hardware design. In fact, some companies have already announced that they will be launching HCI edge compute clusters that are no bigger than a cup of coffee,” said Phil White, CTO of Scale Computing.
“By 2020, it is expected that 80% of all devices will have an artificial intelligence (AI) feature. While the cloud has provided AI the platform it needed to grow to the level of being available on nearly every technological device, the combination of HCI and edge computing will give AI the tools needed to evolve to the next frontier, with smarter and faster decision making for organizations in 2020,” White added.
“2020 will be the year of convergence. At the end of the day, people want less tools to do more things, reducing the overhead. IT teams don’t want to manage infrastructure anymore; they want to offload everything and are utilizing the cloud to deliver that. On the flip side, though, they will want those applications they are still having to manage to be from a multipoint solution that delivers a single outcome,” said Steve Blog, technology evangelist at Zerto.
“It’s no longer multichannel, or even omnichannel: it’s one channel. Every point of entry has to supply the same complete customer experience,” said Monica Eaton-Cardone, CIO of Global Risk Technologies and COO of Chargebacks911.
“By providing employees with access to the tools and resources needed to excel at high-expertise skills – such as coding, software development, and IT — organizations, IT professionals and software developers will be more attainable and simple to source,” said Matt Talbot, CEO and co-founder of GoSpotCheck.
“By providing employees with access to the tools and resources needed to excel at high-expertise skills – such as coding, software development, and IT — organizations, IT professionals and software developers will be more attainable and simple to source,” said Matt Talbot, CEO and co-founder of GoSpotCheck.
While channel partners are all about providing and supporting technologies for their customers, they understand that their customers are ultimately looking to drive business results. Partners, too, are driven by their own bottom lines and a need to find new revenue streams.
This slideshow strives to provide insights across IT and within certain business verticals from a variety of experts to help partners chart a profitable course in the year 2020. That’s a tall order given the accelerated pace of change and disruptions last year and next.
Gartner’s Courtney Rogerson
“We are in the thick of the digital era. New routes to market and technology enabled products and services are rapidly disrupting industries and business models,” said Courtney Rogerson, senior principal analyst with the Gartner Supply Chain Practice.
Even so, keeping a close eye on trends demonstrating staying power gives partners a good idea where business is headed. Additionally, watching new ideas sprout and take root enables savvy partners to stay well ahead of the curve and their nearest competition.
The trick, of course, is in knowing where to look for these telling signs. But the answer to that is “look everywhere” because 2020 is the year when everything converges or morphs but certainly never stays the same.
Take DevOps for example.
“In 2019, we’ve seen growing urgency around digital transformation, and I fully expect that to continue into 2020. As we move into the 11th year since DevOps was ‘born,’ the need to take agile methodologies to the next level – to scale them to support the largest enterprises – is paramount,” said Bob Davis, CMO of Plutora.
“2020 will be the year that value stream management (VSM) will serve as the platform that provides predictive insight and visibility for the entire process from idea to cash. Agile planning and DevOps will come together to form truly converged pipelines,” Davis added.
Scroll through the slideshow above to see what other changes are afoot and glean how and where you might improve your bottom line and your customers’ too.
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