*By Sergio da Motta
The events of recent years have shown that “planning” is an insufficient resource to guarantee resilience given the complexity and unpredictability of the future. What we need is to expand our ability to imagine and elaborate scenarios and consistently invest in skills that lead us to react coherently and consistently – I call this “preparing” for the future.
Technology has helped us survive the challenges posed by the pandemic and has transformed the way we work and live. At the same time, it gave rise or fed the growth of challenges that must be considered in the scenarios for which we must train our organizations. In this article, I point out trends that should stand out in 2023:
1. Cybersecurity is consolidated as one of the main business risks and business resilience challenges. Second Gartner research, 88% of the councils already recognize cybersecurity in this way, and not as an eminently technical risk. ransomware today it is an organized, professional and sophisticated business, with marketing, digital marketplace and sophisticated financial structures. This model came to be called RaaS (“Ransomware as a service” or “Ransomware as a Service”). Many companies suffer attacks on a daily basis and these are increasingly aimed at the most critical components of the business, such as the commercial and industrial areas, aiming to stop business, the cost of which justifies the demand for much more relevant rescues. Every day, attacks on the so-called “Big Phish” (executives of large companies are the main targets) gain more relevance and prominence in the global market. Insurance alternatives and purely technical solutions are not enough to prevent incidents or ensure quick recovery.
2. Expansion of the use of analysis tools and Artificial Intelligence. The volume of data generated and available, the complexity of environments in different IT's, platforms and types of clouds, as well as the differential that their treatment demands, require the expansion of the use of analysis tools and Artificial Intelligence and a new discipline of "DataOps ”. Without robust and secure enterprise architectures, as well as discipline for capture, storage, treatment, contextualization and interpretation, it is difficult to guarantee data quality and reliability and scale the production of insights. Many projects fail as a result of poorly structured planning aligned with business demands, lack of adequate data preparation (we only use about 30% of the data we produce), faulty definition of data lakes, workflows, or lack of scale/capacity in the AI solution.
3. Private 5G use cases will go beyond Industry 4.0, the retail sector is likely to be the next big frontier. The manufacturing, petrochemical, mining, steel and agriculture sectors have started and should accelerate the implementation of private wireless networks, based on 4G and 5G technology, to better monitor their operations, increase security and efficiency, eliminate coverage gaps, in addition to to provide cost reductions. Other sectors are maturing use cases and, in retail, expanding connectivity will create the conditions for the next generation of shopping experience, with integration of consumer identification technologies, smart checkout, contactless payments, dynamic promotions, immersive experiences (Virtual Reality, Metaverse) etc.
4. Training professionals and updating skills will be a priority for mainframe customers. High platform costs, concerns about reliance on legacy technology, and longer solution development cycles are putting pressure on customers to migrate their data and applications to public and private cloud solutions. Despite the expansion and maturation of low-code/no-code solutions to enable data access, the limitation of training and availability of specialists in new programming languages and technologies, limits the progress of modernization projects. Recent research indicates that 33% of skills present in positions in 2017 were no longer needed in 2021. On the other hand, 10% of new skills are needed every year to perform a simple activity, which leads us to a constant search for new methods of learning.
5. The success of recruiting and retaining the best professionals in the world of hybrid work depends on the digital experience of candidates and employees. The digital workplace has become an environment omnichannel, where professionals are more engaged and productive when they can choose the channels they prefer to use to engage and collaborate across organizations. In the coming years, digital experiences will top the list of reasons to choose a company to work for, as well as impacting retention. According to research by Qualtrics, the employees are 230% more engaged and 85% more likely to stay beyond 3 years in a job if they have the right technology support. Companies need to ensure that the environment and available technologies provide a favorable employee experience and encourage them to stay with companies.
6. Greater adhesion of companies to the model of Distributed Cloud. The model recommends the distribution of workloads in different locations to meet sovereignty, compliance and performance requirements, as well as being able to support edge computing (Edge Computing), while the operation, governance and evolution of services remain centrally managed by the public cloud provider. It is worth mentioning that sovereignty is a widely debated topic and will become one of the trends in cloud use in the coming years, whether due to regional and local regulations, or to the compliance established by the company. Special attention is required to data flow, monitoring and control, as well as carefully handling the security of critical business data, which, if leaked, affect brand value and market competitiveness.
I have no doubt that 2023 will be full of challenges and opportunities. Investing in training for the trends described above can be a recipe to help companies prepare and deal with the unpredictability of the coming year.
*Sergio da Motta, leader of Kyndryl Consult for Brazil
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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