CompTIA’s IT Trends to Watch 2020
CompTIA, the leading technology industry association reveals IT Trends to watch 2020
1. Tech-Washing Fades in Favor of Real Strategy
Thanks to the vast influx of user-friendly technologies, it has become popular to say that every company is a tech company. But the ubiquity of technology does not necessarily change the underlying business model. While digital transformation is creating new avenues for growth, companies are finding that they cannot simply slap tech labels on their products and practices and automatically reap benefits. On one end of the spectrum, this takes the shape of larger companies going public and struggling with the realities of their industry. There are well-established economics and regulations in industries such as transportation or real estate. Software and mobile devices may connect consumers directly or change a distribution model, but it is more difficult to alter profit margins or navigate complex interconnections, especially at scale. On the other end of the spectrum, there are smaller businesses who can easily fall prey to marketing hyperbole. As with previous trends like unified communications or gamification, new trends like artificial intelligence and blockchain hold a great deal of promise but require significant investment or change to workflow. Smaller companies are finding that purchasing new technology is not the same as truly integrating that technology for improved results. Just as the opportunistic use of labels has often applied to individual trends, the same behavior has been happening with technology in general. Rather than attempting to use technology as a crutch, businesses will become much more intentional about strategically integrating technology into their culture and roadmap.
2. Workforce Diversity Grows in Many Ways
Workforce diversity most often refers to having an employee population that reflects the general population, with no preferential treatment or restrictive measure given on the basis of gender, race, age, or other factors. The technology workforce in particular has been under the microscope for its lack of diversity thanks to unconscious bias and optimization along with other behavior that is far more conscious, such as barriers to access for low income students or even reports of outright abuse. In 2020, the call for improved diversity will continue to pay dividends, even if fully diverse and inclusive environments still lie further in the future. Going beyond efforts around common conceptions of diversity, there will also be a marked increase in the skill diversity that companies are seeking. Twenty years ago, the stereotypical IT worker had a heavy concentration in infrastructure skills and worked in relative isolation from the rest of the business. Today, companies are seeking expertise across all four areas of CompTIA’s IT framework—infrastructure, software development, cybersecurity, and data. In many cases, companies are hoping to find candidates with some degree of work experience, so there is less willingness to take an entry-level generalist and steer them towards a specialization. Beyond technical skills, businesses are also looking for technology professionals that can speak the language of the business, collaborating with other departments in order to drive technology-fueled business results. Employability skills such as communications and teamwork are no longer reserved for those workers on a management track, but now apply at every level. Given the shortage of skills on the market, there are no easy answers for how companies will fill these needs, but there are tremendous opportunities for technologists in every field.
3. Tech Topics Are Front and Center in U.S. Elections
As the IT industry is maturing, there are challenges posed as a result of tech’s larger impact on the economy and deeper integration with society. In 2020, the U.S. election cycle will put a spotlight on many of these issues. Debate in Washington and around the country has already begun with respect to the responsibilities of certain players in the IT sector. Despite the overwhelming consumer and business benefits enabled by the IT industry, CompTIA data shows that 7 in 10 firms in the business of selling technology, most SMB-sized, fear that a negative perception of the tech industry is gaining momentum across the country and becoming more of an issue in general. In particular, increased awareness over privacy and how information is being collected and used could impact voters’ decisions. Other issues might also join the discussion this election cycle, including cybersecurity, automation, artificial intelligence, net neutrality, and technology’s role in mitigating climate change and educating our children. When it comes to voting itself, election security also remains a key concern for voters. The use of voting technology, coupled with the need to assure voters that their ballot will be counted, underscores the need for safety, reliability, and accessibility in digital infrastructure.
4. Hype Meets Reality with Emerging Technology
Over the past several years, there has been a lot of excitement around emerging technologies. At an operational level, this has been a positive trend as it has helped businesses build better practices for evaluating early-stage topics and accelerating adoption. At a tactical level, though, it has created some chaos. Without the chance to wait and see which technologies prove their worth, companies have found themselves confronted with a bevy of options—a situation that exacerbates resource constraint and skill gaps. Heading into a new year, the hype around emerging technology remains high, especially among those firms selling and supporting technology. Many firms in the IT industry are expecting significant gains in emerging tech adoption or growth within their user base. Of course, part of the reason for significant gains is that the original base is fairly small. And this is where the reality sets in. CompTIA’s end user data shows a very slow adoption curve across various new trends, with only two trends beginning to reach critical mass (internet of things and artificial intelligence). Even amid all the hype, companies in the business of technology are starting to pull back on adopting new technology as part of their portfolio. This slight tap on the brakes suggests that classic situation where companies move too quickly into a new technology discipline or business model only to have a reality check in year two or three. Beyond IoT and AI, companies are excited about building solutions on top of 5G infrastructure, and other topics may have strong but specific use cases (drones), function more as enabling technology (blockchain), or still have years before making an impact (quantum computing). The market is settling down, but it will remain a source of interest since new trends can still take off overnight.
5. Internet of Things Continues to Redefine IT Architecture
As one of the two emerging technologies to be gaining significant traction, internet of things seems poised to join cloud computing and mobile devices as a permanent part of the modern technology landscape. Businesses are quickly discovering the value in digitizing their environment and their operations, collecting data that can help with future decision-making. The trend is also showing positive returns for companies that sell and support technology. Half of these firms report either major or minor levels of IoT-related sales in the last year, with others experimenting internally. Today, IoT as a managed services play is driving the most revenue in this category, but looking ahead to the next two years companies are predicting that analytics on data captured by IoT sensors – then shared with customers – holds the most financial promise. The first wave of IoT adoption is making good progress, but the next stage will require a keen understanding of digital BizOps. Rather than treating IoT installations as separate projects, businesses will have to recognize that they are dealing with an expanded architecture. This will dictate networking structures, storage options, data policies, and security decisions. These changes will drive both channel firms and internal IT departments to invest in skills training in order to fully establish a successful data-based analytics practice. As with cloud computing and mobile devices, the groundwork has been laid for IoT to advance digital transformation.
6. Artificial Intelligence Eats the World
When Marc Andreessen made his now-famous statement about software in 2011, he may not have even realized the extent to which the world would be consumed over the next decade. Cloud computing lowered both the barrier for developing software and the barrier for distribution, and mobile devices extended the reach of software to previously unreached corners. The net effect was an exponential increase in software’s ability to drive activity. This created a new challenge in conducting said activity and acting on the data being collected. Enter artificial intelligence. With a foundation of software-driven routines and the compute resources to broadly run advanced algorithms, AI can push software to the next level. However, there’s a fine line between “eating the world” and “global domination.” The challenges of programming bias and unreasonable outputs mean that AI requires a different form of oversight than earlier software models. This oversight is an example of the kind of responsible implementation that technology professionals and solution providers must now perform. In addition, functional AI is like any other software in that it requires solid inputs. In the case of AI, these inputs are often massive datasets rather than highly specific data points, but there is still a need to ensure quality. For all the disruptive power that AI holds for business operations and job roles, it opens new opportunities for those with the expertise to manage its appetite.
7. Demand for Integration Leads to Demand for Automation
According to CompTIA’s Tech Buying Trends Among Small & Medium-Sized Businesses, the top technology area where SMBs need the most work is integrating various platforms, applications, and data. Large businesses are focused on integration as well, but they have more internal resources that they can lean on. Even so, third parties are a popular option for integration activities, especially where deep knowledge is needed for a particular platform or application. Whether integration is outsourced or being done in-house, the next step for many businesses will be automation. Automation has always been one goal of enterprise technology, but today’s capabilities open new doors. Just by using cloud systems, companies can take advantage of tools from their cloud provider. Internet of things implementations expand the ability to gather inputs from a variety of sources, and artificial intelligence can help drive actions based on those inputs. From there, the vast array of other emerging technologies allows companies to imagine and build complex automation. The goal of this automation, as with all technological advances, is to reduce the amount of routine work and to create breathing room for innovation. There will certainly be job roles that are disrupted in the process, but throughout the decade businesses have shown a preference for keeping and repurposing skilled workers in an environment of skill shortages. Future automation will be highly complex, and the nature of AI will necessitate some amount of monitoring, so the endeavor will not be cheap. As with all strategic IT, businesses will need to see clear ROI calculations and long-term improvement plans before venturing deeper into automation.
8. Cybersecurity Becomes More Operational
The theme of cybersecurity over the past decade was a shift from a purely defensive mindset to a proactive approach that combined technology, process, and education. Moving forward, the shift will be from cybersecurity as a component of IT to cybersecurity as a critical business function. When treated as part of IT, a proactive approach to cybersecurity may still struggle to get the proper budget allocation or properly demonstrate value to the business. As a result, organizations are beginning to treat cybersecurity as a dedicated function. At large enterprises, this usually takes the form of a CISO managing a team of resources, and the division is more clear. For everyone else, establishing a cybersecurity center of operations is much less formal and involves a blend of internal and external resources. The process starts with defining risk tolerance, a step that most companies are not familiar with after simply placing all corporate content behind a secure perimeter. The next step is to fill the skill gaps that exist, which has become a difficult task with so many different areas under the umbrella of security. Finally, there must be metrics to measure the return on a more significant investment. Separating cybersecurity from IT and taking these steps elevates the function to that of a critical business operation, on par with legal or accounting. For third parties providing security services and technical employees with security responsibilities, the transition will not take place overnight, but there will be notable progress throughout the year.
9. Deep Fakes and 5G Exacerbate the Data Management Challenge
Deep fake applications are genuinely terrifying. We are talking about video and voice forgery software that convincingly makes people appear to be doing and saying things they are not. This has the potential to wreak havoc on society, personal lives, politics, careers, and beyond. And while such trickery might seem like a fun distraction or the latest internet game, using these apps also means handing over reams of personal information to strangers. Scary, right? As long as deep fake applications exist – and they will continue to exist and proliferate – the need for sophisticated data management will skyrocket in the coming years. And data volume, already completely exponential, is only going to mushroom with the more expansive rollout of 5G networks next year and beyond. This high-speed network is going to capture data at lightning-fast pace from any type of device or inanimate object. In the next year, these two trends are just the primary examples of ongoing issues with data management. The need to properly identify that data with its true source (i.e. a deep fake verification) and to secure the mountains of information speeding along these networks is going to be paramount for both major broadband providers and their downstream partners in the channel, as well as individual IT departments, and possibly the government.
10. Tech Industry Regulation Stirs Fears
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Dickens could very well be speaking about the state of today’s technology industry. The stock market has been flying high for the most part. The top five corporations in terms of global market capitalization sport names like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Emerging technologies offer exciting promise. And yet, it is also a time of uncertainty. Issues related to privacy violations, data protection, election interference, and others have thrust the industry, and many of its leading corporations, into the media spotlight and the government’s watchdog lens. For many who work in technology, the potential for increased government regulation, which some states are already pursuing, is an obvious concern. Most IT firms are operating on slim margins with limited cash flow. They fear too much regulation could restrain growth, while deregulation, they argue, could spur it. In fact, based on CompTIA’s 8th State of the Channel research, government regulation of the tech industry tops the worry list for the coming year, while a potential downturn to current economic conditions also sparks anxiety. That’s a significant shift from last year when the main concerns for future success focused on new types of competitors in the market and a skills gap for emerging technologies. Those are still valid business concerns, but it’s clear that on a macro level, people are waking up to the fact that the Wild West days are over as the tech industry matures and grows more complex. Success and advancement come with a price: balancing demands for more accountability while continuing to innovate. The question ahead is how the tech industry takes ownership of these issues and works with government to build the proper set of guidelines.
Source : CompTIA
