16 November 2018

10 predictions for how the tech industry will change in 2019 and beyond

By Alison De Nisco Rayome 

By 2023, nearly every enterprise will act like a digital native, as the digitized global economy continues to expand, according to a Tuesday report from the International Data Corporation (IDC). The organization set out to make 10 predictions for the IT landscape moving into 2019 and beyond, as IT and business leaders continue to undergo digital transformation.

Organizations are being rebuilt around 3rd Platform technologies like cloud, mobile, big data analytics, and social media, and are further enabled by "innovation accelerators" such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), the report found. While many organizations are well on their way to transforming using these technologies, the next chapter of innovation will require companies to expand their digital reach, improve intelligence, increase app and service development, and meet increasing customer expectations and security needs.

"As industries - and the global economy - rapidly realign and consolidate around digital innovation, CXOs must race to reinvent their organizations for the fast-paced multiplied innovation world," Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC, said in a press release. "This means reinventing IT around a distributed cloud infrastructure, public cloud software stacks, agile and cloud-native app development and deployment, AI as the new user interface, and new, pervasive approaches to security and trust at scale."

Here are IDC's top 10 worldwide IT industry predictions, according to the report.

1. By 2022, over 60% of global GDP will be digitized with growth in every industry driven by digitally-enhanced offerings, operations, and relationships.

Digital transformation efforts must rise to the top of every business leader's priority list, the report said. Those who fail to transform their operations and offerings will lose out to the competition as traditional marketplaces are disrupted.

2. By 2023, 75% of all IT spending will be on 3rd Platform technologies, as over 90% of all enterprises build "digital native" IT environments to thrive in the digital economy.

Nearly half of enterprises said that they are "digitally determined," meaning they have already set out to develop an integrated digital strategy and architecture that mimics those of digital native organizations, according to IDC. This means they are using the cloud, agile and DevOps practices, digital innovation platforms and communities, and integrated data management and monetization, the report noted.

3. By 2022, over 40% of organizations' cloud deployments will include edge computing, and 25% of endpoint devices and systems will execute AI algorithms.

Cloud infrastructure and enterprise applications and services are already shifting to the edge for increased proximity to devices and data sources, the report said. "AI services will be among the first - and most transformational - of public cloud capabilities being distributed across the edge," according to the release.

4. By 2022, 90% of all apps will feature microservices architectures that improve the ability to design, debug, update, and leverage third-party code; 35% of all production apps will be cloud-native.

In the digital economy, companies must deliver high-quality applications very quickly to meet business needs. This is driving the shift to "hyperagile apps," or those that are highly modular, distributed, continuously updated, and using cloud-native technologies like containers and serverless computing, according to the report. Combining these apps with agile and DevOps approaches, enterprises can speed their ability to innovate compared to past methods.

5. By 2024, a new class of professional developers producing code without custom scripting, will expand the developer population by 30%, accelerating digital transformation.

The rise of low code and no code development platforms and model-driven development tools will give organizations access to a new class of developers who can deliver digital solutions more frequently, the report said. By 2024, these new developers will expand the global developer population by nearly one third, according to IDC.

6. From 2018 to 2023, with new tools/platforms, more developers, agile methods, and lots of code reuse, 500 million new logical apps will be created, equal to the number built over the past 40 years.

The shift to hyperagile app technologies, and the explosion of the developer population thanks to low code and no code tools, will lead to rapid growth in app and services development, and deployment pace and scale, the report noted.

"The ability to accelerate digital innovation volume and pace will be the most critical new benchmark for organizations competing in the digital economy," Gens said in the release.

7. By 2022, 25% of public cloud computing will be based on non-x86 processors (including quantum); by 2022, organizations will spend more on vertical SaaS apps than horizontal apps.

The number of use cases served by IT will grow significantly in the coming years, creating a wide variety of specialized IT needs, the report said. AI processing requirements are driving the need for stronger processors, and organizations are choosing vertically-specialized Software as a Service applications nearly twice as often as horizontal applications, IDC found.

8. By 2024, AI-enabled user interfaces and process automation will replace one third of today's screen-based apps. By 2022, 30% of enterprises will use conversational speech tech for customer engagement.

AI will increasingly be used as the main UI for a number of apps and services, while at the same time, AI-driven process automation will streamline and replace human tasks. This will increasingly become to norm to maximize employee productivity, according to the report.
9. By 2022, 50% of servers will encrypt data at rest and in motion; over 50% of security alerts will be handled by AI-powered automation; and 150 million people will have blockchain-based digital identities.

Emerging technologies like pervasive encryption, blockchain, machine learning, and analytics will be used to improve security measures across the enterprise.
10. By 2022, the top four cloud "megaplatforms" will host 80% of IaaS/PaaS deployments, by 2024, 90% of G1000 organizations will mitigate lock-in through multi- and hybrid cloud technologies and tools.

In the coming years, enterprises will embrace integrated hybrid and multi-cloud tools and strategies, the report said. "Lack of an integrated strategy will result in suboptimal resource allocation, limited access to best-available technology innovations, longer problem identification and resolution times, and limited vendor leverage," according to the release.

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