How do business and IT managers deal with the current upheavals and challenges of digitization? What are your plans? A recent study examines the most critical IT trends for 2021.
Many companies face a generation change: in the next ten years, almost 21 percent of IT and business professionals will retire. Digitizing, transforming, saving for the future is the order of the day. It doesn’t stop there: It’s also about digital orders, automated service, intelligent factories, data exchange, or the intelligent management of supply chains.
All of this increases the security requirements. How do executives deal with it? What do IT managers say about data sovereignty or the regulation of intelligent technologies? The results should help companies compare their strategies, evaluate local factors and international influences, classify technology trends and shape the future of their organization.
Table of Contents
Customer Needs Are Becoming More Critical
Data security, better use of information, shorter release cycles, and the establishment of partner networks are gaining importance – flexibility and efficiency are taking a back seat.
Generation Change In IT
The shortage of IT specialists has increased slightly over the past year in German-speaking countries. However, the participants in the study expect it to continue to grow steadily over the next two years. As already mentioned: Many IT employees will retire in the next few years. However, the companies surveyed assume that this will have no or only slightly adverse effects in their area of responsibility.
Intelligent Technologies On The Rise
According to the study, the use of intelligent technologies has increased slightly in the past 12 months. This effect is mainly due to the upper-middle class and the middle class, which have expanded their activities somewhat. The application areas would be prioritized similarly to the previous year, with the automation of manual work at the top. The added value of the individual measures for users is more critical than those responsible for a business.
Both groups come to a similar assessment of intelligent technologies. In the past year, most study participants rejected state or external controls in this area and preferred voluntary commitments. That has changed in the meantime: approval of the state regulation of the areas of application of AI is still low but somewhat higher than in the previous year. The external review of the measures supposed to protect learning systems from manipulation is now more popular. At the same time, developing an ethical framework for the use of AI in one’s own company has lost its approval.
Cloud More And More Popular
The research suggests that the spread of data platforms is increasing. Since their operation is complex and the implementation expensive, corporations are better positioned than medium-sized companies. The data exchange along the company’s supply chain has increased enormously this year: In addition to cooperation with authorities and partners, more data is now being exchanged with third parties. The study authors believe that the increase shows that there is great potential for data sharing.
Further Technology Trends In 2021
Production safety and security, predictive analytics, protection against threats from IoT-capable devices, DevOps, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) without AI support are the most important technology trends for IT managers in the current year. Chatbots, voice control, virtual assistants, virtual and augmented reality applications, blockchain technologies, and mobile wallets are less relevant for those responsible.
In 2021, the main focus will be on optimizing the application landscape, accelerating its further development, and simplifying data exchange. In this way, the respondents react to new customer requirements and prepare themselves to take advantage of the advantages of digitization: They want to work more closely with other organizations and exploit the potential of data.
