Digital Transformation will continue to be the double edged sword in 2021

The year 2020 will go down as the period when organizations responded to new risks, pivoted to new business models and accelerated their digital transformation programs in an effort to weather a lethal pandemic. In 2020, leaders abruptly pivoted their digital transformation strategies to support remote working and other health and safety priorities brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Heading into 2021, IT and digital leaders must continue to respond to changing working conditions amid increasing COVID-19 numbers, but as vaccines become available there's also the hope of evolving to a new normal. The changing environment will create challenges for digital transformation leaders on what initiatives get prioritized, which technologies are selected and how to engage employees.

IT companies emerged as the biggest beneficiary of digital transformation and the pandemic acting as a catalyst for organisations across sectors to fast-track adoption of digital and cloud-led technologies to survive in the new normal. Emerging technologies, such as cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and big data, which saw unprecedented demand, is not likely to reverse even in a post-pandemic world. Sine the technology solutions to operate remotely and efficiently. This trend will extend into 2021, but with a difference: IT leaders will shift from a reactive posture to proactive, strategic digital transformation initiatives. Every company is on a journey to advance data and analytics capabilities in their organizations; what capabilities leaders should prioritize depends on the company's overall maturity as a data-driven organization. 2020 has been a year like no other for all of us, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made its presence felt in the world of media and entertainment industry as in all other aspects of life and society. At the same time, companies have continued to innovate with service propositions and the technologies that underpin them.

Secondly, Digital Transformation is perhaps the single most important imperative facing IT decision-makers today. If your organization doesn’t evolve to a digital model, it faces the potential of significant disruption. Following a digital boom, India’s cyber security sector is seeing an exponential growth. As with many other digital sectors, start-ups are driving this trend.

The year 2020 has seen rapid growth of digital transformation, and with increased connectivity, 5G, and improvements in AI and machine learning, IoT extended their roots in people's lives and industries. Looking ahead to 2021 and beyond, the technology is set to be at the heart of every organization. IoT is a technology of hope, and in 2021 few of the trends will come to the forefront, fuelling its importance, right from data-intensive experiences that use IoT devices to basic health-and-safety needs. During this time an unprecedented number of unprotected users and devices were online, giving a perfect storm of opportunity for the cybercriminals. And these devices don’t even need to be attacked directly, since they are all connected to the single home network and have multiple avenues of attack that can be exploited with the ultimate goal of finding a way back into a corporate network and its valuable resources.

This has been a year that will be remembered as the one when around 1.6 million people died globally due to the pandemic and world economies faced their toughest times in the recent past. The lockdown has been lifted, but the pandemic continues. Businesses have resumed a partial number of employees with critical roles, working while most of the employees still work from home until the coming year. According to an industry report in 2021, smart building technology will be focused on IoT applications for intelligent office initiatives. These initiatives will include smart lighting, energy and environmental monitoring, and sensor-enabled space utilization and activity monitoring.

With 2021 just days away, we here at VARINDIA took an honest look at how our news, views and analysis solutions could better serve you. During this unprecedented time, we’re always striving to improve and innovate how you could get updated on regular basics with the News Hour . At the end of what’s been an incredibly challenging year, we wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

S Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA