Problem-solving to Long-term Innovation: The technology shift in 2022

An organization’s capacity to access relevant data in a secure, actionable manner has become as important as its cash flow, balance sheet, or market share strategy, and other traditional indicators of business performance. Data is the new oil - its availability, quality, and usage offer competitive advantage for organizations.

An enterprise’s performance is increasingly defined by its ability to deliver individual and personalized experiences. The ones that do this best with a customer-first approach will see themselves thriving in the new normal. This also means that the enterprises will have to quickly reconfigure business structures and capabilities based on new technologies. In the long run, this will help them meet future customer and employee needs with adaptivity, creativity, and resilience.

With IT innovations redefining the workplace and hybrid workplaces continuing to gain momentum, we will also see organizations further experimenting with software-defined solutions such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). There will be an increased demand for infrastructure as a service and other hybrid multi-cloud services.

As I see it, the following trends will differentiate future-ready firms from legacy organizations in 2022:

* Cloud-native platforms: The cloud revolution for Indian businesses - The coming year will see large organizations move decisively away from a lift-and-shift approach to the cloud, embracing cloud-native technologies instead. Having watched the hyperscalers upend industries across verticals, enterprises will accelerate their move to cloud-scale applications to meet their competitive challenges.

* Data privacy and security: The secret sauce for digital acceleration - If data is a genuine asset – analogous to human capital or infrastructure – can it be secured, insured, and graded in terms of value and/or usage? How should this asset be quantified and valued on the balance sheet? ‘Data Economics’ will be the science that will help companies define their expertise in the collection, storage, deployment and use of this data. The increasing importance of data will also make data security and reliability top priorities for both companies and consumers alike.

* 5G: The game-changer for tech transformation in India - We are increasingly seeing players in the technology industry and business community invest in building edge-computing environments to support AI-driven IoT. The advances it will bring - everything from self-driving cars and smart cities, to connected healthcare and industrial IoT, will truly revolutionize every sector and open new avenues for businesses across regions. 5G, with its machine-to-machine connectivity, will lead to an exponential increase in data. How enterprises leverage this data is what will define their future success.

* The rise of sustainable technology in India (ESG) - In 2022, the demand for sustainability-related services powered by edge and IoT will grow in the areas of energy efficiency and resource management. Use cases for technologies like this will be environmental monitoring, resource management and supply chain processes.

* AI driving intelligent data management: A report by Raconter shows that by 2025, users will generate about 463 exabytes of data per day. However, this data is only as good as the AI systems used to manage, regulate, and mine it for insights. The work that many organizations continued in 2021 with new use cases for AI, will continue to expand as businesses realize the power that AI can hold for solving problems better, faster, and at scale.

The pandemic brough along some drastic changes in the way businesses operate. It has had a significant impact on communication service providers both in India and globally. As Covid-19 continues to present new challenges for IT professionals across sectors with many enterprises still working from home, we can expect to see these trends continue in 2022 and well beyond, as the global economy settles into changes that may indeed become permanent – the new normal.

Puneet Gupta, Managing Director & VP India/Saarc, NetApp