Business and IT leaders need to incorporate trends into their D&A strategies

Gartner, Inc. has identified the top 10 data and analytics (D&A) trends for 2023 that can enable D&A leaders to unlock new sources of value and capitalize on business opportunities amidst uncertainty. These trends emphasize the need for delivering measurable value at scale, managing AI risks, enhancing observability, embracing data sharing, driving sustainability, and more.

At the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Mumbai, Gartner analysts shared insights on these trends, urging business and IT leaders to incorporate them into their D&A strategies.

Trend 1: Value Optimization D&A leaders often struggle to communicate the value they provide in business terms. Value optimization requires building value stories that establish clear connections between D&A initiatives and mission-critical priorities.

Trend 2: Managing AI Risk The increased use of AI introduces new risks that must be managed effectively. This involves mitigating ethical risks, addressing data poisoning or fraud detection circumvention, and implementing AI governance and responsible AI practices to build trust.

Trend 3: Observability enables organizations to understand the behaviour of their D&A systems and answer questions about their performance. By reducing the time to identify performance issues and making data-driven decisions, observability enhances operational efficiency.

Trend 4: Data Sharing Is Essential Data sharing, both internally and externally, creates opportunities for collaboration and value creation. Adopting a data fabric design enables organizations to share and leverage reusable data assets across heterogeneous sources.

Trend 5: D&A Sustainability D&A leaders should not only provide analysis for enterprise ESG projects but also optimize their own processes for sustainability improvement. This includes using renewable energy, energy-efficient hardware, and adopting practices that minimize energy consumption.

Trend 6: Practical Data Fabric Data fabric, a data management design pattern, leverages metadata to analyse and recommend data management solutions. It enables users to consume data confidently and empowers citizen developers with integration and modelling capabilities.

Trend 7: Emergent AI Emergent AI, driven by technologies like ChatGPT and generative AI, will revolutionize scalability, versatility, and adaptability. This next wave of AI will enable its application in new scenarios, making it more pervasive and valuable.

Trend 8: Converged and Composable Ecosystems Converged D&A ecosystems ensure cohesive operation through seamless integrations, governance, and technical interoperability. Composable ecosystems deliver configurable applications and services that enable scalability and flexibility to meet changing business needs.

Trend 9: Consumers Become Creators Predefined dashboards are giving way to conversational and embedded user experiences that address specific content consumers’ needs. Organizations can empower users by providing easy-to-use automated insights and conversational experiences to foster content creation.

Trend 10: Humans Remain the Key Decision Makers While automation plays a vital role in decision-making, human involvement remains crucial. Organizations need to consider the human element in decision support and prioritize data literacy programs that combine data, analytics, and human decision-making.

Gareth Herschel, VP Analyst at Gartner, emphasized the importance of engaging stakeholders and considering human psychology and values in driving D&A adoption. By embracing these trends, organizations can unlock the full potential of their data assets and gain a competitive edge in the evolving landscape.

Tags: D&A leadersGartner

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Financial institutions are embracing global industry trends to create a new ecosystem

As the financial landscape continues to rapidly evolve and industry players rethink their business models to establish the digital infrastructure required to drive future growth, International Data Corporation is delighted to announce that the Middle East edition of its IDC Financial Services Congress 2023 will take place at The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai International Financial Centre on June 13.

Addressing the theme ‘The Adoption and Utilization of All Things Digital’, the event will present exclusive insights from respected industry thought leaders as they discuss the latest trends and strategies shaping digital transformation in the BFSI space.

“Across the Middle East, financial institutions are embracing global industry trends to create a new ecosystem,” says Cyrus Daruwala, managing director of IDC Financial Insights Asia/Pacific, who will present the congress’s opening keynote, ‘Simplification in an Age of Complexity’. “The adoption of digital transformation is the key strategy that will propel the industry forward and enable institutions to meet tomorrow’s challenges.

“Traditional financial institutions are facing stiff competition from digital banks and insurers that use data to deliver innovative products and services. To overcome these challenges, they must look to embrace an organizational culture that prioritizes trust, resiliency, transparency, sustainability, productivity, and efficiency for the digital-first BFSI organization.”

The IDC Financial Services Congress 2023 will feature keynote speeches, presentations, and panel discussions on a variety of critical topics, including open banking, cloud management, AI/ML integration and industrialization, digital core systems, innovation excellence, cybersecurity risk typologies, frictionless banking, financial wellbeing, financial inclusion, employee empowerment, digital trust, and customer consent.

The event will also showcase first-hand end-user perspectives from senior representatives of prominent financial institutions, including:

• Somnath Sarkar, Executive Vice President & Group CISO, Mashreq Bank
• Saud Al Dhawyani, Chief Technology Officer, Emirates NBD
• Barrak Al Mattar, General Manager, Information Technology, Kuwait International Bank (KIB)
• Haroon Durrani, Head of Dubai First Cards & Digital, First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB)
• Salil Ahuja, Head of Products, Portfolio & Value Proposition, First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB)
• Evren Altiok, Chief Operating Officer, Commercial Bank International (CBI)
• Muhammad Rashid, Chief Compliance & Risk Officer, Jingle Pay
• Samy Massoud, Regional Head of Technology Delivery, PayTabs
• Mamoun Alhomssey Group Technology Advisor, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB)
• Mohamad Najmeddine, Head of Platforms & Data Services / Senior Vice President, Treasury & Trade Solutions (MEA), Citibank

Tags: IDCMiddle east

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Multiple sectors see ROI ramp up as something they can embrace

Solace, the leading enabler of event-driven architecture (EDA) for real-time enterprises, today announced the release of the IDC Infobrief, sponsored by Solace, Getting in Sync: Unlocking the Exponential Business Value of Real-Time Event-Driven Data Flows. The Infobrief is based on the results of a survey of over 300 enterprise IT professionals in North America, Asia and Europe, all of whom work for companies with over 1,000 employees that are implementing or considering EDA.

The survey revealed that as enterprises gain experience in their early applications of EDA, they recognize other areas of their business in which EDA could be beneficial. This is reflected by the fact that 82 per cent said their company plans to apply EDA to 2-3 new use cases within the next 24 months, and 93 per cent of companies that have deployed EDA across multiple use cases said EDA has met or exceeded their expectations.

“It’s been clear for several years that event-driven architecture has become the de facto standard way businesses are becoming real-time, and the results of this survey confirm that,” said Mychelle Mollot, chief marketing officer at Solace. “The survey results show how the market has evolved since a survey we conducted in 2021, and sheds light on the increasing ROI enterprises see as they advance toward enterprise-wide EDA.”

The survey found that in addition to technical advantages from EDA, most businesses also see clear business benefits: 23 per cent of respondents reported increasing productivity, 22 per cent said better customer acquisition, and 18 per cent saw revenues increase because of their EDA efforts.

“EDA maturity is linked to general digital maturity, as those with higher levels of EDA maturity generally exhibit the strategic and change management support needed to sustain digital business initiatives,” said Shari Lava, research director, automation within the AI and automation group, IDC. “In fact, organizations with higher levels of EDA maturity were more likely to report being ahead of their peers in developing digital business models than those in early stages.”

Expanding the footprint of EDA across the enterprise is a journey, and the survey also revealed that as benefits evolve over time, so do the challenges faced. For organizations just getting started with EDA, the most common challenges are lack of understanding of EDA benefits and inconsistent buy-in between business and IT. As organizations progress and internal support increases, the most common concerns are keeping costs in check and finding the right use cases. Finally, companies further along run into change resistance as EDA affects an increasing number of processes across lines of business and partners.

To learn more, download the full IDC Infobrief here. In addition, sign up for the 2023 EDA Summit taking place Wednesday May 10, and hear firsthand from IDC Research Director Shari Lava, author of the Infobrief, who will introduce and explain the results of the survey in more detail.

The results of this survey are comparative to the findings from a 2021 study, also sponsored by Solace, which was the first ever focused specifically on EDA. The 2021 study concluded that although most respondents recognized the critical business value in embracing EDA, adoption was still ‘early days’ and required more support from business leadership to move forward.

Tags: EDAPrnasia

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There are solid opportunities to shape the next generation of digital government

Gartner, Inc. identified the top 10 government technology trends for 2023 that can guide public sector leaders in accelerating transformation as they prepare for post-digital government and a relentless focus on mission objectives.

“Not only is the current global turmoil and technological disruption putting pressure on governments to find a balance between digital opportunities and risks, it also presents solid opportunities to shape the next generation of digital government,” said Arthur Mickoleit, Director Analyst at Gartner. “Government CIOs must demonstrate their digital investments aren’t just tactical in nature as they continue to improve service delivery and core mission impacts.”

Government CIOs should consider the impact of the following technology trends on their organizations and apply insights to make a case for investments to improve business capabilities, achieve leadership priorities and create a more future-ready government organization.

Adaptive Security
Gartner predicts that by 2025, 75 per cent of government CIOs will be directly responsible for security outside of IT, including operational and mission-critical technology environments. The convergence of enterprise data, privacy, supply chain, cyber-physical systems (CPS) and cloud requires an integrated security approach. CIOs should link adaptive security to broader digital innovation, transformation, national security, and resilience objectives.

Cloud-Based Legacy Modernization
Leading governments are under pressure to break down legacy, siloed systems, and data stores to modernize IT infrastructure and applications to ensure more resilient government services. CIOs can use adaptive sourcing strategies to identify areas where “as-a-service” delivery models augment internal resources and address business priorities. Gartner predicts over 75 per cent of governments will operate more than half of workloads using hyperscale cloud service providers by 2025.

Sovereign Cloud
Global uncertainty, as well as concerns over data privacy and potential government overreach, are resulting in greater demand for sovereign clouds. Governments are increasingly seeking to limit exposure of data and infrastructure by external jurisdictions and foreign government access. Gartner predicts over 35 per cent of government legacy applications will be replaced by solutions developed on low-code application platforms and maintained by fusion teams by 2025.

Hyperautomation
According to Gartner, 60 per cent of government organizations will prioritize business process automation by 2026, up from 35 per cent in 2022. Hyperautomation initiatives support business and IT processes in government to deliver connected and seamless citizen services. CIOs must align automation initiatives with current priorities to pursue digital transformation, while also optimizing operational costs.

AI for Decision Intelligence
By 2024, Gartner predicts 60 per cent of government AI and data analytics investments will directly impact real-time operational decisions and outcomes. AI for decision intelligence provides governments with rapid, accurate and early decision-making capabilities at scale. CIOs must prepare for widespread AI use by ensuring data is available at points of decision and by establishing effective governance principles.

Data Sharing as a Program
Data sharing as an ad hoc effort among agencies and departments is no longer sufficient given the demands to drive value from data and analytics. By the end of 2023, Gartner predicts 50 per cent of government organizations will establish formal accountability structures for data sharing, including standards for data structure, quality, and timeliness. CIOs should focus on value-added and mission objectives when developing data-sharing initiatives.

Total Experience (TX)
By 2026, government total experience (TX) approaches will reduce process ambiguity by 90 per cent, while increasing satisfaction metrics for both customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) by 50 per cent. TX creates synergies and coherence among traditionally siloed disjointed CX, EX, multi-experience (MX) and user experience (UX) disciplines in support of government transformation. CIOs can reduce experience friction points by mapping, visualizing and redesigning citizen and employee journeys.

Digital Identity Ecosystems
Gartner predicts over a third of national governments will offer citizens mobile-based identity wallets by 2024. Governments are facing new responsibilities in emerging digital identity ecosystems, with expectations to ensure trust, innovation and adoption across sectors and borders. To achieve this, governments must make high-assurance digital identity easy to obtain and relevant for diverse target groups of end users and service providers.

Case Management as a Service (CMaaS)
The integration of government services depends on designing and developing case management solutions as composable products and services that can be shared across the programs, verticals, and levels of government. Gartner predicts that by 2024, agencies using composable case management will implement new features 80 per cent faster than their peers. CIOs should demonstrate how better outcomes, improved collaboration or program integration can be attained.

Composable Government Applications
Governments can successfully break down legacy, siloed systems and data stores by applying a composable architecture. Continuous improvement and modernization can be achieved by adopting a modular approach to application architecture and by exploiting rapid advancements in automation and machine learning.

Tags: GartnerGovernment technology

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42 per cent of people optimistic about 2023

Dynata, the world’s largest first-party data company for insights, activation, and measurement, today released its latest Global Consumer Trends survey, which explores the attitudes and behaviors of 11,000 people across 11 countries, aiming to better understand how evolving economic and social factors are impacting consumers across the world.

This installment of the research series focuses on people’s feelings about the year ahead, their personal finances and mental health. A deeper dive into all key findings, including country- and demographic-specific data, is illustrated in more detail in the infographics below. Full data tables are also available.

2023 Outlooks

• Globally, people are more optimistic (42 per cent) than pessimistic (34 per cent) about the year ahead.
  • Optimism is highest in China(76 per cent), the United States (49 per cent), Australia (47 per cent) and Canada (46 per cent). In the U.S., 26 per cent are ‘”very optimistic,” compared to France (9 per cent), Netherlands (8 per cent) and Italy (7 per cent).
  • Gen Z (60 per cent) and Millennials (52 per cent) feel more optimistic than Gen X (36 per cent) and Baby Boomers (28 per cent).
• Inflation is the No. 1 concern for consumers globally and across all age groups — except in China, where consumers are worried most about the ongoing impacts of COVID-19.
• Younger generations worry more than older generations about unemployment (41 per cent of Gen Z vs. just one in five Baby Boomers), gender equality (36 per cent of Gen Z vs. 17 per cent of Baby Boomers) and LGBTQ+ rights (29 per cent of Gen Z vs. 13 per cent of Baby Boomers).

Personal finances

• Globally, more than six in 10 people (61 per cent) say their personal finances have changed during the past year — and of those, more are likely to say their finances have worsened (33 per cent) than improved (28 per cent).
• Across the world, an increasing proportion of consumers are struggling to make ends meet — and more are falling into debt. The percentages of those who agree with these statements increased in every country between August 2022and January 2023.
  • People in the U.S. (48 per cent), Japan(47 per cent), Australia (44 per cent) and Spain (43 per cent) were most likely to be struggling to make ends meet as the year began.
• Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X are experiencing more financial hardship than Baby Boomers — and at higher levels than last summer.

Mental health

• Half of people globally (49 per cent) say their mental health has changed since before the pandemic. Of those:
  • Slightly more people self-report feeling better (26 per cent) than worse off (23 per cent) mentally, with the most positive improvements found in China(59 per cent), the U.S. (34 per cent) and Canada (28 per cent).
  • Financial problems (43 per cent) are the top-cited factor globally for those whose mental health has declined — including by more than half of consumers in the U.S. and Spain(both 53 per cent), and Australia (52 per cent).
• Talking about mental health was once considered taboo. Now, half of people globally (50 per cent) are comfortable discussing it openly. The highest figures are found in China(61 per cent), the U.K. and U.S. (both 58 per cent).
• Compared to 2019, women of all ages (26 per cent) report worse mental health than men (19 per cent).

Tags: Consumer trendsDynataPrnasia

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HR leaders report HR technology is the top priority

Nearly half of HR leaders cited HR technology as their top investment priority, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc.

An October 2022 Gartner survey of 118 HR leaders revealed the other top investment areas for HR leaders in 2023 are: staffing and recruiting, total rewards and learning and development.

“HR leaders continue to face persistent high inflation, intense competition for talent and global supply constraints,” said Seyda Berger-Böcker, director in the Gartner HR practice. “Instead of opting for simple cost cutting measures, leading organizations are focusing on growth and determining which investments will drive competitive advantage in the year ahead.”

To optimize costs and drive growth, HR leaders should action on the below investment imperatives:

HR Technology

Technology was ranked as the leading HR investment priority for the second year in a row as HR leaders expect technology-related initiatives to hold the biggest HR function efficiency potential.

Specifically, HR technology can trigger cost savings in HR administration, which has seen a drastic uptick in cost due to pandemic-related tasks such as vaccine mandates, remote work arrangements and contact tracing programs.

“Our research shows yearly spend on HR administration increased from $US155 per employee in 2021 to $US194 per employee in 2022,” said Berger-Böcker. “This is alarming considering HR functions have been trying to reduce the burden of administrative tasks through the use of technology.”

HR leaders can create efficiencies by implementing human-centric technology solutions – such as skills management or learning experience platforms –to maximize employee experience, retention, collaboration, and performance outcomes.

Staffing and Recruiting

Organizations continue to face talent shortages as competition expands due to accelerated digitalization and the adoption of remote work. HR leaders are now tasked with redefining hiring needs to access larger pools of talent and meet hiring demands.

Leading organizations are preparing for extremes in hiring by investing in recruiting technology. To-date, digitalization has pushed organizations to better automate parts of the hiring process; HR leaders are now focusing their investments in all areas of the candidate pipeline, including candidate attraction, sourcing, and experience, as well as talent analytics to navigate today’s complex labour market.

Gartner predicts technologies with the most potential to aid recruiting operational excellence are AI-enabled sourcing and screening capabilities and candidate relationship management platforms.

Total Rewards

As organizations struggle with cost constraints, HR functions face the challenging task of providing additional financial support to employees affected by today’s cost of living increase, while avoiding a wage-price spiral. This is significant for HR leaders with respondents citing total rewards as the third-largest investment area for 2023 – moving up from fifth in 2022.

HR functions are boosting total rewards investments by focusing on equitable reward and recognition programs, pay transparency and well-being programs. This includes investments in areas such as compensation planning technologies, pay equity tools or smart wearable technology to monitor employee stress and fitness levels.

“HR leaders must recognize that obligations, stressors and concerns from employees’ personal lives will reverberate in their working lives, potentially affecting performance and productivity,” said Hanne Nieberg, director in the Gartner HR practice. “Total rewards strategies must holistically support employees as people – not just as workers – which includes physical and mental well-being.”

Learning and Development

Skills needs continue to change rapidly, requiring the learning and development (L&D) function to take on an expanded role in supporting employees’ expectations for a more human-centric employee experience.

However, L&D offerings are not keeping up with the pace of change. Gartner research shows less than half (45 per cent) of employees agree the learning their organization provides is relevant to them.

To deliver on employee expectations, HR leaders must shift their L&D investments towards whole career growth; rather than focusing solely on current or future roles, thinking more broadly about growth that helps employees develop as people.

Increased digital learning solutions and changing learning preferences provide an opportunity for L&D functions to invest more heavily in HR technologies that enhance skills management solutions, learning experience platforms with AI-enabled self-service learning options, coaching applications, and virtual reality technologies.

“It’s about intentionally exploring where, how and when employees learn, as well as what impacts their ability to learn effectively,” said Nieberg.

Tags: GartnerHR Leaders

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Understanding these three trends will help leaders

Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and controllership leaders need to have a plan to harness the ways digital acceleration is disrupting legacy processes in their functions, according to Gartner, Inc.

“We’re seeing widespread acceptance among finance leaders that technology is driving finance processes towards an autonomous state of operation,” said Matthew Mowrey, senior director analyst, research in the Gartner Finance practice. “80 per cent of CFOs we surveyed in 2022 expected to spend more in AI in the coming two years, for example. Around two thirds of finance leaders we surveyed think their function will reach an autonomous state within six years”.

To make autonomous finance a reality, in broad terms organizations need to move beyond investment priorities and rethink three aspects of their operations. They must consider how functions can strengthen semantic models to improve data quality and transparency; how can technology expand the number of teams performing judgment-based activities versus manual activities; and how autonomous finance can improve business performance by minimizing the burden of data analysis and decision making.”

To help FP&A and controllership leaders plan out this future, Gartner experts have made three predictions for the impact of autonomous technologies through 2028.

By 2025, 70 per cent of organizations will use data-lineage-enabling technologies such as graph analytics, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain as critical components of their semantic modelling.

FP&A teams build reports and analysis using data from multiple – and often disconnected – systems. End users don’t always have clear visibility into these transformations and can end up not trusting or misusing finance data while making decisions.

“When poorly understood data is used, and FP&A can’t explain its treatment, decision makers often revert to instinct or gut feel,” said Mowrey. “Data lineage solutions promise to better explain data’s treatment and improve its transparency for decision makers.”

An increasingly regulated data environment alongside a growing volume of data and decision support demands is pushing organizations to pursue more ambitious solutions to this problem. FP&A teams have tended to perceive this as an IT initiative because it is linked to enterprise data and analytics architecture. However, FP&A teams have the right skills and capabilities to drive it within the organization.

By 2027, 90 per cent of descriptive (“what happened”) and diagnostic (“how or why it happened”) analytics in finance will be fully automated.

“There is a recent trend of analytics and business intelligence (A&BI) tool vendors acquiring data science and machine learning providers which indicates a desire to leverage these capabilities to automate descriptive and diagnostic insight generation,” said Mowrey. “Today’s A&BI platforms are shifting emphasis from the analyst as a consumer to the decision maker as a consumer.”

Although automated or augmented A&BI descriptive and diagnostic insights may minimize the analytical skills barrier, decision makers must still understand and act upon them appropriately. FP&A leaders must help establish continuous and evolving literacy programs for all employees — including senior executives — to remain relevant and competitive.

By 2028, 50 per cent of organizations will have replaced time-consuming bottom-up forecasting approaches with AI, resulting in autonomous operational, demand and other types of planning.

“AI-supported decision making is just emerging as a practical, off-the-shelf innovation, and is expected to mature within the next five years, said Mowrey. “Although it is available in many financial planning applications, it just isn’t used that widely, but we expect that to change significantly in the next few years.”

Organizations should pilot solutions in pockets where current decision management approaches leave decision makers wanting, so users will become more comfortable with AI in the decision-making process. Greater comfort with AI episodes will lead to more serial acceptance and an organization momentum to drive further adoption.

Tags: FP&AGartner

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Top trends reflect increased reliance on technology

Gartner, Inc. highlighted the top trends that will impact technology providers through 2025. These trends reflect three overarching themes: businesses increasing their reliance on technology, new opportunities emerging through technology and the impact of external macro forces.

“The march of digitalization continues even amidst disruption, and technology providers have a leading role to play,” said Rajesh Kandaswamy, Distinguished VP Analyst and Gartner Fellow. “In 2023, product leaders and technology executives must balance short-term planning with long-term strategy to stay ahead of the immediate shocks to the economy and the underlying ‘perm crisis’ forces shaping business.”

Here are the trends Gartner identified that will impact technology customers, buyers, products, ecosystems, business models and operating models worldwide for at least the next three years:

Democratization of Technology

The democratization of technology empowers non-IT workers to seek out, select, implement and custom fit their own technology. This trend offers opportunities to meet the needs of a new set of citizen developers and business technologists. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 55 per cent of all successful emerging technology solutions will be delivered to “non-traditional” buyers – for example, outside IT – within enterprises, enabling vendors to expand into new markets and forge new customer relationships.

Federated Enterprise Technology Buying

In a federated buying process, buying decisions are made by representatives across the business. Driven by the democratization of technology, federated enterprise technology buying is accelerating, with just 26 per cent of technology buyers in a recent Gartner survey reporting that purchases are funded solely by IT.

“Federated buying creates opportunities for product leaders as it enables a focus on more value-added services for business customers,” said Emil Berthelsen, VP Analyst at Gartner. “However, it also adds complexity, forcing changes to go-to-market models and demanding a greater focus on value scenarios and outcomes.”

Product-Led Growth

Product-led growth (PLG) is a go-to-market strategy in which users experience value through free product offers or interactive or automated demonstrations. Then, users are either converted directly to paid accounts or their advocacy and influence helps to drive purchases. By 2025, 95 per cent of software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers will employ a form of self-service PLG for new customer acquisition.

“PLG is hitting its stride in B2B after much acclaim in the B2C technology world,” said Kandaswamy. “It can reduce cost to acquire customers and shorter sales cycles relative to traditional buyer-oriented, top-down marketing and sales strategies.”

Co-Innovation Ecosystems

The co-innovation ecosystem approach is an emerging practice that enables the convergence of internal, external, collaborative, and co-creative ideas to create new value. Businesses are actively using technology to differentiate and succeed, so they are increasingly co-innovating with tech providers.

“With a co-innovation partner ecosystem, technology providers can meet pressing customer needs through use of shared skills, technology expertise, investment and incentives,” said Kandaswamy.

Digital Marketplaces

Technology buyers are embracing digital marketplaces to easily find, procure, implement, and integrate technology solutions. Non-tech buyers are also increasingly looking to marketplaces to meet their requirements for composable and easily consumable technology solutions.

“Technology and service providers are increasing their investment in marketplace channels as they seek growth opportunities and competitive advantage,” said Kandaswamy. “A digital marketplace accelerates time to market, extends outreach to target segments, expands partner ecosystems and speeds up the sales cycle.”

Intelligent Applications

Intelligent applications will create value and disrupt markets by learning, adapting, and generating new ideas and outcomes. For example, generative artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology quickly gaining traction for commercial use within intelligent applications. Generative AI can produce novel media content (including text, image, video, and audio), synthetic data and models of physical objects.

“Product leaders should expect generative AI features that empower workforces with augmented and creative capabilities to be a new competitive front in intelligent applications,” said Kandaswamy.

Metaverse Technologies for Marketing and Customer Experience (CX)

Metaverse technologies are rapidly gaining traction in marketing for creating unique experiences, impactful interactions, and novel engagement. By 2027, over 40 per cent of large organizations worldwide will be using a combination of Web3, spatial computing and digital twins in metaverse-based projects aimed at increasing revenue.

“B2B marketers have an opportunity to apply metaverse technologies and the immersive experiences they provide to expand customer reach and engagement and improve CX,” said Kandaswamy. “Early adopters are using metaverse technologies to host events in virtual spaces, conduct internal and external sales meetings, showcase products and more.”

Sustainable Business

“Sustainable business has transformed into a ‘must have’ rather than a ‘nice to have,’” said Kandaswamy. “In an increasingly technology-driven world, sustainable business is underpinned by sustainable technology.”

Technology providers must improve the sustainability of their products that enable sustainable business outcomes. A recent Gartner survey found that 42 per cent of leaders are currently leveraging sustainability activities to drive innovation, differentiation, and enterprise growth through sustainable products. Gartner predicts that by 2025, tech providers that can quantify their offering’s positive contribution to customers’ sustainability objectives will increase their win rate by 20 per cent.

Techno-nationalism

A trend away from globalization and into mercantilism is causing global markets to become increasingly local, impacting global technology ecosystems. Policy decisions are driving countries to implement of digital sovereignty regulations, causing a divergence of technology stacks. In response to this trend, product leaders must balance meeting specific country-level localization needs and product profitability.

Tags: GartnerTechnologytrends

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Gartner defines zero trust as a security paradigm

Zero trust is top of mind for most organizations as a critical strategy to reduce risk, but few organizations have completed zero-trust implementations. Gartner, Inc. predicts that by 2026, 10 per cent of large enterprises will have a mature and measurable zero-trust program in place, up from less than 1 per cent today.

Gartner defines zero trust as a security paradigm that explicitly identifies users and devices and grants them just the right amount of access so the business can operate with minimal friction while risks are reduced.

“Many organizations established their infrastructure with implicit rather than explicit trust models to ease access and operations for workers and workloads. Attackers abuse this implicit trust in infrastructure to establish malware and then move laterally to achieve their objectives,” said John Watts, VP Analyst at Gartner. “Zero trust is a shift in thinking to address these threats by requiring continuously assessed, explicitly calculated and adaptive trust between users, devices, and resources.”

To help organizations complete the scope of their zero-trust implementations, it is critical that chief information security officers (CISOs) and risk management leaders start by developing an effective zero-trust strategy which balances the need for security with the need to run the business.

“It means starting with an organization’s strategy and defining a scope for zero-trust programs,” said Watts. “Once the strategy is defined, CISOs and risk management leaders must start with identity – it is foundational to zero trust. They also need to improve not only technology, but the people and processes to build and manage those identities.

“However, CISOs and risk management leaders should not assume that zero trust will eliminate cyberthreats. Rather, zero trust reduces risk and limits impacts of an attack.”

Gartner analysts predict that through 2026, more than half of cyberattacks will be aimed at areas that zero- trust controls don’t cover and cannot mitigate.

“The enterprise attack surface is expanding faster, and attackers will quickly consider pivoting and targeting assets and vulnerabilities outside of the scope of zero-trust architectures (ZTAs),” said Jeremy D’Hoinne, VP Analyst at Gartner.” This can take the form of scanning and exploiting of public-facing APIs or targeting employees through social engineering, bullying, or exploiting flaws due to employees creating their own “bypass” to avoid stringent zero-trust policies.”

Gartner recommends that organizations implement zero trust to improve risk mitigation for the most critical assets first, as this is where the greatest return on risk mitigation will occur. However, zero trust does not solve all security needs. CISOs and risk management leaders must also run a continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) program to better inventory and optimize their exposure to threats beyond the scope of ZTA.

Tags: GartnerZero trust

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We have seen more diversified AI products and applications

The physical security industry has been changing quickly in recent years. Developments and applications of cutting-edge technologies in this ever-evolving industry such as AI, machine perception, and IoT, are breaking boundaries all the time. We have seen security systems become deeply integrated and more comprehensive, expanding with capabilities that are now shouldering more intelligent tasks to improve efficiency in security as well as other operational functions. And all this is happening across many different industries and types of organizations.

AI applications are diversified, requiring more open ecosystems

We have seen more diversified AI products and applications that help solve intricate problems daily and meet customers’ fragmented needs. AI’s acoustic and textual capabilities are also being explored by the industry, beginning with visual AI. For example, AI-powered audio anomaly detection is being used to detect equipment failures in industrial environments for heightened levels of worker safety. Furthermore, AI technology itself is evolving to the stage of self-learning with training and optimizing itself much faster than supervised learning.

All of these require more ecosystems with open technologies, open resources, and even open protocols, for collaborations in the industry. Open technologies, such as container technology and virtualization technology, have significant potential for our industry, which are making hardware products more open.

AIoT continues to bridge physical and digital worlds

Taking artificial intelligence further, we believe the combination of AI and IoT (AIoT) will continue to be a major trend for 2023, reshaping the scope of the security industry. More AIoT solutions have been introduced that will not only provide intelligent protections but also help advance the efficiency of operations in a multitude of industries and organizations.

AIoT will create an important path for boosting digital transformation across several industries. This can be done by creating a digital twin, bridging the physical and digital worlds. For example, in industrial park management, virtual sites can be created by applying 3D modelling, using VR and AR technologies to represent and reflect the real ones, empowering them with the dynamic insight to act quickly to make the whole site run smoothly.

Visual experiences improve with 24/7 imaging technologies

Capturing security imaging with sharp clarity and colour around the clock is a core demand for users of video security, but dim light at night has always been the biggest challenge to achieving this.

Now, with the development of several new imaging technologies, we are seeing these challenges removed. Bi-spectrum image fusion technology that employs two sensors is being used to combine IR and visible-light imaging to reproduce vivid colours in dim lighting conditions. Artificial Intelligence-based image signal processing (AI-ISP) technology leverages deep-learning algorithms to radically improve visual noise reduction for night-time image optimization.

Perception capabilities extend to a wider range

For security applications, perception capabilities are going far beyond visible light, extending out along the electromagnetic spectrum to expand capabilities of perceiving the physical world in new ways. For instance, hyperspectral imaging technology has been used in analysing optical irradiance characteristics and eutrophication to record water quality trends in rivers and lakes. In the millimetre-wave band, radar products are assisting the measurement of vehicle speeds and distances. The X-ray band has been applied widely in security inspections, now extending its applications in industrial equipment flaw detection.

And these multi-dimensional perception capabilities also converge to create innovative solutions that can accomplish a multitude of new operations, such as radar assisted video systems for perimeter protection, integration solutions of video and sonar arrays for traffic management, and alarm systems with a wide range of detectors for smart home applications.

More focus on usability of devices and systems

Usability of devices and systems impacts the daily life of security professionals, which has generated more focus now considering workforce shortages and labour cost increases across our industry. This trend is requiring manufacturers to optimize their products with an easier configuration process, make better use of interactive experiences that will reduce installation time, and lower the costs of equipment maintenance and skill building.

For example, we see more installers preferring to use mobile applications over PCs in device installation and maintenance where that interactive and simplified process comes across best.

The industry moves to greener, lower-carbon operations for sustainability

Trends in green manufacturing and low-carbon initiatives in the security industry are very inspiring. Security manufacturers are rolling out products featuring longer life expectancies, recyclable materials and packaging, and renewable energy usage. Each of these initiatives reduces waste and emissions. For example, the solar-powered camera demand continues to increase due to its well-established effectiveness at using the sun’s limitless clean energy.

And in daily manufacturing and operations, more companies in the industry have set medium-to-long-term goals for environmental management, spanning from lower carbon production, efficient energy use, and waste and chemical management to greener office environments.

Zero Trust continues to become the go-to cybersecurity strategy

Cybersecurity remains a very important and challenging issue for all parties in our industry, as customers and regulators get more concerned about the security of their data and privacy and have set higher standards and demands on this issue. We see the value in highlighting the idea of Zero Trust for everyone to consider when making cybersecurity strategies.

Zero Trust is a strategic initiative that was developed to prevent data breaches by eliminating the concept of trust from an organization’s network architecture. In cybersecurity, trust becomes a vulnerability. Zero Trust is an approach to cybersecurity that dictates our connected systems must “never trust; always verify.”

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