Predictions for the Future of Intelligence.
Results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Future of Intelligence survey reveal a significant positive correlation between enterprise intelligence and better business outcomes.
By investing in enterprise intelligence, organizations can achieve first-order benefits – improved decision-making, higher knowledge, and more efficiency – which in turn result in improved financial outcomes, employee outcomes, customer outcomes, and offering outcomes.
Enterprise intelligence is a key driver for growth for organizations of all sizes, across all industries and geographies. IDC’s research shows that 60 per cent of organizations that scored highest in its enterprise intelligence index scale saw major improvements in decision making compared to 1 per cent of organizations with poor enterprise intelligence. Also, 47 per cent of organizations that scored well in enterprise intelligence increased customer acquisition by 10 per cent or more, compared with 10 per cent of those with poor enterprise intelligence.
“IDC FutureScape predictions highlight key trends that will occur over the next five years,” said Chandana Gopal, research director, Future of Intelligence. “These predictions will help guide business leaders as they strive to improve enterprise intelligence to become leaders in their markets and outpace their peers.”
IDC’s Future of Intelligence top 10 predictions impact the four pillars of enterprise intelligence:
- The ability to synthesize information
- The capacity to learn from the information
- The ability to apply those insights at scale
- A data-driven culture built on a foundation of technology that enables all the above
- Prediction 1: By 2025, 10 per cent of F500 companies will incorporate scientific methods and systematic experimentation at scale, resulting in a 50 per cent increase in product development and business planning projects — outpacing peers.
- Prediction 2: By 2023, 70 per cent of F1000 enterprises will be involved in intercompany intelligence sharing based on common standards, values, and goals, strengthening mutualism in ecosystem relationships by 50 per cent.
- Prediction 3: 40 per cent of the G2000 will double the use of intelligent automation in knowledge retention, dissemination, and information synthesis by 2026, filling the skills vacuum in the data to insights life cycle.
- Prediction 4: By 2026, 30 per cent of organizations will use forms of behavioral economics and AI/ML-driven insights to nudge employees’ actions, leading to a 60 per cent increase in desired outcomes.
- Prediction 5: A lack of meritocracy-based data culture will erode trust in management, reducing employee satisfaction and increasing turnover in two-thirds of mid-size to large enterprises by 2024, exacerbating skills gaps.
- Prediction 6: By 2023, 60 per cent of enterprise intelligence initiatives will be business specific, purpose built for business, shortening the data to decisions time frame by 30 per cent, driving higher agility and resiliency.
- Prediction 7: By 2024, 30 per cent of the G2000 will leverage post-pandemic automation initiatives, with the role of the middle manager evolving to that of a visionary, curator, and connector, driving collective intelligence.
Prediction 8: By 2025, to reduce reputational risks, 40 per cent of G2000 companies will be forced to redesign their approaches to algorithmic decision making, providing better human oversight and explainability.
Prediction 9: By 2026, advances in computing will enable 10 per cent of previously unsurmountable problems faced by F100 organizations to be solved by super-exponential advances in complex analytics.
Prediction 10: By 2025, three-fourths of large enterprises will face blind spots due to a lack of intelligent knowledge networks and the harmonization they provide between localized and centralized intelligence.
Top 10 Predictions for the Future of Digital Infrastructure
IDC also predicts the Future of Digital Infrastructure point to a digital infrastructure strategy that addresses resiliency and trust; data-driven operational complexity; and business outcomes-driven sourcing and autonomous operations. Organizations must invest in and foster a digital-first culture that leverages trusted industry ecosystems, generates profitable revenue growth, provides empathetic customer experiences, and demonstrates an ability to adapt operating models to complex customer requirements.
In the coming years, organizations will deploy, operate, and scale digital infrastructure to ensure consistent security, performance, and compliance across all resources, regardless of where and how they are deployed. These organizations will invest in more intelligent, autonomous operations and take advantage of flexible consumption and strategic vendor partnerships to promote agility and ensure that the business, and its digital infrastructure, can continue to perform in the face of a wide range of unexpected scenarios – social, geopolitical, economic, climate, or business related.
“Digital infrastructure spans compute, storage, network, and infrastructure software, including virtualization and containers, and the automation, AI/ML analytics, and security software and cloud services needed to maintain and optimize both legacy and modern applications and data,” explained Mary Johnston Turner, research vice president, Future of Digital Infrastructure. “IDC’s 2022 predictions for the future of digital infrastructure identify critical shifts in governance, operations, architecture, and sourcing that need to be factored into enterprise digital transformation strategies going forward.”
The top 10 predictions from the Worldwide Future of Digital Infrastructure 2022 report are:
- Prediction 1: By 2023, G2000 leaders will prioritize business objectives over infrastructure choice, deploying 50 per cent of new strategic workloads using vendor-specific APIs that add value but reduce workload portability.
- Prediction 2: In 2023, over 80 per cent of the G2000 will cite business resiliency to drive verifiable infrastructure supply chain integrity as a mandatory and non-negotiable vendor evaluation criterion.
- Prediction 3: By 2023, most C-suite leaders will implement business critical KPIs tied to data availability, recovery, and stewardship as rising levels of cyber-attacks expose the scale of data at risk.
- Prediction 4: By 2024, 75 per cent of G2000 digital infrastructure RFPs will require vendors to prove progress on ESG/Sustainability initiatives with data, as CIOs rely on infrastructure vendors to help meet ESG goals.
- Prediction 5: By 2024, due to an explosion of edge data, 65 per cent of the G2000 will embed edge-first data stewardship, security, and network practices into data protection plans to integrate edge data into relevant processes.
- Prediction 6: By 2025, a 6x explosion in high dependency workloads leads to 65 per cent of G2000 firms using consistent architectural governance frameworks to ensure compliance reporting and audit of their infrastructure.
- Prediction 7: By 2025, 60 per cent of enterprises will fund LOB and IT projects through OPEX budgets, matching how vendors provide their services with a focus on outcomes that are determined by SLAs and KPIs.
- Prediction 8: By 2025, 70 per cent of companies will invest in alternative computing technologies to drive business differentiation by compressing time to value of insights from complex data sets.
- Prediction 9: By 2026, 90 per cent of G2000 CIOs will use AIOps solutions to drive automated remediation and workload placement decisions that include cost and performance metrics, improving resiliency and agility.
- Prediction 10: By 2026, mid-market companies will shift 65 per cent of infrastructure spending from traditional channels towards more app-centric trusted advisors.
