Four technology areas to undergo major transformations in 2020
"What does this year lay ahead of us?" is a question that, while not spoken, each manager searches solutions for. We can have a realistic picture of the near future if we draw upon the estimates produced by analysis companies relying on current and historical data. Thus, from the many forecasts published early in the year, we selected four important technology areas for all companies, regardless their scope of business, industry or size. Our selection criteria were the impact of technology changes at the business level, their scale, and, last but not least, their relevance in terms of the ECKO competences in these areas.
Security
By far the "hottest" and the most popular topic, and a genuine problem for all companies. This is due, on one hand, to the effective regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), or Law no. 362/2018 on the provision of a common level of security for computer networks and systems, which came into force one year ago. On the other hand, the amount of threats and their complexity are growing constantly – last year, we got to see one ransomware attack every 14 seconds. Last, but not least, this is also due to the dire shortage of staff specialized in cyber security – according to estimates, a shortage of 3.5 million specialists is reported at global level. In Romania, things are as critical – the study produced at the end of last year by Codecool and Brainspotting points to a local annual shortage of IT professionals of 15.400 people.
This explains why 76% of organizations envisage increasing their IT security budgets this year. But the bulk of this additional money will not be invested in either protection software or hardware, but in services to make up for the lack of relevant in-house skills. If you want to regain control over the security solutions you use, and have an accurate assessment of the protection they provide you with, the first step you need to take is to run a CyberSecurity Software Asset Management audit.
Storage
Another area in which companies will continue to invest more, under the pressure of the data volumes they operate with. Pressure is also exerted by a phenomenon that was first seen two years ago, and is expected to be fully visible in 2020 – organizations start moving some of their Cloud-stored data back to on-premises solutions. The causes for this are prevailingly represented by the difficult cost management in the Public Cloud, the problems encountered in uploading and downloading large amounts of data, and the security challenges that start to multiply. Bringing storage back in-house – under a hybrid model though, because some data will still remain in the Public Cloud – will bring along the increasingly pressing problem of a consistent management of the resources available. This will trigger adoption of Software-Defined Storage solutions.
Another market niche expected to see significant developments in 2020 is that of hyper-converged solutions, which are ideal for companies that use Hybrid Cloud or multi-Cloud environments, and operate several business units and subsidiaries with a wide territorial spreading. As for the technologies, 2020 will bring a strong increase in the sales of All Flash Array (AFA) storage equipment intended to make up for the decline in the Hybrid Flash Array (HFA) and HDD-Only niches, according to IDC. The NVMe solutions are also expected to further develop in order to help optimally build on the SDD performance. The introduction of NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics) technology allows organizations to put in place high-performance storage infrastructures with latencies that rival clasical setups. In order to get better acquainted with the NVMe technology and the benefits it provides, you cand read this article.
Last but not least, specialists have high expectations from storage equipment built on the RAM Based SSD technology that promises to be extremely fast, and to support a virtually unlimited number of data to be written/deleted. Such solutions, the price of which remains high compared to Flash SSDs, have already been widely used in financial and banking, telecommunications, and e-commerce.
Infrastructure
An area strongly impacted by the digital transformation the business models undergo and the widespread adoption of mobility and Cloud solutions. Here too, hyper-convergence is a piece of technology that comprehensively addresses the challenges faced by organizations in connection with: rendering the storage and processing infrastructure more scalable; improving the storage and use of resources in on-premises and Cloud infrastructures; streamlining integration and management of SaaS (Software as a Service); and reducing the management effort and operational costs. You can read here about how the VersaStack solution, developed by Cisco and IBM can be put to use. The market of hyper-converged infrastructure solutions is on the plus side, with an annual growth rate of about 20%.
Another niche expected to see accelerated developments – with a CAGR of 58% – will be that of SD-WAN solutions. Technology has become sufficiently mature, the number of deployments is growing fast, and the operation scenarios are diversifying rapidly.
Cloud
Remains ubiquitous, with a direct impact on the entire portfolio of technologies used by organization. As expected, the take-up of Cloud will continue to expand this year, but we will also witness some interesting "secondary phenomena". These are, for instance, the increased take-up of container technologies, with the use of Kubernetes in the enterprise area being fostered by Red Hat OpenShift. Specialists consider that "OpenShift is the enterprise Kubernetes", a state of affairs that was decisively determined also by the acquisition of RedHat by IBM, that completed last year in a USD 34 billion deal. Or the new security standards imposed to the Public Cloud service providers, and the development of Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions, which takes leaps of close to 50% year-on-year.
Another niche due to follow its previously ascending trend (+41.8% year-on-year) is that of Disaster Recovery as-a-Service (DRaaS) solutions, where Microsoft fights for the leader seat with AWS. Learn here which are the reasons why Azure is the provider of choice when it comes to Disaster Recovery strategies.
Behold, 2020 announces to bring along important technology shifts and challenges, which we can help you successfully overcome, without exhausting your budgets, or overloading your in-house team. We wish you every success!