Digital transformation trends for 2019
Once again, Forbes has collated its top digital transformation trends for the coming year. At Pipol, we’ve experienced some of these trends developing and are ready to put our stamp on the ones having the biggest impact on our customers. Find out what they are here.
Many tech and business publications put out their yearly predictions around the adoption of emerging technologies. Over the past few years, a few usual suspects, such as blockchain and virtual reality (VR), kept appearing on these lists without making much of a mark on the real world. Forbes includes some of these on their list of digital transformation trends for 2019 – with the caveat that exploration of these technologies is continuing, and their promise grows even as the technologies begin to take new shape.
In any case, technology in itself does not equate to digital transformation. Forbes contends that the customer, culture and employees along with business continuity must be at the heart of every technology investment. This is also our philosophy at Pipol, and these are the most important Forbes trends as we see it.
CEOs take the reigns
Arguably the most important trend on the list is CEOs taking the reins. Forbes reports that countless studies have shown an overwhelming desire from employees to see digital transformation start at the top, but the task is still being delegated to IT, Marketing or HR departments.
The fact is that digital transformation is here to stay, and CEOs simply must learn to trust data and hire people with the skills and agility to execute the digital transformation – while taking responsibility for driving and managing the change.
At Pipol, we’re seeing this trend roll out in our own business as we are working directly with more and more CEOs on our implementation projects. We’ve experienced that projects with CEO involvement always run more smoothly and efficiently than projects without.
Connected clouds
Forbes’ research shows that the growing pains of cloud adoption are continuing, and companies are realizing that going all public cloud, private cloud or data centre isn’t the best option. Sometimes the best solution is a mix of all three. That’s why connected clouds are continuing to develop to meet companies’ changing needs – whether they want to cloud-source storage, networking, security or app deployment.
We’ve seen the same trend at Pipol. Many of our managed hosting customers are running a mix of public, private and hybrid environments with Microsoft Azure, and we see Microsoft’s increased commitment to connecting clouds. Especially for international organisations, this is an extremely effective solution.
Data analytics
At the centre of all the latest tech trends is data – from analytics to Machine Learning to AI. Data is key to companies being able to make good decisions about products, services, employees, strategy and more – and we won’t see a slowdown anytime soon. Forbes research shows that we have created 90% of the world’s data in the past year and we are only using 1% of the data effectively.
Microsoft, Tableau and Qlik are showing market leadership with its BI and analytics platforms. We are seeing our customers increasingly focus on their BI strategies and request our BI assessment service. Although there is still a way to go before BI is fully integrated into companies’ strategies, we are confident the trend is moving in the right direction.
GDPR forces hands
As of August 2018, one-third of companies were still not compliant with GDPR. This means that informed customers will start to see which companies truly care about protecting their data, and which companies don’t.
Forbes believes that GDPR is the start of a more global trend that will hold companies accountable for how they treat privacy and personal data – and this movement will serve as a warning to companies to figure out how to build relationships without misusing personal data.
At Pipol, we have also seen this trend unfold. As most of our customers are international, they have been forced to comply with GDPR, and we have been assisting them with our GDPR services. And even our customers who have no activities in Europe are beginning to plan for such regulations in the regions where they operate.
Consumption-based IT services
Forbes asked CIOs and IT executives about their IT budgets and trends in their consumption of cloud and found they are interested in creating efficiency, having more flexibility with their workloads and having the ability to scale up and down quickly based on business requirements. In other words, they want anything and everything as-a-Service.
If you’d like to discuss your company’s own tech trends and challenges, get in touch with us. We can help you adopt the technologies you need for a successful 2019. And if you would like to read more on Digital Distruption, you can do so right here.
