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2024 will be another crucial year for tech leaders – through the continuing economic uncertainties, they will have to embrace transformative technologies and keep an eye on market disruptors such as infrastructure providers and AI startups. Ecosystm analysts outline the key considerations for leaders shaping their organisations’ tech landscape in 2024.​

Navigating Market Dynamics

Continuing Economic Uncertainties​. Organisations will focus on ongoing projects and consider expanding initiatives in the latter part of the year.​

Popularity of Generative AI​. This will be the time to go beyond the novelty factor and assess practical business outcomes, allied costs, and change management.​

Infrastructure Market Disruption​. Keeping an eye out for advancements and disruptions in the market (likely to originate from the semiconductor sector)​ will define vendor conversations.

Need for New Tech Skills​. Generative AI will influence multiple tech roles, including AIOps and IT Architecture. Retaining talent will depend on upskilling and reskilling. ​

Increased Focus on Governance​. Tech vendors are guide tech leaders on how to implement safeguards for data usage, sharing, and cybersecurity.​

5 Key Considerations for Tech Leaders​

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Click here to download ‘Anticipating ​ Tech Advances and Disruptions​: Strategic Guidance for Technology Leaders’ as a PDF.

#1 Accelerate and Adapt: Streamline IT with a DevOps Culture 

Over the next 12-18 months, advancements in AI, machine learning, automation, and cloud-native technologies will be vital in leveraging scalability and efficiency. Modernisation is imperative to boost responsiveness, efficiency, and competitiveness in today’s dynamic business landscape.​

The continued pace of disruption demands that organisations modernise their applications portfolios with agility and purpose. Legacy systems constrained by technical debt drag down velocity, impairing the ability to deliver new innovative offerings and experiences customers have grown to expect. ​

Prioritising modernisation initiatives that align with key value drivers is critical. Technology leaders should empower development teams to move beyond outdated constraints and swiftly deploy enhanced applications, microservices, and platforms. ​

#2 Empowering Tomorrow: Spring Clean Your Tech Legacy for New Leaders

Modernising legacy systems is a strategic and inter-generational shift that goes beyond simple technical upgrades. It requires transformation through the process of decomposing and replatforming systems – developed by previous generations – into contemporary services and signifies a fundamental realignment of your business with the evolving digital landscape of the 21st century.​

The essence of this modernisation effort is multifaceted. It not only facilitates the integration of advanced technologies but also significantly enhances business agility and drives innovation. It is an approach that prepares your organisation for impending skill gaps, particularly as the older workforce begins to retire over the next decade. Additionally, it provides a valuable opportunity to thoroughly document, reevaluate, and improve business processes. This ensures that operations are not only efficient but also aligned with current market demands, contemporary regulatory standards, and the changing expectations of customers.​

#3 Employee Retention: Consider the Strategic Role of Skills Acquisition

The agile, resilient organisation needs to be able to respond at pace to any threat or opportunity it faces. Some of this ability to respond will be related to technology platforms and architectures, but it will be the skills of employees that will dictate the pace of reform. While employee attrition rates will continue to decline in 2024 – but it will be driven by skills acquisition, not location of work.  ​

Organisations who offer ongoing staff training – recognising that their business needs new skills to become a 21st century organisation – are the ones who will see increasing rates of employee retention and happier employees. They will also be the ones who offer better customer experiences, driven by motivated employees who are committed to their personal success, knowing that the organisation values their performance and achievements. ​

​#4 Next-Gen IT Operations: Explore Gen AI for Incident Avoidance and Predictive Analysis

The integration of Generative AI in IT Operations signifies a transformative shift from the automation of basic tasks, to advanced functions like incident avoidance and predictive analysis. Initially automating routine tasks, Generative AI has evolved to proactively avoiding incidents by analysing historical data and current metrics. This shift from proactive to reactive management will be crucial for maintaining uninterrupted business operations and enhancing application reliability. ​

Predictive analysis provides insight into system performance and user interaction patterns, empowering IT teams to optimise applications pre-emptively, enhancing efficiency and user experience. This also helps organisations meet sustainability goals through accurate capacity planning and resource allocation, also ensuring effective scaling of business applications to meet demands. ​

​#5 Expanding Possibilities: Incorporate AI Startups into Your Portfolio

While many of the AI startups have been around for over five years, this will be the year they come into your consciousness and emerge as legitimate solutions providers to your organisation. And it comes at a difficult time for you! ​

Most tech leaders are looking to reduce technical debt – looking to consolidate their suppliers and simplify their tech architecture. Considering AI startups will mean a shift back to more rather than fewer tech suppliers; a different sourcing strategy; more focus on integration and ongoing management of the solutions; and a more complex tech architecture. ​

To meet business requirements will mean that business cases will need to be watertight – often the value will need to be delivered before a contract has been signed. ​

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• ADVANCE.AI provides digital transformation, fraud prevention, and process automation solutions for enterprise clients. The company offers services in security and compliance, digital identity verification, and biometric solutions. They partner with over 1,000 enterprise clients across Southeast Asia and India across sectors, such as Banking, Fintech, Retail, and eCommerce. 
• Megvii is a technology company based in China that specialises in AI, particularly deep learning. The company offers full-stack solutions integrating algorithms, software, hardware, and AI-empowered IoT devices. Products include facial recognition software, image recognition, and deep learning technology for applications such as consumer IoT, city IoT, and supply chain IoT. 
• I’mCloud is based in South Korea and specialises in AI, big data, and cloud storage solutions. The company has become a significant player in the AI and big data industry in South Korea. They offer high-quality AI-powered chatbots, including for call centres and interactive educational services. 
• H2O.ai provides an AI platform, the H2O AI Cloud, to help businesses, government entities, non-profits, and academic institutions create, deploy, monitor, and share data models or AI applications for various use cases. The platform offers automated machine learning capabilities powered by H2O-3, H2O Hydrogen Torch, and Driverless AI, and is designed to help organisations work more efficiently on their AI projects. 
• Frame AI provides an AI-powered customer intelligence platform. The software analyses human interactions and uses AI to understand the driving factors of business outcomes within customer service. It aims to assist executives in making real-time decisions about the customer experience by combining data about customer interactions across various platforms, such as helpdesks, contact centres, and CRM transcripts. 
• Uizard offers a rapid, AI-powered UI design tool for designing wireframes, mockups, and prototypes in minutes. The company’s mission is to democratise design and empower non-designers to build digital, interactive products. Uizard’s AI features allow users to generate UI designs from text prompts, convert hand-drawn sketches into wireframes, and transform screenshots into editable designs. 
• Moveworks provides an AI platform that is designed to automate employee support. The platform helps employees to automate tasks, find information, query data, receive notifications, and create content across multiple business applications. 
• Tome develops a storytelling tool designed to reduce the time required for creating slides. The company’s online platform creates or emphasises points with narration or adds interactive embeds with live data or content from anywhere on the web, 3D renderings, and prototypes. 
• Jasper is an AI writing tool designed to assist in generating marketing copy, such as blog posts, product descriptions, company bios, ad copy, and social media captions. It offers features such as text and image AI generation, integration with Grammarly and other Chrome extensions, revision history, auto-save, document sharing, multi-user login, and a plagiarism checker. 
• Eightfold AI provides an AI-powered Talent Intelligence Platform to help organisations recruit, retain, and grow a diverse global workforce. The platform uses AI to match the right people to the right projects, based on their skills, potential, and learning ability, enabling organisations to make informed talent decisions. They also offer solutions for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), skills intelligence, and governance, among others. 
• Arthur provides a centralised platform for model monitoring. The company’s platform is model and platform agnostic, and monitors machine learning models to ensure they deliver accurate, transparent, and fair results. They also offer services for explainability and bias mitigation. 
• DNSFilter is a cloud-based, AI-driven content filtering and threat protection service, that can be deployed and configured within minutes, requiring no software installation. 
• Spot AI specialises in building a modern AI Camera System to create safer workplaces and smarter operations for every organisation. The company’s AI Camera System combines cloud and edge computing to make video footage actionable, allowing customers to instantly surface and resolve problems. They offer intelligent video recorders, IP cameras, cloud dashboards, and advanced AI alerts to proactively deliver insights without the need to manually review video footage. 
• People.ai is an AI-powered revenue intelligence platform that helps customers win more revenue by providing sales, RevOps, marketing, enablement, and customer success teams with valuable insights. The company’s platform is designed to speed up complex enterprise sales cycles by engaging the right people in the right accounts, ultimately helping teams to sell more and faster with the same headcount.  

These examples highlight a few startups worth considering, but the landscape is rich with innovative options for organisations to explore. Similar to other emerging tech sectors, the AI startup market will undergo consolidation over time, and incumbent providers will continue to improve and innovate their own AI capabilities. Till then, these startups will continue to influence enterprise technology adoption and challenge established providers in the market.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Juniper Networks for USD 40 per share, totaling an equity value of about USD 14 Billion. This strategic move is aimed to enhance HPE’s portfolio by focusing on higher-growth solutions and reinforcing their high-margin networking business. HPE expects to double their networking business, positioning the combined entity as a leader in networking solutions. With the growing demand for secure, unified technology driven by AI and hybrid cloud trends, HPE aims to offer comprehensive, disruptive solutions that connect, protect, and analyse data from edge to cloud.

This would also be the organisation’s largest deal since becoming an independent company in 2015. The acquisition is expected to be completed by late 2024 or early 2025.

Ecosystm analysts Darian Bird and Richard Wilkins provide their insights on the HPE acquisition and its implications for the tech market.

Converging Networking and Security

One of the big drawcards for HPE is Juniper’s Mist AI. The networking vendors have been racing to catch up – both in capabilities and in marketing. The acquisition though will give HPE a leadership position in network visibility and manageability. With GreenLake and soon Mist AI, HPE will have a solid AIOps story across the entire infrastructure.

HPE has been working steadily towards becoming a player in the converged networking-security space. They integrated Silver Peak well to make a name for themselves in SD-WAN and last year acquiring Axis Security gave them the Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), Secure Web Gateway (SWG), and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) modules in the Secure Service Edge (SSE) stack. Bringing all of this to the market with Juniper’s networking prowess positions HPE as a formidable player, especially as the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) market gains momentum.

As the market shifts towards converged SASE, there will only be more interest in the SD-WAN and SSE vendors. In just over one year, Cato Networks and Netskope have raised funds, Check Point acquired Perimeter 81, and Versa Networks has made noises about an IPO. The networking and security players are all figuring out how they can deliver a single-vendor SASE.

Although HPE’s strategic initiatives signal a robust market position, potential challenges arise from the overlap between Aruba and Juniper. However, the distinct focus on the edge and data center, respectively, may help alleviate these concerns. The acquisition also marks HPE’s foray into the telecom space, leveraging its earlier acquisition of Athonet and establishing a significant presence among service providers. This expansion enhances HPE’s overall market influence, posing a challenge to the long-standing dominance of Cisco.

The strategic acquisition of Juniper Networks by HPE can make a transformative leap in AIOps and Software-Defined Networking (SDN). There is a potential for this to establish a new benchmark in IT management.

AI in IT Operations Transformation

The integration of Mist’s AI-driven wireless solutions and HPE’s SDN is a paradigm shift in IT operations management and will help organisations transition from a reactive to a predictive and proactive model. Mist’s predictive analytics, coupled with HPE’s SDN capabilities, empower networks to dynamically adjust to user demands and environmental changes, ensuring optimal performance and user experience. Marvis, Mist’s Virtual Network Assistant (VNA), adds conversational troubleshooting capabilities, enhancing HPE’s network solutions. The integration envisions an IT ecosystem where Juniper’s AI augments HPE’s InfoSight, providing deeper insights into network behaviour, preemptive security measures, and more autonomous IT operations.

Transforming Cloud and Edge Computing

The incorporation of Juniper’s AI into HPE’s cloud and edge computing solutions promises a significant improvement in data processing and management. AI-driven load balancing and resource allocation mechanisms will significantly enhance multi-cloud environment efficiency, ensuring robust and seamless cloud services, particularly vital in IoT applications where real-time data processing is critical. This integration not only optimises cloud operations but also has the potential to align with HPE’s commitment to sustainability, showcasing how AI advancements can contribute to energy conservation.

In summary, HPE’s acquisition of Juniper Networks, and specifically the integration of the Mist AI platform, is a pivotal step towards an AI-driven, efficient, and predictive IT infrastructure. This can redefine the standards in AIOps and SDN, creating a future where IT systems are not only reactive but also intuitively adaptive to the evolving demands of the digital landscape.

At Elevandi Insights in November last year, Ecosystm CEO Ullrich Loeffler had the pleasure of moderating a roundtable hosted by HSBC that brought together regulators, banks, investors, incubators, FinTechs, and digital economy players to discuss the strategies that can grow and strengthen Singapore’s FinTech ecosystem.

We are pleased to make available to you a Summary Report outlining the key findings; and an action plan that participants felt will accomplish the objective of doubling the number of FinTech startups in the next three years.

This report includes:
• The success factors of an Innovation Ecosystem
• Opportunities for enhancement
• Maximising support from financial institutions
• An action plan for banks to shape FinTech success stories

Our thanks to the roundtable participants for contributing to this discussion, and to HSBC for driving this crucial industry initiative.

Download Summary Report – The Role of the Innovation Ecosystem: Putting Singapore at the Centre of the Global Digital Economy

COP27 laid the groundwork for this year’s conference. The summit focused on mitigation, adaptation, finance, and collaboration. The key outcomes of COP27 included the creation of the loss and damage fund, new pledges to the Adaptation Fund, and advancements in the Santiago Network focused on technical support for climate-affected regions. The conference also saw progress on the Global Stocktake and formal recognition of new issues such as water, food security, and forests within climate deliberations.

However, there was widespread criticism for failing to live up to the urgency of impending climate crisis. Despite being called the “implementation COP”, nothing decisive was done to ensure global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees celsius.

COP28: Milestones

Launching the first-ever Global Stocktake. The Global Stocktake was the spotlight of this year’s event and covered various climate issues, including energy, transport, and nature. Despite strong opposition from Oil & Gas interests, negotiators secured an agreement indicating the start of the end of the fossil fuel era – a much-needed conclusion to the hottest year in history. The next global assessment of Paris Agreement targets is expected to take place at COP33 in 2028.

Supporting sustainable agriculture. A landmark declaration on sustainable agriculture was adopted to address climate-related threats to global food systems. Signed by 160 countries, the declaration pledged a collective commitment by participating nations to expedite the integration of agriculture and food systems into national climate actions by 2025. For the first time ever, the summit also featured an entire day devoted to food and agriculture and saw a food systems roadmap laid out by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Operationalising the “Loss and Damage” fund. The conference saw the approval of the “loss and damage fund” that was first tabled at COP27 last year. The fund has been a long-requested support for developing nations facing the impact of climate change.

Tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency by 2030. 118 countries signed a renewable energy pledge to triple the world’s green energy capacity to 11,000 GW by 2030, reducing the reliance on fossil fuels in generating energy. The pledge is expected to see global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements from around 2% to over 4% every year until 2030. While the pledge spearheaded by the EU, the US, and the UAE is not legally binding, it is a step in the right direction.  

Adapting to a warmer world. COP28 provided a framework for the ‘Global Goal on Adaptation’ to guide countries in their efforts to protect their people and ecosystems from climate change. An explicit 2030 date has been integrated into the text for targets on water security, ecosystem restoration, health, climate-resilient food systems, resilient human settlements, reduction of poverty, and protection of tangible cultural heritage.

Addressing methane. Methane took centre stage at COP28, reflecting its significant role in current global warming. US, Canada, Brazil, and Egypt announced more than USD 1 billion in funding to reduce methane emissions. Despite facing political challenges, these measures signify a shift towards concrete regulatory and pricing tools, marking a step forward in addressing methane’s impact on climate protection.

How COP28 Could Have Been More Impactful

Better funding allocations. Although the “loss and damage” funding agreement seems like a major outcome, the actual financial commitments fell far short. US and China, despite being the world’s largest emitters, extended only USD 17.5 million and USD 10 million to the fund, respectively. There is also debate about how funds should be distributed, with mature countries favouring aid allocation based on vulnerability. This approach might exclude middle-income countries that have suffered significant climate-related damage recently.

More focus on AI. While COP28 tackled critical climate issues, it overlooked a significant concern – the environmental impact of AI. While AI holds promise for improved sustainability, it is important to address the environmental consequences of AI model training and deployment. The absence of scrutiny on the ecological impact of AI represents a missed early opportunity, considering the widespread hype and significant investments in the technology.

Recognising climate refugees. The increase in climate-related displacement is a growing concern, with millions already affected and predictions of a significant rise by 2050. International law does not recognise those displaced by climate events as refugees. Despite this, the topic wasn’t adequately explored at COP28, highlighting the need for inclusive discussions and solutions for safe migration pathways.

A Call for Unified Action

While COP28 and similar forums highlight the severity of the climate crisis, the real power lies in continuous collective conversations that identify gaps, strive to bridge them, and drive meaningful change. Ecosystm, in collaboration with partners Kyndryl and Microsoft, conducted a Global Sustainability Barometer study, that reveals that while 85% of global organisations acknowledge the strategic importance of sustainability goals, only 16% have successfully integrated sustainability into their corporate and transformation strategies with tangible data.

While governments and policy makers continue to focus on building a sustainable future for the planet, this is time for a shift in mindset and action is pivotal for a unified global effort in addressing climate challenges and building a sustainable future – from organisations and individuals alike.  

(Clicking on this link will take you to the Khoros website where you can download the eBook)

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In 2024, business and technology leaders will leverage the opportunity presented by the attention being received by Generative AI engines to test and integrate AI comprehensively across the business. Many organisations will prioritise the alignment of their initial Generative AI initiatives with broader AI strategies, establishing distinct short-term and long-term goals for their AI investments.

AI adoption will influence business processes, technology skills, and, in turn, reshape the product/service offerings of AI providers.

Ecosystm analysts Achim Granzen, Peter Carr, Richard Wilkins, Tim Sheedy, and Ullrich Loeffler present the top 5 AI trends in 2024.

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Click here to download ‘Ecosystm Predicts: Top 5 AI Trends in 2024.

#1 By the End of 2024, Gen AI Will Become a ‘Hygiene Factor’ for Tech Providers​

AI has widely been commended as the ‘game changer’ that will create and extend the divide between adopters and laggards and be the deciding factor for success and failure.  ​

Cutting through the hype, strategic adoption of AI is still at a nascent stage and 2024 will be another year where companies identify use cases, experiment with POCs, and commit renewed efforts to get their data assets in order. ​

The biggest impact of AI will be derived from integrated AI capability in standard packaged software and products – and this will include Generative AI. We will see a plethora of product releases that seamlessly weave Generative AI into everyday tools generating new value through increased efficiency and user-friendliness.  ​

Technology will be the first industry where AI becomes the deciding factor between success and failure; tech providers will be forced to deliver on their AI promises or be left behind.   

#2 Gen AI Will Disrupt the Role of IT Architects ​

Traditionally, IT has relied on three-tier architectures for applications, that faced limitations in scalability and real-time responsiveness. The emergence of microservices, containerisation, and serverless computing has paved the way for event-driven designs, a paradigm shift that decouples components and use events like user actions or data updates as triggers for actions across distributed services. This approach enhances agility, scalability, and flexibility in the system.​

The shift towards event-driven designs and advanced architectural patterns presents a compelling challenge for IT Architects, as traditionally their role revolved around designing, planning and overseeing complex systems.​

Generative AI is progressively demonstrating capabilities in architectural design through pattern recognition, predictive analytics, and automated decision-making.​

With the adoption of Generative AI, the role of an IT Architect will change into a symbiotic relationship where human expertise collaborates with AI insights.​

#3 Gen AI Adoption Will be Confined to Specific Use Cases​

A little over a year ago, a new era in AI began with the initial release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Since then, many organisations have launched Generative AI pilots.​

In its second-year enterprises will start adoption – but in strictly defined and limited use cases. Examples such as Microsoft Copilot demonstrate an early adopter route. While productivity increases for individuals can be significant, its enterprise impact is unclear (at this time).​

But there are impactful use cases in enterprise knowledge and document management. Organisations across industries have decades (or even a century) of information, including digitised documents and staff expertise. That treasure trove of information can be made accessible through cognitive search and semantic answering, driven by Generative AI.​

Generative AI will provide organisations with a way to access, distill, and create value out of that data – a task that may well be impossible to achieve in any other way.

#4 Gen AI Will Get Press Inches; ‘Traditional’ AI Will Do the Hard Work ​

While the use cases for Generative AI will continue to expand, the deployment models and architectures for enterprise Generative AI do not add up – yet. ​

Running Generative AI in organisations’ data centres is costly and using public models for all but the most obvious use cases is too risky. Most organisations opt for a “small target” strategy, implementing Generative AI in isolated use cases within specific processes, teams, or functions. Justifying investment in hardware, software, and services for an internal AI platform is challenging when the payback for each AI initiative is not substantial.​

“Traditional AI/ML” will remain the workhorse, with a significant rise in use cases and deployments. Organisations are used to investing for AI by individual use cases. Managing process change and training is also more straightforward with traditional AI, as the changes are implemented in a system or platform, eliminating the need to retrain multiple knowledge workers.​

#5 AI Will Pioneer a 21st Century BPM Renaissance

As we near the 25-year milestone of the 21st century, it becomes clear that many businesses are still operating with 20th-century practices and philosophies. ​

AI, however, represents more than a technological breakthrough; it offers a new perspective on how businesses operate and is akin to a modern interpretation of Business Process Management (BPM). This development carries substantial consequences for digital transformation strategies. To fully exploit the potential of AI, organisations need to commit to an extensive and ongoing process spanning the collection, organisation, and expansion of data, to integrating these insights at an application and workflow level. ​

The role of AI will transcend technological innovation, becoming a driving force for substantial business transformation. Sectors that specialise in workflow, data management, and organisational transformation are poised to see the most growth in 2024 because of this shift.​

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While the discussions have centred around AI, particularly Generative AI in 2023, the influence of AI innovations is extensive. Organisations will urgently need to re-examine their risk strategies, particularly in cyber and resilience practices. They will also reassess their infrastructure needs, optimise applications for AI, and re-evaluate their skills requirements.​

This impacts the entire tech market, including tech skills, market opportunities, and innovations. 

Ecosystm analysts Alea Fairchild, Darian Bird, Richard Wilkins, and Tim Sheedy present the top 5 trends in building an Agile & Resilient Organisation in 2024.  

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Click here to download ‘Ecosystm Predicts: Top 5 Resilience Trends in 2024’ as a PDF.​

#1 Gen AI Will See Spike in Infrastructure Innovation​​

Enterprises considering the adoption of Generative AI are evaluating cloud-based solutions versus on-premises solutions. Cloud-based options present an advantage in terms of simplified integration, but raise concerns over the management of training data, potentially resulting in AI-generated hallucinations. On-premises alternatives offer enhanced control and data security but encounter obstacles due to the unexpectedly high demands of GPU computing needed for inferencing, impeding widespread implementation. To overcome this, there’s a need for hardware innovation to meet Generative AI demands, ensuring scalable on-premises deployments. ​

The collaboration between hardware development and AI innovation is crucial to unleash the full potential of Generative AI and drive enterprise adoption in the AI ecosystem. ​

Striking the right balance between cloud-based flexibility and on-premises control is pivotal, with considerations like data control, privacy, scalability, compliance, and operational requirements. ​

#2 Cloud Migrations Will Make Way for Cloud Transformations​

The steady move to the public cloud has slowed down. Organisations – particularly those in mature economies – now prioritise cloud efficiencies, having largely completed most of their application migration. The “easy” workloads have moved to the cloud – either through lift-and-shift, SaaS, or simple replatforming.​

New skills will be needed as organisations adopt public and hybrid cloud for their entire application and workload portfolio.​

• Cloud-native development frameworks like Spring Boot and ASP.NET Core make it easier to develop cloud-native applications​
• Cloud-native databases like MongoDB and Cassandra are designed for the cloud and offer scalability, performance, and reliability​
• Cloud-native storage like Snowflake, Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage provides secure and scalable storage​
• Cloud-native messaging like Amazon SNS and Google Cloud Pub/Sub provide reliable and scalable communication between different parts of the cloud-native application ​

#3 2024 Will be a Good Year for Technology Services Providers ​

Several changes are set to fuel the growth of tech services providers (systems integrators, consultants, and managed services providers). ​

There will be a return of “big apps” projects in 2024. ​

Companies are embarking on significant updates for their SAP, Oracle, and other large ERP, CRM, SCM, and HRM platforms. Whether moving to the cloud or staying on-premises, these upgrades will generate substantial activity for tech services providers.​

The migration of complex apps to the cloud involves significant refactoring and rearchitecting, presenting substantial opportunities for managed services providers to transform and modernise these applications beyond traditional “lift-and-shift” activities.​

The dynamic tech landscape, marked by AI growth, evolving security threats, and constant releases of new cloud services, has led to a shortage of modern tech skills. Despite a more relaxed job market, organisations will increasingly turn to their tech services partners, whether onshore or offshore, to fill crucial skill gaps.​

#4 Gen AI and Maturing Deepfakes Will Democratise Phishing​

As with any emerging technology, malicious actors will be among the fastest to exploit Generative AI for their own purposes. The most immediate application will be employing widely available LLMs to generate convincing text and images for their phishing schemes. For many potential victims, misspellings and strangely worded appeals are the only hints that an email from their bank, courier, or colleague is not what it seems. The ability to create professional-sounding prose in any language and a variety of tones will unfortunately democratise phishing. ​

The emergence of Generative AI combined with the maturing of deepfake technology will make it possible for malicious agents to create personalised voice and video attacks. Digital channels for communication and entertainment will be stretched to differentiate between real and fake.​

Security training that underscores the threat of more polished and personalised phishing is a must. 

#5 A Holistic Approach to Risk and Operational Resilience Will Drive Adoption of VMaaS

Vulnerability management is a continuous, proactive approach to managing system security. It not only involves vulnerability assessments but also includes developing and implementing strategies to address these vulnerabilities. This is where Vulnerability Management Platforms (VMPs) become table stakes for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as they are often perceived as “easier targets” by cybercriminals due to potentially lesser investments in security measures. ​

Vulnerability Management as a Service (VMaaS) – a third-party service that manages and controls threats to automate vulnerability response to remediate faster – can improve the asset cybersecurity management and let SMEs focus on their core activities.  ​

In-house security teams will particularly value the flexibility and customisation of dashboards and reports that give them enhanced visibility over all assets and vulnerabilities.​

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In recent years, organisations have had to swiftly transition to providing digital experiences due to limitations on physical interactions; competed fiercely based on the customer experiences offered; and invested significantly in the latest CX technologies. However, in 2024, organisations will pivot their competitive efforts towards product innovation rather than solely focusing on enhancing the CX. ​

This does not mean that organisations will not focus on CX – they will just be smarter about it! 

Ecosystm analysts Audrey William, Melanie Disse, and Tim Sheedy present the top 5 Customer Experience trends in 2024. 

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Click here to download ‘Ecosystm Predicts: Top 5 CX Trends in 2024’ as a PDF.​

#1 Customer Experience is Due for a Reset

Organisations aiming to improve customer experience are seeing diminishing returns, moving away from the significant gains before and during the pandemic to incremental improvements. Many organisations experience stagnant or declining CX and NPS scores as they prioritise profit over customer growth and face a convergence of undifferentiated digital experiences. The evolving digital landscape has also heightened baseline customer expectations. ​

In 2024, CX programs will be focused and measurable – with greater involvement of Sales, Marketing, Brand, and Customer Service to ensure CX initiatives are unified across the entire customer journey. ​

Organisations will reassess CX strategies, choosing impactful initiatives and aligning with brand values. This recalibration, unique to each organisation, may include reinvesting in human channels, improving digital experiences, or reimagining customer ecosystems. ​

#2 Sentiment Analysis Will Fuel CX Improvement ​

Organisations strive to design seamless customer journeys – yet they often miss the mark in crafting truly memorable experiences that forge emotional connections and turn customers into brand advocates. ​

Customers want on-demand information and service; failure to meet these expectations often leads to discontent and frustration. This is further heightened when organisations fail to recognise and respond to these emotions. ​

Sentiment analysis will shape CX improvements – and technological advancements such as in neural network, promise higher accuracy in sentiment analysis by detecting intricate relationships between emotions, phrases, and words. ​

These models explore multiple permutations, delving deeper to interpret the meaning behind different sentiment clusters. ​

#3 AI Will Elevate VoC from Surveys to Experience Improvement  ​

In 2024, AI technologies will transform Voice of Customer (VoC) programs from measurement practices into the engine room of the experience improvement function. ​

The focus will move from measurement to action – backed by AI. AI is already playing a pivotal role in analysing vast volumes of data, including unstructured and unsolicited feedback. In 2024, VoC programs will shift gear to focus on driving a customer centric culture and business change. AI will augment insight interpretation, recommend actions, and predict customer behaviour, sentiment, and churn to elevate customer experiences (CX).  ​

Organisations that don’t embrace an AI-driven paradigm will get left behind as they fail to showcase and deliver ROI to the business.

#4 Generative AI Platforms Will Replace Knowledge Management Tools

Most organisations have more customer knowledge management tools and platforms than they should. They exist in the contact centre, on the website, the mobile app, in-store, at branches, and within customer service. There are two challenges that this creates:​

• Inconsistent knowledge. The information in the different knowledge bases is different and sometimes conflicting.​
• Difficult to extract answers. The knowledge contained in these platforms is often in PDFs and long form documents.​

Generative AI tools will consolidate organisational knowledge, enhancing searchability.​

Customers and contact centre agents will be able to get actual answers to questions and they will be consistent across touchpoints (assuming they are comprehensive, customer-journey and organisation-wide initiatives).​

​#5 Experience Orchestration Will ​
Accelerate

Despite the ongoing effort to streamline and simplify the CX, organisations often implement new technologies, such as conversational AI, digital and social channels, as independent projects. This fragmented approach, driven by the desire for quick wins using best-in-class point solutions results in a complex CX technology architecture. ​

With the proliferation of point solution vendors, it is becoming critical to eliminate the silos. The fragmentation hampers CX teams from achieving their goals, leading to increased costs, limited insights, a weak understanding of customer journeys, and inconsistent services. ​

Embracing CX unification through an orchestration platform enables organisations to enhance the CX rapidly, with reduced concerns about tech debt and legacy issues.