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.
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.
On 4 November Kyndryl completed the spin-off from IBM and began trading as an independent company on the New York Stock Exchange. It is effectively a USD 19 Billion start-up, and the industry will be tracking its journey keenly. Kyndryl has the ability to disrupt markets as it reinvents its business to embrace growth areas and help clients through their tech-led transformations.
Ecosystm Analysts Darian Bird, Peter Carr, Sash Mukherjee, Tim Sheedy, Ullrich Loeffler, and Venu Reddy comment on Kyndryl’s strategy going forward and the associated opportunities.
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