COVID-19 Pandemic blew many industries out of the water. For instance, the Information Technology sector was predicted to rise by 4% in 2020 but it ended up dropping by 4% to 5%. Organizations slowed down experimentation this year and began to bring into reality their digital transformation proofs-of-concept. With companies shutting down offices worldwide and remote working becoming the new normal, the enterprise technology space is on the horizon of experiencing a surge in innovation and applications. So, what exactly can one expect in the enterprise tech space in 2021?
First, tech spending will get back to 4% growth in 2021 and maybe shoot higher. The pandemic highlighted proof-of-concept on technology and what works in the digital business. Organizations will now push forward and double down on this success. Many organizations reported productivity improvements for remote workers and ways to leverage them. We can also expect collaborations between software and remote tools like desktops.
Productivity increase has also led to a surge in productivity measuring apps and software as companies want to maximise work without burning out employees. The video conferencing trend is expected to remain strong while Microsoft Teams continues to have a stronghold.
The remote-working culture also exposed us to escalated cyberattacks and breaches. Identity access management, cloud security, endpoint and zero-trust security upstarted while CrowdStrike, Okta, etc thrive. They are expected to show 30% to 50% revenue growth into 2021. Certain micro-segmentation players will experience spikes in activity. As a skill shortage continues, there will be an increasing trend toward automation to counter talent shortage.
With low-interest rates, technology spending is picking up in enterprises. There will also be a perfect storm of more liquidity events, whether it be continued IPOs or Mergers and Acquisitions. There’s a rapid shift to cloud databases and cross-cloud data sharing. We see a pending shift toward domain-centric ownership of the data pipeline with data teams organized around data products and embedded into the business.
Cloud, containers, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and automation are expected to have the highest Net Scores or spending momentum. With the IT project freezes at the end of 2020, outsourcing and consulting could pick up. AI and real-time inferencing will also need more development in terms of processor and systems design. Companies like Apple Inc., Broadcom Inc., Microsoft, Nvidia Corp. etc will dominate the new workload while showing superior price-performance metrics.
With these expectations in 2021, the enterprise technology space has immense potential to evolve and develop further into a full-fledged sector. We can only hope these forecasts turn into reality in the near future.
