Similar to any other sector, players in the technology space have to ensure they stay aligned with rapidly changing customer demands. From data compliance and cybersecurity to emerging trends such as the autonomous car, 2019 holds a lot in store for organizations looking to keep up with these changing demands.
Cybersecurity & Data Compliance
Cybersecurity was one of the key challenges of 2018, and we'll see this continue into 2019. Mass-scale data theft raised the need for expediting the discovery and resolution of security breaches. As data has become the fuel for company success, driving insights, customer targeting and business planning, and even training AI and machine learning models, the ability to protect data and restore backed up files has become important to modern business. Being able to extract additional value from data has become critical to business success, and the shift to data management is key, where data is not only protected, but properly archived, easily searchable, can be leveraged for analytics, and is compliant.
Data management has also been elevated to the country and federal levels. In the wake of the European Union's (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), others are using it as a blueprint to enact more stringent compliance standards. The California Consumer Privacy Act goes into effect in January 2020 and we should expect to see more of the same in the coming years. Such regulations mean company obligations will become more complicated and will need to meet new standards. Having the flexibility and scalability to store data within specific regions will become a key buying consideration and increasingly favour cloud deployments over on-premises solutions.
Cloud Services and Serverless architecture
As 2019 dawns, the cloud wars will continue to escalate. The serverless architecture will drive down costs even further, and we can expect hybrid and multi-cloud to become more popular with pushes from VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Online marketplaces will shift spending from offline distribution and vendors, and resellers will increasingly adopt digital VAR-like models. Machine learning and AI will continue to rise in adoption and increase the allure of cloud computing. Because of these technologies, the public cloud will become the de-facto choice for developers.
Technologies such as AI, machine learning, and analytics thrive in environments with expansive amounts of data and compute abilities beyond those available in on-premises solutions. These trends greatly favour cloud-based architectures and will only increase as vendors offer more advanced solutions. As part of this, I also expect AI and machine learning to become commoditized, given they are increasingly embedded into cloud services or available on-demand in some manner from the majority of cloud providers.
Impact of Emerging Technologies on Data Management
There is a massive investment being made in new technologies, such as autonomous and connected cars, and soon this investment will need to cascade to the data centre. The impact of this transition cannot be overstated. For example, the success of autonomous cars relies on telemetry data from vehicles to inform driving decisions, but how do you properly archive this data for compliance? With so many data points being created every minute, how do you properly isolate necessary data, such as from any accidents or incidents and retain it for the multiple years necessary? Proper data management architectures will be key to ensuring success.
Blockchain becoming a commodity
Another key trend for the next year is that we will see blockchain becoming a commodity. Vendors are fighting for a share of a rapidly increasing market for blockchain applications, but the reality is it's a race to the bottom. As standardization continues, there will be little differentiation and blockchain will slip into the background of applications, taking place behind the scenes. Industries like data management will begin adopting this technology, as well, since it offers a way to validate and trust the data as records are pulled into other resources.
The pace of innovation continues to accelerate, and I have no doubt 2019 will continue this trend. Enterprises will keep looking for ways to leverage the latest technologies and push the envelope to differentiate themselves in increasingly competitive and crowded marketplaces. The cloud, and cloud-based technologies, will be at the foundation of tech innovation for the foreseeable future, and those who are able to best leverage it for business transformation will be the companies that rise to the top.
The author is VP of Products at Druva, a Cloud Data Protection and Management company.
