The global economy remains on its way to its ”digital destiny” driving USD 6.8 trillion of IT spending from 2020 to 2023, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). The impacts from COVID-19 pandemic are ubiquitous and affect the many external forces that are driving change, the research firm said in its worldwide information technology (IT) industry predictions for 2021 and beyond.

Yet despite the disruptions caused by the global pandemic in 2020, the global economy remains on its way to its ”digital destiny” as most products and services are based on a digital delivery model or require digital augmentation to remain competitive, an IDC press release said. ”With this shift, 65 percent of global GDP is digitalised by 2022, driving USD 6.8 trillion of IT spending from 2020 to 2023”, it said.

By the end of 2021, based on lessons learned, 80 percent of enterprises would put a mechanism in place to shift to cloud-centric infrastructure and applications twice as fast as before the pandemic, IDC predicted. Through 2023, reactions to changed workforce and operations practices during the pandemic would be the dominant accelerators for 80 percent of edge-driven investments and business model changes in most industries.

”The need to deliver of infrastructure, application and data resources to edge locations will spur adoption of new, cloud-centric edge and network solutions that enable faster responses to current business needs while serving as a foundation for boosting long-term digital resilience, enabling business scaling, and ensuring greater business operational flexibility”, it said. By 2023, 75 percent of G2000 companies would commit to providing technical parity to a workforce that is hybrid by design rather than by circumstance, enabling them to work together separately and in real-time.

Through 2023, coping with technical debt accumulated during the pandemic would shadow 70 percent of CIOs, causing financial stress, inertial drag on IT agility, and ”forced march” migrations to the cloud. Smart CIOs would look for opportunities to design next-generation digital platforms that modernise and rationalise infrastructure and applications while delivering flexible capabilities to create and deliver new products, services, and experiences to workers and customers.

In 2022, enterprises focused on digital resiliency would adapt to disruption and extend services to respond to new conditions 50 percent faster than ones fixated on restoring existing business/IT resiliency levels. By 2023, an emerging cloud ecosystem for extending resource control and real-time analytics would be the underlying platform for all IT and business automation initiatives anywhere and everywhere.

By 2023, driven by the goal to embed intelligence in products and services, one-quarter of G2000 companies would acquire at least one AI software start-up to ensure ownership of differentiated skills and IP. Successful organisations would eventually sell internally developed industry-specific software and data services as a subscription, leveraging deep domain knowledge to open profitable new revenue streams.

By 2024, 80 percent of enterprises would overhaul relationships with suppliers, providers, and partners to better execute digital strategies for ubiquitous deployment of resources and for autonomous IT operations. ”Reevaluating technology, service, and service provider relationships would be crucial to long-term success in an environment where the existing IT ecosystem is undergoing major transition”, according to IDC.

By 2025, 90 percent of G2000 companies would mandate reusable materials in IT hardware supply chains, carbon neutrality targets for providers’ facilities, and lower energy use as prerequisites for doing business. Through 2023, half of enterprises’ hybrid workforce and business automation efforts would be delayed or will fail outright due to underinvestment in building IT/Sec/DevOps teams with the right tools/skills.

To address the shortage of developer and data analytics talent, enterprises would turn to flexible talent sources, crowdsourcing, and internal staff to meet their development/automation and advanced analytics needs and to speed up innovation, it was stated.

First Published:Oct 28, 2020 12:17 PM IST