Learnings from 2022 and Challenges for 2023

We asked the IT leaders what their learnings are from 2022 and what challenges lie ahead for them in 2023.

Following are the responses they gave us.

"2022 has witnessed several uncertainties, both displayed as opportunities and risks. While it has undoubtedly fast-tracked the digital transformation journey of most businesses, it has also made them vulnerable to a suite of unforeseen cyber threats. But most importantly, it has also set a solid security blueprint for the upcoming year. According to the latest Cisco Security Outcome Study, 96% of businesses now consider security resilience a top priority. Therefore, in 2023 as enterprises become more distributed, their platforms and systems will become predictive and intelligent, providing real-time visibility into distributed applications, security, networks, users, and services.

Moreover, as 5G becomes widespread, we will also see a massive uptake in emerging technologies like IoT, cloud, edge, and metaverse, propelling a connected future. In line with this, modernizing IT infrastructures with integrated security technologies and SD-WAN technologies will become imperative as organizations unravel their benefits in securely connecting devices, users, and IoT to systems, data, and apps with inbuilt unified security management systems. Lastly, sustainability must be at the heart of everything we do. Products that are energy efficient, help save energy, and reduce carbon emissions will take center stage."

--By Samir Mishra, Director, Security Business, Cisco India & SAARC

“Companies that rapidly engineer modern software solutions have an edge over others who are stuck with traditional IT models and struggle to move at a faster pace. Future businesses will be agile, customer centric and will be powered by modern software built by world class engineers.

Upskilling alone is not sufficient. Craftsmanship is key to engineering world class software that impacts human lives and drives business growth. Firms need to adopt a communities of practice model that nurtures craftsmanship through mentoring, hands on projects, IP creation over and beyond training.

Today, Engineers look for purpose, joy, empathy, and flexibility in doing what they are best at. Ascendion was born during the pandemic and has been set up to engineer modern software leveraging tools and automation. Flexible work hours, high impact work, craftsmanship through Ascendion Circles and sense of community, we offer it all so that our engineers bring their complete selves to work.”

By Prakash Balasubramanian, Executive Vice President, Ascendion

“2022 witnessed multilateral digital transformation initiatives by enterprises that have empowered them to be more relevant with changing times. It provided them with an opportunity to re-imagine the way business can run through digital processes and tools. With the advent of technological developments, enterprises also faced critical challenges ranging from security concerns, right talent availability, skill- gaps, limited expertise in digital transformation strategies, and budgetary constraints, which will continue to hinder enterprises in 2023 as well. These challenges can be overcome by incorporating methods such as investment in Digital Adoption Platforms, inclusion and consulting with a change leadership team, aligning the overall business goals with the digital transformation strategy, and being agile and open to change in strategy when the need arises.

Enterprises have the opportunity to integrate multiple software into one inclusive software to enhance user and employee experience. The rise of big data has empowered enterprises to create digital adoption strategies through the use of smart tools to segment users to create contextual adoption experiences called userization.”

By Khadim Batti, Co-founder & CEO, Whatfix

“Many sectors operating in the technology space has undergone rapid digital transformation in 2022. While the rapid adoption of digital technologies helps in implementing new and disruptive business models and processes, it also involves risks, increasing cyberattacks being the biggest risk factor. To address these challenges, security leaders should ensure cybersecurity is woven into the digital fabric to achieve a state of “security by design.” As we welcome the new year, the following four trends focus on the issues that we are likely to see on the horizon in 2023 for the partner ecosystem.

--Partners will work increasingly with vendors that offer a unified security platform as budget restraints tighten as a result of the global macroeconomic shift.

--Customers are evolving the security procurement process and partners will evolve alongside them to meet their needs. Customers are shifting away from traditional purchase orders (via solution providers) toward buying and consuming services and products online through various marketplaces, including online SaaS stores, public cloud marketplaces and even direct to vendors. Due to this shift, partners will make their solutions available in multiple locations with flexible buying options.

--Identity will be the top threat vector in 2023 and identity providers will play a critical role in helping to protect user credentials. The ability to protect identity-based attacks will require an identity protection solution, therefore, partnering with identity providers will have increased importance so that organizations can handle the complexities of storing and authenticating identities.

--There’s a global cybersecurity workforce gap of 3.4 million people. As a result, organizations will look to Managed security service providers(MSSPs) and global system integrators (GISs) to fill this gap. The benefit for organizations leveraging MSSPs is that they provide 24/7/365 expert monitoring without the need for additional staffing. As for GSIs, they can help organizations manage the complexity inherent with cybersecurity and solve business challenges through implementation services.”

By Jon Fox, Senior Channel Director, APJ, CrowdStrike

“The rise of cyber-attacks, ranging from ransomware to phishing to social engineering threats, and more has been one of the most significant and pressing problems for security teams this year. Lack of visibility, authentication, and improper configuration of the cloud setups are some of the key reasons for compromised data security. 2023 is sure to bring in new challenges as the technology evolves. Another trend we see emerging here is on business email compromise (BEC) scams that will further harass the enterprises with increasingly targeted schemes. Deepfakes will also be a bigger problem in 2023, as users on underground forums intend to use deepfakes to defraud financial institutions. Organizations must have a multilayered defence strategy supported by mitigation measures to stay ahead of the evolving threats that will surface in the future. A unified cybersecurity platform will help with managing the entire lifecycle of the digital attack surface.”

By  Sharda Tickoo, Technical Director at Trend Micro

“During 2021-2022, the cloud contact center ecosystem witnessed multiple trends ranging from agents migrating from on-premise work to hybrid mode driving more relevance for cloud platforms. Moreover, we saw increase adoption of virtual assistants to address customer queries, rise in hyper-personalisation among others. Another interesting trend will be an increase adoption of voice analytics in contact centers for analyzing conversations to identify key issues for lower quality score and other bottlenecks in CX. The year, 2023 will see a rise in the adoption of tools like Conversational AI, use of AI-powered chatbots and voicebots, voice analytics and the coming into mainstream of Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) by enterprises at large to enhance the end customer experience.”

By Uthaman Bakthikrishnan, Executive Vice President, ClearTouch

“The growing data appetite of Asia-Pacific has fuelled the rapid development of demand for digital infrastructure for CDN services to store and distribute the splurge in the content being consumed by the millions of online users and also growing demand for cloud infrastructure by enterprises large and small   across both established and emerging markets. Major metropolitan hubs across the region are demanding greater data connectivity, first the last mile between the user and the mobile base station which is pushing the demand and deployment for 5G services and second the back haul from the base stations to the data centers and between the data centers and Cable landing stations. We are seeing growing deployment of new undersea cable systems to meet the growing demand with over 4 cable systems being announced to land in different ports in India in next year or so.

As we move into 2023, sustainability will remain our core focus, where our data centers will concurrently mitigate the effects of climate change while striving towards carbon neutrality. Our partnership with National University of  Singapore  to develop Hydrogen as an alternate source of power, our announcement to adopt ASHRAE A1A norms and other such measures on sustainability are highly forward looking and would lead the future course of action by the data center industry towards conservation and green generation. Digital twins, while traditionally relevant to manufacturing, are helping to solve sustainability issues, aiding in rapid turnover for future data center designs that meet ESG criteria. Finite land, water and energy resources on our planet have spurred forward-looking innovations to solve our planetary constraints. For achieving higher efficiency, continuous focus will be on new innovations driven by cloud computing. 

The best way to predict the future is to create it, and at Equinix we believe that the spirit of collaboration will lead to innovative and sustainable outcomes for us all.”

--By Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India

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