IT managers continually face a major challenge: staying up to date with the constant evolution of technologies and products emerging every day. They must remain updated regarding competitive advantages, offering a better quality product or service, lowering process costs, and most importantly: how IT can effectively contribute to providing this differential in the business. Knowing these trends can take our service offering to the next level. Keeping ourselves aligned with prominent solutions and technologies ensures competitive advantage in an increasingly aggressive market.
Understanding IT as a strategic part of the business
In IT Governance, the importance of IT for a business is usually measured according to specific parameters linked to its integration with the business areas and the company’s directions. It may have:
- strategic importance for the business: when it has a high impact on core operations — those carried out in the present — and on core strategies — those focused on the future. This is the ideal world of IT;
- manufacturing importance for the business: when it has a high impact on core operations, but low impact on core strategies. A dangerous scenario because, although day-to-day operations depend on IT tasks, the future does not seem to count on it;
- importance for support tasks: when it has low impact on both core operations and strategies. In this scenario, Top Management usually views IT merely as a cost center, not as a business partner;
- importance in the change role: when it has low impact on core operations, but high impact on core strategies. This scenario indicates a moment of change, that is, a framework in which IT is moving toward the future and becoming a strategic part of the business.
The first aspect for IT to position itself strategically for the business is to be inserted in a relevant role in present activities and in the company’s future planning.
Therefore, for a manager, investing in IT trends means being prepared to become an essential part of the success of any enterprise, achieving increasingly consolidated positions and making it capable of offering cutting-edge products, aligned with the dynamics of the modern world.
Knowing to invest in IT trends for the coming years
When we try to take a look at the future, we quickly realize that all technological trends converge toward an environment of mobility, flexibility, and above all, instantaneity.
This means we must capture these trends and align ourselves with them. Thus, we have the tools to offer a cutting-edge product that meets our customers’ expectations and, on top of that, empowers us to act increasingly effectively in the challenging task of ensuring availability and quality in our services.
What would the trends of these technological transformations be for the coming years? Some of the main ones are:
Device Mesh
It can be understood as a set of endpoints that allow us to access applications, information, and resources to establish communication, such as IoT (Internet of Things) devices with:
- people;
- systems;
- mobile devices;
- electronic appliances;
- automotive devices;
- environmental devices;
3D Printing
Undoubtedly, it is not only a trend, but a reality. Printing devices capable of using the most diverse materials, such as nickel alloys, conductive inks, carbon alloys, glass, etc.
All of this has been extremely useful in the most diverse areas, ranging from health, technology, robotics, and pharmaceuticals to the construction of prosthetics for humans and animals.
Internet of Things
Today we are not alone on the Internet. We share the great network with our watches, cell phones, home appliances, cars, and every device we can imagine.
The Internet of Things (also known as IoT, acronym for the English expression Internet of Things) opens a world of possibilities that we can and must use to add more value to what we have to offer as an IT solution.
Advanced Machine Learning
Information has become an extremely precious asset and, at the same time, a challenge. The multiplicity of equipment, programs, and data generated makes it impossible to analyze and interpret information that can provide knowledge and decision-making power in a timely and accurate manner.
Extremely powerful algorithms are developed to form the so-called Neural Networks — programs capable of learning that form a complex mesh, very similar to the human nervous system. This technology undoubtedly establishes a major competitive advantage due to its high information processing power.
Adaptive Security Architecture
Nowadays, our life is practically in the cloud. Our personal data, information, businesses, and even the money we own can become targets of hacker technologies.
The traditional solution of having an antivirus installed on our network and standard security requirements cannot cope with the intelligence employed by information capture systems.
The information security trend has led us to new concepts, such as:
- application self-protection;
- behavioral analysis;
- attack predictability and others.
The challenge for the coming years is to stay ahead, understand the behavior of unwanted software, and anticipate potential attack attempts, whether passive — information theft without the user’s knowledge — or active — deliberate attacks to bring down services.
Each of these mentioned trends takes IT services to a much higher level of incident prevention, more effective problem resolution, and they are also great tools to assist in IT asset monitoring for a company.
Investing in new IT trends provides us, in addition to the mentioned benefits, with the necessary condition so that we can dedicate ourselves to management itself, instead of always “putting out fires” due to technologies that no longer meet the new demands required by the dynamics of the modern world.
Thus, seeking or not seeking professional alignment with new IT trends is no longer a matter of option, but truly a matter of survival in an increasingly competitive scenario that reinvents itself at every moment.
What are the main IT trends that you believe are emerging and bringing new directions for the future? Leave a comment: join the conversation!
