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IDC New Zealand is predicting the country's digital decision makers will concentrate on filling gaps in their digital plans exposed by COVID-19, but some will face "force-marched" migrations to the cloud.
The technology market research company yesterday released its forecast for New Zealand organisations over the next five years, including a focus on cloud-centric infrastructure, hybrid by design workforces and operating models that flourish beyond the perimeter of the organisation.
"The 2021 IT Industry predictions reflect the speed of how New Zealand businesses have adapted to the next normal, with a crystalised focus on how innovation will help them grow and thrive in a post COVID-19 economy," said Louise Francis, country manager of IDC NZ.
"The mantra of business and digital resiliency will be amplified in 2021 as organisations prepare to respond to continued uncertainly and disruption throughout the year."
It was essential businesses understand how the IT landscape is morphing, including how to effectively manage and implement the changes required to enable responsiveness during times of ambiguity and change.
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"This year's predictions provide the compass heading for digitally determined organisations to reassess, strengthen and relaunch their future enterprise roadmap fit for the next normal," Francis said.
The top 10 trends at a glance are:
Cloud centric IT: By the end of 2021, 60 per cent of New Zealand enterprises will put a mechanism in place to shift to cloud-centric infrastructure and applications twice as fast as before the pandemic.
Edge acceleration: Through 2023, reactions to changed workforce and operations practices during the pandemic will be the dominant accelerators for 75 per cent of edge-driven investments and business model changes in most industries.
Hybrid by design: By 2023, two thirds of NZX companies will 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.
Remediate technical debt: Through 2022, coping with technical debt accumulated during the pandemic will shadow 50 per cent of CIOs, causing financial stress, inertial drag on IT agility, and "forced march" migrations to the cloud.
Digital resiliency: In 2022, enterprises focused on digital resiliency will adapt to disruption and extend services to respond to new conditions 50 per cent faster than ones fixated on restoring existing business/IT resiliency levels.
Automation platforms: By 2023, an emerging cloud ecosystem for extending resource control and real-time analytics will be the underlying platform for all it and business automation initiatives anywhere and everywhere.
Opportunistic AI extension: By 2023, driven by the goal to embed intelligence in products and services, one in ten NZX companies will acquire at least one ai software start-up to ensure ownership of differentiated skills and intellectual property.
ICT ecosystem: By 2025 65 per cent of enterprises will overhaul relationships with suppliers, providers, and partners to better execute digital strategies for ubiquitous deployment of resources and for autonomous IT operations.
ICT joins circular economy: By 2025, 85 per cent of NZX companies will mandate reusable materials in IT hardware supply chains, carbon neutrality targets for providers' facilities, and lower energy use as prerequisites for doing business.
People still matter: Through 2023, a third of enterprise hybrid workforce and business automation efforts will be delayed or will fail outright due to underinvestment in building IT/Sec/DevOps teams with the right tools and skills.
IDC will flesh these out in an A/NZ webinar on 23rd February 2021.
