Over the past decade or more, you have provided your clients with the ability to transform their operations from paper-based, manual workflows to digital, connected, automated processes. Your users recognize that the solutions you provide directly impact greater productivity, efficiency, accuracy, and profitability. In 2022, however, expect your clients to take a big-picture view of their digital transformation strategies and work to bring those benefits throughout their organizations.
Colin Dawes, Chief Solutions Architect at Syntax, points out, “Organizations’ previous efforts to digitally transform were nothing more than digitization. However, for 2022, the necessary commitment to organizational changes and adjustments to core business models has greater attention at the executive level and is no longer solely the domain of the CIO.”
“Companies will increase their adoption of the cloud for core business applications, including customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and human resource management systems, and other line of business (LOB) applications. This is a change from the cautious approach of years past.” Dawes also predicts that organizations will also assume a cloud-first mentality for business analytics.
John Pocknell, Senior Market Strategist at Quest, agrees that the demand for business analytics will grow, citing research by Beroe, Inc., which estimates the global business intelligence market will reach $30.9 billion by 2022. “In response to the appetite for greater business insights, we will see continued growth in the demand for self-service data prep and analytics in the upcoming year. As a result, companies will be looking for self-service data prep and analytics tools that can be used by non-technical users and include data governance and collaboration.”
Where Computing Takes Place Will Change
Industry experts also predict that organizations will expand their digital transformation strategies to address where people work and where computing occurs.
Ken Galvin, Senior Product Manager at Quest, says, “Organizations will make moves towards incorporating modern management into their endpoint management strategy. The pandemic proved the benefit of modern management methods like using Microsoft autopilot to direct ship enrolled laptops directly to new employees. The simplicity and flexibility that modern endpoint management provides users can’t be beaten for many organizations as they desire agile solutions to meet their agile workplaces.”
“We will witness IT departments explore the benefits of modern endpoint management more widely and use it in tandem with traditional methods for stronger endpoint management across the board,” he says.
Ray Nelson, SVP of Technical Sales and Services at ScanSource, also points out that computing is no longer only in the cloud or data centers. “Edge computing is a technology trend that has no choice but to develop in 2022 due to the proliferation of new technologies that will drive a greater need for computing and data.”
“Data and computing analysis will need move closer to the areas that are generating it, and things like Internet of Things (IoT) and the analysis of that data with artificial intelligence (AI), ML, and robotic process automation (RPA) will require the compute to be at the edge. The continued expansion of 5G and mobile business computing will drive this trend,” Nelson says. “We are already seeing several verticals adopting these technologies today and looking at ways to optimize their environments with edge computing.”
A New Approach to Database Management
Justin Mclean, VP at Instaclustr, says 2022 will also usher in powerful new digital transformation strategies that address database management with machine learning (ML) predictive analytics.
“The realities of flexible data design, difficulties in predicting data usage patterns, and lack of storage management have traditionally required carefully-applied DBA expertise to achieve performant queries,” he says.
“ML will finally resolve this challenge by leveraging predictive models that accurately determine where data resides. New ML-powered tools will perform data index creation, reindexing, and storage management, resulting in transformative improvements to query performance and the efficiency of database operations. Iterative improvements to ML training sets will mature this technology throughout 2022, preparing its inevitable rise as a ubiquitous necessity.”
Digital Transformation Strategy and Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)
Businesses are also approaching digital transformation with respect to future or current mergers or acquisitions. Rich Dean, Senior Manager of Technical Product Management, Quest, comments, “In 2022, we will see an increased focus on pre-migration analysis and planning, with mergers and acquisitions taking significantly longer than in previous years.”
“Email is slowly losing its dominance as the primary communication method within organizations resulting in less data being stored in Exchange Online and more finding its home on SharePoint Online. IT pros will adjust the priorities and strategies for tenant-to-tenant (T2T) migrations, such as IT integrations associated with M&As, and scrutinize the data involved based on complexity, usage patterns, and business criticality to carefully consider how to ensure seamless coexistence during the migration project.
Solutions Providers Must Keep Pace
Stay up to date with trends in your clients’ digital transformation strategies as they adapt to new ways people work, new technologies, and user demands – and deliver solutions that will enable them to achieve their goals.
