Insights


The industry insights pavilion is dedicated to help you navigate the profound changes in the telecommunications and cloud channel over the past year. Explore the emerging business models and mergers and acquisitions landscape. Understand how the customer's buying journey has evolved and how you must evolve to keep pace. Join discussion forums and networking lounges to weigh in on industry trends, insights and ideas.


Cloud Conventions 2021
May 12-14

View the On Demand Sessions

Navigate the "Next Normal"

On Demand Insights Sessions

Sold! Breaking Down the Decision to Sell

Get an inside look fromTim Mueller from ITExchangeNet as he talks to companies he navigated through the sales process

The Changing Landscape of Compliance

Join Darlene Geller-Stoff of Compliance Point as she leads a discussion on what regulations to pay attention to and how to make sure you are compliant and protected.

The Secrets to Improving the Value of Your Company

If you have thought about selling your business, there are steps you can take now to improve the price you receive when it's time to sell

View the On Demand Sessions >>

Network & Connect

Meet the Experts

Speakers and panelists joined the Meet the Expert lounges, available after sessions for attendees to take a deeper dive and join the conversation.

The Networking Lounge

The Cloud Coffee Corner opened each morning and the day ended with a casual lounge & Comedy Night on Thursday.

The Latest from Cloud Conventions 2021:


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Moving Beyond Owning the Relationship to Owning... Moving Beyond Owning the Relationship to Owning...

You've been getting commission checks for years and focusing your time on creating and building relationships with your customers. However, ...

May 13, 2021 Live Webinar
Live Webinar
0 Live-Webinar-Live-Webinar jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-Altaworx jplist-topic-customer jplist-topic-relationship 05/13/2021 0 508585 508585

Moving Beyond Owning the Relationship to Owning the Customer

Live Webinar

You've been getting commission checks for years and focusing your time on creating and building relationships with your customers. However, although ...

The Secrets to Improving the Value of Your Company The Secrets to Improving the Value of Your Company

Look around the industry and you'll find that more and more agencies, VARs and MSPs are now part of the mergers and acquisitions movement ...

May 13, 2021 On Demand Sessions
On Demand Sessions
1 On-Demand-Sessions-On-Demand-Sessions jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-VAR jplist-topic-msp 05/13/2021 0 508584 508584 Look around the industry and you'll find that more and more agencies, VARs and MSPs are now part of the mergers and acquisitions movement in the channel. If you have thought about selling your business, there are steps you can take now to improve the price you receive when it's time to sell. Join Curt Allen as he moderates a discussion with Matt LaHood from Clifton/Larson/Allen, the 8th largest accounting firm in the country with a specialized focus in the telecommunications and cloud industry. You'll learn how to improve the quality of your earnings and raise the value of your business. Interested in learning more about Cloud Conventions Virtual Events? Visit Cloud Conventions » Want to learn about Convey Services Partner Portals? Visit Convey Services »

The Secrets to Improving the Value of Your Company

On Demand Sessions

Look around the industry and you'll find that more and more agencies, VARs and MSPs are now part of the mergers and acquisitions movement in the ...

Rolling up of the Channel - A Unique Perspective... Rolling up of the Channel - A Unique Perspective...

Steve Braverman, principal in EagleTEQ Advisors is no stranger to the sell side of a channel business after selling his agency, master ...

May 13, 2021 On Demand Sessions
On Demand Sessions
2 On-Demand-Sessions-On-Demand-Sessions jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-EagleTEQ jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-M-A 05/13/2021 0 508583 508583 Steve Braverman, principal in EagleTEQ Advisors is no stranger to the sell side of a channel business after selling his agency, master agency and achieving a profitable exit as a partner in a technology provider. Steve leads a panel of familiar faces in the channel who have also made the decision to sell their business, become part of larger organizations and become part of new channel business models. Steve moderates what will be a unique look behind the scenes as these long-time channel business owners reveal their thoughts on the current M&A environment and insights into how and when to make the decision to sell your business. Interested in learning more about Cloud Conventions Virtual Events? Visit Cloud Conventions » Want to learn about Convey Services Partner Portals? Visit Convey Services »

Rolling up of the Channel - A Unique Perspective of the M&A Environment for Agencies

On Demand Sessions

Steve Braverman, principal in EagleTEQ Advisors is no stranger to the sell side of a channel business after selling his agency, master agency and ...

Sold! Breaking Down the Decision to Sell Sold! Breaking Down the Decision to Sell

The mergers and acquisitions market has never been hotter for the managed services provider, but many organizations think they are too ...

May 12, 2021 On Demand Sessions
On Demand Sessions
3 On-Demand-Sessions-On-Demand-Sessions jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-sales jplist-topic-ITExchangeNet 05/12/2021 0 508582 508582 The mergers and acquisitions market has never been hotter for the managed services provider, but many organizations think they are too small to attract interest. Join Tim Mueller from ITExchangeNet in a conversation with companies he took through the sales process. Learn what motivated the sale, the biggest misconception about the sales process and now that the sale is behind them, what might they have done differently. Interested in learning more about Cloud Conventions Virtual Events? Visit Cloud Conventions » Want to learn about Convey Services Partner Portals? Visit Convey Services »

Sold! Breaking Down the Decision to Sell

On Demand Sessions

The mergers and acquisitions market has never been hotter for the managed services provider, but many organizations think they are too small to ...

2021 Industry Trends - Moving from 2020's... 2021 Industry Trends - Moving from 2020's...

The past year, our customers had to pivot quickly just to keep their teams connected during the pandemic. As such, they did whatever they ...

May 12, 2021 On Demand Sessions
On Demand Sessions
4 On-Demand-Sessions-On-Demand-Sessions jplist-topic-industry jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-2021 05/12/2021 0 508579 508579 The past year, our customers had to pivot quickly just to keep their teams connected during the pandemic. As such, they did whatever they had to do just to keep their business's going. At the same time, they were consumed with messages about technologies that enable people to work from home. But what happens now? Well, we've proven two things: the first is that we were all pretty effective working remotely and two, it's not likely we'll ever go 100% back to the way it was. So, what are the strategic decisions that business leaders need to make now to ensure that they're connecting employees and customers alike in an effective and sustainable way? Companies are now making decisions on their eventual return to the office and they're evaluating their long-term strategies around communications, collaboration, and IT support. With that, they're determining which technologies require investment and which ones require consolidation. Evolve IP is enabling employees to Work Anywhere with enterprise solutions that integrate Microsoft Teams, Digital Workspaces, and Contact Center. Please join Scott Kinka, Evolve IP's Chief Strategy Officer, as he walks you through the 2021 industry trends your business needs to consider to prepare your the "Next Normal." Interested in learning more about Cloud Conventions Virtual Events? Visit Cloud Conventions » Want to learn about Convey Services Partner Portals? Visit Convey Services »

2021 Industry Trends - Moving from 2020's Temporary "fix" to a Permanent Remote Workforce Solution

On Demand Sessions

The past year, our customers had to pivot quickly just to keep their teams connected during the pandemic. As such, they did whatever they had to do ...

The Lunchbox with EagleTEQ Advisors The Lunchbox with EagleTEQ Advisors

Interested in learning more about Cloud Conventions Virtual Events? Visit Cloud Conventions » ...

May 12, 2021 On Demand Sessions
On Demand Sessions
5 On-Demand-Sessions-On-Demand-Sessions jplist-topic-EagleTEQ 05/12/2021 0 508578 508578 Interested in learning more about Cloud Conventions Virtual Events? Visit Cloud Conventions » Want to learn about Convey Services Partner Portals? Visit Convey Services »

The Lunchbox with EagleTEQ Advisors

On Demand Sessions

Interested in learning more about Cloud Conventions Virtual Events? Visit Cloud Conventions » ...

Mutlek Amrov Mutlek Amrov

Senior Channel Manager at Converigia

Click here to request a meetingMutlek Amrov, is a Senior Channel Manager at Converigia, a Pan-American Value-Added Distributor for ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
6 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Converigia jplist-topic-mutlek-amrov 0 509913 509913 Click here to request a meetingMutlek Amrov, is a Senior Channel Manager at Converigia, a Pan-American Value-Added Distributor for connectivity solutions. Mutlek's excellent support for his channel sales teams has been a key contributing factor in the rapid growth Convergia Channel Program.

Mutlek Amrov

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingMutlek Amrov, is a Senior Channel Manager at Converigia, a Pan-American Value-Added Distributor for connectivity ...

Justin Cooper Justin Cooper

EVP, Customer Success & Product at Alianza

Click here to request a meeting

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7 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Justin-Cooper jplist-topic-ALIANZA 0 510478 510478 Click here to request a meeting

Justin Cooper

Speaker Profile

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David Danto David Danto

Director of UC Strategy and Research Poly Director of Emerging Technology ...

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8 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-David-Danto 0 510473 510473 Click here to request a meeting

David Danto

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meeting

Mike Schmidtmann Mike Schmidtmann

Founder, Trans4mers

Click here to request a meeting Mike Schmidtmann has led Information Technology Sales Teams for more than 20 ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
9 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-mike-schmidtmann 0 509230 509230 Click here to request a meeting Mike Schmidtmann has led Information Technology Sales Teams for more than 20 years. He works with organizations throughout the United States to improve their sales recruiting, new business development, and profit growth. For the past six years, he has led the Trans4mers Peer Groups for Sales Leaders in the IT industry. Members of these groups consistently out-perform the industry in sales growth, profitability, and innovation. Mike produces the award-winning Trans4mers webinar series, and frequently writes for IT Publications on sales and automation topics. During the past 20 years Mike lead national and regional sales teams and recruited and hired more than 300 salespeople and 30 sales managers. Mike's clients benefit from his extensive experience and the insight and proven results he has achieved. He expanded and led a five-state region for Strategic Products and Services as a highly successful Avaya Business Partner and received national recognition and numerous awards, including the Avaya Largest Competitive Win-Back of the Year in 2005. While serving as National Sales Director for Inacom Communications and General Manager of the Mid-Atlantic for Strategic Products and Services, Mike's firm was ranked the Number One Telecommunications Reseller in the Washington Business Journal for three years in a row.

Mike Schmidtmann

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meeting Mike Schmidtmann has led Information Technology Sales Teams for more than 20 years. ...

Rick Beckers Rick Beckers

CEO, XaaS1

Click here to request a meetingFor the past 35 years I have been designing, installing, and supporting computers, cloud, telephone, video ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
10 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-rick-beckers 0 503560 503560 Click here to request a meetingFor the past 35 years I have been designing, installing, and supporting computers, cloud, telephone, video surveillance, Internet-of-Things and all forms of business technology. And now things have evolved so that it is all available "As-a-Service. On January 1, 2019 I launched a revolutionary company, XaaS1, that provides all things "Technology-as-a-Service. It's a new Industry 4.0 era of digital transformation and I'm out in front riding the wave!Specialties: Cloud & Traditional Computer networking (LAN, WAN, & Wireless), Telecommunications, Analog & VoIP Telephony, Analog & IP Video Surveillance, Internet-of-Things, Technology-as-a-Service, & Outsourced CIO.Seeking board and advisory positions with progressive technology organizations. 

Rick Beckers

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingFor the past 35 years I have been designing, installing, and supporting computers, cloud, telephone, video ...

Bruce Ahern Bruce Ahern

Chairman of Convey Holdings

Click here to request a meeting Bruce Ahern is an experienced marketing professional, focusing on high-level communication strategy, ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
11 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-bruce-ahern jplist-topic-convey-services jplist-topic-cloud-conventions 0 509188 509188 Click here to request a meeting Bruce Ahern is an experienced marketing professional, focusing on high-level communication strategy, sales implementation and positioning for acquisition. Ahern's experience includes the management of investor relations, M&A and corporate information programs designed to strengthen a company's perceived value and market reach.Ahern is a respected author and publisher. He built a family of technical publications and is a frequently quoted speaker, commentator and industry analyst.

Bruce Ahern

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meeting Bruce Ahern is an experienced marketing professional, focusing on high-level communication strategy, sales ...

Forrest Derr Forrest Derr

President, Altaworx

Click here to request a meetingForrest Derr is President of Altaworx, a state-of-the-art UCaaS provider and a fully Integrated ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
12 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Forrest-Derr jplist-topic-Altaworx jplist-topic-UCaaS 0 508502 508502 Click here to request a meetingForrest Derr is President of Altaworx, a state-of-the-art UCaaS provider and a fully Integrated telecommunication service provider of data, wireless and IoT connectivity. Altaworx provides business telephone service, hosted PBX, and IP data services to organizations across the US, Canada, and Mexico. Altaworx helps channel partners build their businesses equity value with innovative white label UCaaS voice services, LTE failover, SD-WAN products. Altaworx helps channel partners build their businesses equity value with innovative white label UCaaS voice services, LTE failover, SD-WAN products. We combine our white label products with a turn-key billing platform that allows our channel partners own their customers and build equity value. Forrest has been with Altaworx for almost seven years running technology, marketing, finance and automation. Prior to Altaworx, Forrest specialized in the office equipment industry in warehousing, technology infrastructure, and distribution.

Forrest Derr

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingForrest Derr is President of Altaworx, a state-of-the-art UCaaS provider and a fully Integrated telecommunication ...

Doug Green Doug Green

Editor and Publisher of TR Publications

Click here to request a meeting Having recorded over 2,000 podcasts on UC, Doug is one of the most prolific podcasters and content creators ...

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Speaker Profile
13 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Doug-Green jplist-topic-TR-Publications 0 509326 509326

Doug Green

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meeting Having recorded over 2,000 podcasts on UC, Doug is one of the most prolific podcasters and content creators in UC and ...

Curt Allen Curt Allen

Managing Partner, EagleTEQ

Click here to request a meetingCurt has deep experience on both the provider and partner side of the technology space with roles as global ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
14 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-curt-allen 0 503563 503563 Click here to request a meetingCurt has deep experience on both the provider and partner side of the technology space with roles as global channel leader for multi billion dollar public companies as well as leading one of the premier master agencies for 12 years. Curt also has a background in resale, wholesale, and whitelabel business in network, collaboration, UCaaS and CCaaS. Known as a dynamic channel leader and talented speaker, Allen excels at delivering data driven GTM strategies with specific and actionable tactics to execute that are supported and understood from the boardroom to the street. Allen's areas of specialization at EagleTEQ are GTM, sales process, partner compensation, partner programs, routes to market, revenue and profitability growth, and team building/ development.

Curt Allen

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingCurt has deep experience on both the provider and partner side of the technology space with roles as global channel ...

Craig Arends Craig Arends

Managing Principal- Private Equity Industry, Clifton/Larson/Allen

Click here to request a meeting Craig Arends is a principal at CLA and is the managing principal of CLA's private equity practice. Craig ...

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Speaker Profile
15 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Craig-Arends jplist-topic-Clifton-Larson-Allen 0 508739 508739 Click here to request a meeting Craig Arends is a principal at CLA and is the managing principal of CLA's private equity practice. Craig brings a concentration of experience in providing accounting and transaction structuring advice for leveraged recapitalizations, purchase accounting and SEC reporting, assessing quality of earnings, and GAAP accounting. He has far-reaching experience with critiquing financial models and reviewing target companies' financial performance to identify cost reductions and/or operating efficiencies Craig has more than 25 years of experience in public accounting serving public companies, private equity groups, and companies, including a term as principal in charge of a Big Four Capital Markets Group in Moscow, Russia. He has led financial accounting due diligence projects for private equity investor groups and venture capital funds, primarily in the technology, communications, and manufacturing industries, as well as assisting with Foreign Corrupt Practice Act matters ranging from investigation of payments made, validation of compliance with corporate policies, and review of proposed transactions to ensure compliance.

Craig Arends

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meeting Craig Arends is a principal at CLA and is the managing principal of CLA's private equity practice. Craig brings a ...

Cardi Prinzi Cardi Prinzi

Partner, EagleTEQ

Click here to request a meetingIn a career spanning four decades, Cardi has gained a wealth of experience as a sales and marketing leader ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
16 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-cardi-prinzi 0 508588 508588 Click here to request a meetingIn a career spanning four decades, Cardi has gained a wealth of experience as a sales and marketing leader for telecommunications and technology companies focused on the B2B market from SMB to Enterprise. He has had success throughout the US and Internationally in large corporations through early-stage start-ups - both public & private, and has been involved in multiple mergers, acquisitions, and integrations. Recognized as a thought leader, he excels in "connecting-the-dots" between product, marketing, and sales. His opinions on sales and marketing strategies are sought out by large service providers and technology distributors. His areas of focus at EagleTEQ are Go-to-Market strategies and tactics, international sales and marketing, accentuating unique value propositions, and organizational structure.

Cardi Prinzi

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingIn a career spanning four decades, Cardi has gained a wealth of experience as a sales and marketing leader for ...

Scott Kinka Scott Kinka

Chief Strategist, Innovator and Founding Partner, Evolve IP

Click here to request a meetingVeteran commercial technologist with heavy experience in bringing MSP and cloud offerings to the midmarket ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
17 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Scott-Kinka 0 503568 503568 Click here to request a meetingVeteran commercial technologist with heavy experience in bringing MSP and cloud offerings to the midmarket and enterprise. Chief Strategist, Innovator and Founding Partner of Evolve IP.40 under 40 award Recipient in 2013, and Philadelphia's Top IT Innovator in 2014, Philadelphia's Top Tech Disruptor in 2017.Recognized Technology Expert having appeared on CBS and Fox news, as well as featured in USA Today, CIO Magazine, Business Week, and Inc., among others. 

Scott Kinka

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingVeteran commercial technologist with heavy experience in bringing MSP and cloud offerings to the midmarket and ...

Scott Forbush Scott Forbush

Chief Revenue Officer of UPSTACK

Click here to request a meetingScott Forbush is Chief Revenue Officer of UPSTACK-the fast-growing platform that transforms the buying ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
18 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Scott-Forbush jplist-topic-UPSTACK 0 508501 508501 Click here to request a meetingScott Forbush is Chief Revenue Officer of UPSTACK-the fast-growing platform that transforms the buying experience for businesses seeking cloud and internet infrastructure solutions-where he is responsible for strategic revenue growth, platform adoption and leads the company's agent investment strategy.  A 25-year veteran of the telecom industry, Forbush has served in various executive sales and channel sales positions. Most recently, he was the Senior Vice President of Global Sales for Telarus, where he led the master agency's six regional sales teams to impressive growth during his tenure. Previously, Forbush was Vice President of Indirect Sales at Zayo Group and Vice President of Indirect Sales at Electric Lightwave. 

Scott Forbush

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingScott Forbush is Chief Revenue Officer of UPSTACK-the fast-growing platform that transforms the buying experience for ...

Rob Molinaro Rob Molinaro

Senior Partner Development Manager, Telarus

Click here to request a meetingRob Molinaro became the Senior Partner Development Manager for Telarus in 2020, one of the nation's leading ...

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19 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Rob-Molinaro jplist-topic-Telarus 0 508719 508719 Click here to request a meetingRob Molinaro became the Senior Partner Development Manager for Telarus in 2020, one of the nation's leading master agencies. Telarus holds contracts with the world's leading cloud voice, contact center, and cybersecurity providers to it easier and more profitable for trusted advisors to sell and source UCaaS and Contact Center solutions. The Telarus GeoQuote platform combines real-time carrier pricing with advanced research features and branded proposals. Telarus' experienced sales staff is strategically focused on enterprise WAN and high-capacity bandwidth solutions, making it easier to find the best offer, every time. Telarus has been named the top master agent by the members of the Telecom Association in each of the past three years, the first and only company in the carrier channel to accomplish this feat. In his position as Senior Partner Development Manager, Rob manages and grows an elite and strategic partner base including the recruitment, training and collaboration with partners affiliated with Telarus. He translates training offered by Telarus providers for partners to have the tools to identify services that will produce monthly recurring revenue and commissions month over month. Prior to Telarus, Rob spent 26 years serving as Vice President of Chorus Communications, Philadelphia-based technology consulting firm positioned as one of the largest master agencies on the East Coast.

Rob Molinaro

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingRob Molinaro became the Senior Partner Development Manager for Telarus in 2020, one of the nation's leading master ...

Rickie Richey Rickie Richey

Founder and Visionary, Altaworx

Click here to request a meetingRickie Richey is the founder and visionary of Altaworx, a state-of-the-art UCaaS provider and a fully ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
20 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Rickey-Richey jplist-topic-Altaworx jplist-topic-UCaaS 0 508503 508503 Click here to request a meetingRickie Richey is the founder and visionary of Altaworx, a state-of-the-art UCaaS provider and a fully Integrated telecommunication service provider of data, wireless and IoT connectivity. Altaworx provides business telephone service, hosted PBX, and IP data services to organizations across the US, Canada, and Mexico. Altaworx helps channel partners build their businesses equity value with innovative white label UCaaS voice services, LTE failover, SD-WAN products. We combine our white label products with a turn-key billing platform that allows our channel partners own their customers and build equity value It is the Mission of Altaworx to have a meaningful impact on our clients and partners organizations by learning about the current state and their short and long-term goals. We assist them in finding the right technologies to meet those goals. We then put our 18 years of carrier service experience to work to help implement those solutions. These solutions include UCaaS, IoT (Cisco Jasper, AT&T Control Center), and Altaworx Catapult billing as a service platform.)

Rickie Richey

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingRickie Richey is the founder and visionary of Altaworx, a state-of-the-art UCaaS provider and a fully Integrated ...

Mike Cromwell Mike Cromwell

Managing Partner, EagleTEQ Advisors

Click here to request a meetingMr. Cromwell works with innovative emerging technology solution providers who are laser focused on driving ...

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Speaker Profile
21 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-mike-cromwell 0 508587 508587 Click here to request a meetingMr. Cromwell works with innovative emerging technology solution providers who are laser focused on driving Digital Transformation of the Enterprise, as well as companies enabling channel partners, who are increasingly being entrusted by IT organizations to serve as trusted advisors to CIOs.During a 26 year career in technology sales, sales & marketing leadership and executive roles, Mike has led organizations ranging from head of sales & marketing at a $1.5B company to launching new business units. He led teams selling to & supporting nearly every customer segment, and through multiple sales distribution channels.Digital Transformation is driving innovation & an accelerating pace of adoption of emerging technologies such as SD-WAN, UCaaS, CCaaS, IoT, and Managed Security. With it comes increasing complexities for IT organizations, disruption to legacy tech companies, and an entirely new set of challenges to grow.Amidst the change & disruption, it is more important than ever for technology companies to be maniacally focused on customer experience, partner enablement, constant innovation, building a winning culture, having the right team in place, and most importantly the ability to EXECUTE.Through a combination of experience in leading organizations through insurmountable obstacles, business transformations, and building new businesses along with learning from some of the industry's top executives & thought leaders, he everages those real-life experiences to help technology companies and their distributors who are committed to transformational growth.

Mike Cromwell

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingMr. Cromwell works with innovative emerging technology solution providers who are laser focused on driving Digital ...

Matt LaHood Matt LaHood

Managing Principal, Telecommunications Industry CLA Clifton/Larson/Allen ...

Click here to request a meetingMatt LaHood, Managing Principal, Telecommunications IndustryCliftonLarsonAllenMatt LaHood is the Managing ...

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22 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Matt-LaHood 0 503565 503565 Click here to request a meetingMatt LaHood, Managing Principal, Telecommunications IndustryCliftonLarsonAllenMatt LaHood is the Managing Principal for the Telecommunications Industry for CliftonLarsonAllen, the 8th largest accounting firm in the United States serving over 200K clients with 7,400 professionals in 120 locations. Matt became a principal of CLA after his firm Global Strategic Accountants in Alpharetta merged with the firm in November of 2020. In his current role at CLA and in his former role as CEO and Managing Partner of GSA, Matt focused his practice on the communications industry to help clients enhance their regulatory and tax posture, enhance the quality of their earnings and enable clients to increase growth and revenue.

Matt LaHood

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingMatt LaHood, Managing Principal, Telecommunications IndustryCliftonLarsonAllenMatt LaHood is the Managing Principal ...

Ken Bisnoff Ken Bisnoff

Founding Partner, EagleTEQ

Click here to request a meetingKen Bisnoff has over 30 years of experience leading high-performing organizations through periods of rapid ...

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Speaker Profile
23 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-ken-bisnoff 0 508586 508586 Click here to request a meetingKen Bisnoff has over 30 years of experience leading high-performing organizations through periods of rapid organizational growth, industry change and sales-driven expansion. Repeatedly honored and recognized for his accomplishments and expertise in B2B sales, channel partner & marketing leadership, his ability to drive strong growth, profitability and process improvement was a key element in the growth and profitability of an industry-leader in the managed services and telecommunications arenas.Ken was a Founding Member of the TPx Communications (formerly TelePacific) executive team and played an integral part in that company's explosive growth and evolution from small startup regional CLEC to billion-dollar national managed services powerhouse. He served as a Senior Vice President there for more than 22 years, leading direct and agent channel sales, Human Resources, Marketing Communications, Sales Compensation and Business Development efforts, among others. Ken also had responsibility for TPx's M&A due diligence and sales force integrations as the company used that strategy to power rapid growth.

Ken Bisnoff

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingKen Bisnoff has over 30 years of experience leading high-performing organizations through periods of rapid ...

Steve Braverman Steve Braverman

Founding Partner, EagleTEQ

Click here to request a meetingSteve has multiple successful start up ventures under his belt and is a born entrepreneur. Recognized as an ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
24 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-steve-braverman 0 503564 503564 Click here to request a meetingSteve has multiple successful start up ventures under his belt and is a born entrepreneur. Recognized as an innovator, visionary leader, and sales and marketing expert, he has brought and helped bring businesses to market that have changed the technology landscape and partner community. Braverman is sought out by leaders in the space for his "out of the box" thinking and ability to see problems from unique perspectives. His ability to break complex challenges into manageable and understandable pieces makes him the perfect bridge between executive leaders and the people who need to execute the plan. Steve's areas of specialization at EagleTEQ are GTM strategy, marketing and branding, M&A, revenue and profitability growth, and business planning, and channel programs.Most recently, Steve served as Co-Founder and President of Coeo Solutions, a geographically redundant, facilities-based telecommunications provider of SIP, SD-WAN and UCaaS services. During his time at Coeo, Steve created the brand message and marketing automation and built the indirect sales channel. He also helped implement the Rockefeller Habits,  guiding the company with a KPI focus and weekly huddles. Prior to Coeo, Steve was the Co-Founder and CEO of X4 Solutions. Responsible for day-to-day management and marketing, Steve grew X4 into one of the top 10 largest telecom Master agencies in the United States. In 2016, Steve led the sale of X4 to Sandler Partners, which created an unprecedented valuation for the industry.In his earlier years, Steve founded Telelink Communications which was the nation'sfirst Nextlink (XO) distributor. Telelink became a direct and indirect sales agency, representing more than a dozen telecom providers and 40 top PBX dealers. In 2004, Telelink was merged with two companies to become X4 Solutions. Steve earned a Bachelor's Degree in Economics Management from Ohio Wesleyan University, has served on numberous telecom advisory boards, is an active member of YPO and resides in the Chicago area with his wife and six children.

Steve Braverman

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingSteve has multiple successful start up ventures under his belt and is a born entrepreneur. Recognized as an innovator, ...

Tim Mueller Tim Mueller

Strategic Growth Initiatives and Operations, IT ExchangeNet

Click here to request a meetingTim Mueller is an American businessman specializing in the growth of technology and communications ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
25 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-Tim-Mueller 0 503567 503567 Click here to request a meetingTim Mueller is an American businessman specializing in the growth of technology and communications companies. With a broad range of experience in corporate, early stage and government, he is best known for identifying next generation technologies, assembling teams to leverage these opportunities, and building cultures for success.Tim is the CEO of IT ExchangeNet, a marketplace connecting global buyers and investors with founders of IT-enabled businesses, as well as 3D ExchangeNet, a collective of global additive manufacturing leaders, 3D start-ups, and mature 3D print businesses.Prior, Tim was CEO and Vice Chairman of Phylogy, a Silicon Valley start-up offering groundbreaking broadband technology to telephone carriers globally. In 2010, Phylogy was ranked 243rd on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies in the United States. The company was acquired by Actelis Networks in March 2011.In the early 90s, Tim capitalized on the Internet's growing commercial applications as co-founder and CEO of Vantage One Communications, where he accomplished numerous "firsts" by uniting old school communications with the untapped muscle of the Internet. He was named Entrepreneur of the Year by USA TODAY/ NASDAQ/Ernst & Young in 1997, and received the Pillar Award for community service from SBN in 1999. After expanding nationally, Vantage One sold in 1999 to the private equity firm GTCR.In between Vantage One and Phylogy, Tim turned to public service as Deputy Mayor/Chief Development Officer for the City of Cleveland (Ohio), leading initiatives in city planning, housing, and economic development that resulted in more than $1B of private investment during the last decade.A life-long musician, Tim served on the Board of the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame & Museum for 15 years and Chaired its Technology Committee. He is an advisor to Morino Ventures, served on the Boards of OneCommunity and Union Home Mortgage, and is a frequent lecturer at the Weatherhead School of Business at CWRU.

Tim Mueller

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingTim Mueller is an American businessman specializing in the growth of technology and communications companies. With a ...

Bill Patchett Bill Patchett

CEO, P2 Broadband and P2 Business Solutions

Click here to request a meetingAs founder of the company, Mr. Patchett, has also served as CEO since 2008. Under his professional ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
26 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-bill-patchett jplist-topic-p2-broadband jplist-topic-p2-business-solutions jplist-topic-p2 0 508500 508500 Click here to request a meetingAs founder of the company, Mr. Patchett, has also served as CEO since 2008. Under his professional leadership P2 Business Solutions has come to be recognized as a premier Master Agency that provides ongoing support to thousands of agents throughout the nation. William, as CEO of P2 Business Solutions, is responsible for the evaluation and maintenance of P2 Business Solution's strategic relationships with all of the companies' cloud, mobility and telecommunications partners. Further, William is Co-Founder of Technology Solutions Xchange (TSX) which is an association of master agents within the telecommunications and cloud space offering its master agent members a diverse and expanded portfolio consisting of innovative solutions specific to connectivity, cloud, hosting, cybersecurity and loT vendors. TSX, while educating its master agents and helping to develop new sales partners, focused on master agents who were steadfast in their efforts to evolve their company by way of exploring new opportunities and incorporating creative techniques needed to approach the market. With over 250 supplier contracts within the portfolio today, TSX serves its valued customer base, from the SMB to the Enterprise space, with only the highest quality and most effective broad-reaching products and services.

Bill Patchett

Speaker Profile

Click here to request a meetingAs founder of the company, Mr. Patchett, has also served as CEO since 2008. Under his professional leadership P2 ...

Carolyn Bradfield Carolyn Bradfield

Founder & CEO, Convey Services & Cloud Conventions

Carolyn Bradfield is a seasoned CEO with 5 successful start-up ventures, 4 self-financed, achieving profitable exits and strong returns for ...

Speaker Profile
Speaker Profile
27 Speaker-Profile-Speaker-Profile jplist-topic-carolyn-bradfield jplist-topic-cloud-conventions jplist-topic-convey-services 0 508605 508605 Carolyn Bradfield is a seasoned CEO with 5 successful start-up ventures, 4 self-financed, achieving profitable exits and strong returns for investors. A pioneer in the conferencing industry, Bradfield founded several of the industry's largest and most successful conferencing technology providers. Since 1991, she has been a driving force behind the adoption of innovation in the conferencing industry leading with the creation of a fully automated conferencing experience for customers. Bradfield has spent three decades offering communications solutions to businesses to improve productivity, drive revenue and reduce cost.

Carolyn Bradfield

Speaker Profile

Carolyn Bradfield is a seasoned CEO with 5 successful start-up ventures, 4 self-financed, achieving profitable exits and strong returns for ...

7 Cloud Computing Trends to Look Out For in 2021 7 Cloud Computing Trends to Look Out For in 2021

February 11, 2021 by Samuel O'Brien

Article written by Samuel O'Brien and published on February 11, 2021 to customerthink.com. 2020 was a huge year for digital transformation. ...

Cloud Computing Trends
28 Cloud-Computing-Trends-Cloud-Computing-Trends jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-computing jplist-topic-edge jplist-topic-wifi jplist-topic-network jplist-topic-business jplist-topic-transition jplist-topic-transform jplist-topic-adapt jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-2020 0 506542 506542

7 Cloud Computing Trends to Look Out For in 2021

Cloud Computing Trends

Article written by Samuel O'Brien and published on February 11, 2021 to customerthink.com. 2020 was a huge year for digital transformation. With the ...

SEVEN CLOUD COMPUTING TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2021 SEVEN CLOUD COMPUTING TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2021

March 17, 2021

Article posted to hava.io on March 17, 2021.Continuing on a stellar trajectory and partly enhanced by the pandemic, the adoption of cloud ...

Cloud Computing Trends
29 Cloud-Computing-Trends-Cloud-Computing-Trends jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-emerging jplist-topic-transform jplist-topic-engaging jplist-topic-tech jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-2020 jplist-topic-transition jplist-topic-adapt 0 506537 506537

SEVEN CLOUD COMPUTING TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2021

Cloud Computing Trends

Article posted to hava.io on March 17, 2021.Continuing on a stellar trajectory and partly enhanced by the pandemic, the adoption of cloud ...

7 Top Cloud Computing Trends That Will Transform... 7 Top Cloud Computing Trends That Will Transform...

December 11, 2020 by Henry Garcia

Blog written by Henry Garcia and posted on Server Space website.Sometime in the future, Covid-19 will be referred to in history as one of ...

Cloud Computing Trends
30 Cloud-Computing-Trends-Cloud-Computing-Trends jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-computer jplist-topic-computing jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-tech jplist-topic-technology jplist-topic-data jplist-topic-transform 0 506060 506060 Blog written by Henry Garcia and posted on Server Space website.Sometime in the future, Covid-19 will be referred to in history as one of the greatest disruptions to ever occur in business models across industries, in the 20th century. This is the year when every business had to learn how to operate virtually. The gym lovers had to take sessions through online streaming services, corporate meetings went virtual, and so much more! In the tech world, especially the cloud computing industry, the cloud service providers had to increase their level of innovation to help businesses handle the chaos. Despite the rise of trends in cloud computing such as the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) and, big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), the most important innovations leaned towards helping businesses face the challenges created by the pandemic. This led to a spike in cloud market revenue for Q12020 $29 billion. With 94% of workloads expected to run on the cloud, it's critical to underpin the cloud computing trends to expect in 2021. To help your business prepare for any changes in cloud computing models, we have created a list of the 7 top cloud computing trends in 2021, and how they can affect your business and the tech industry at large: 1. Moving Cloud Towards The Edge The 'Edge' simply refers to a computing model that optimizes web applications and internet devices by reducing the data source distance. According to Forrester, components such as the rapid 5G rollout, fast AI & ML integration into cloud computing, and other relevant factors will push the cloud towards the edge. Some of the advantages of edge computing include easy deployment for services in the case of developers, and the ability of the cloud to solve the gap existing between the cloud and end-users. However, this may create a problem when it comes to providing high levels of data security. 2. AI and ML Will Revolutionize Cloud Computing AI will be an integral ingredient in driving the cloud towards its full potential in 2021. Think about what the cloud, in collaboration with AI could do to anticipated inventions such as smart cities, self-driving cars, automated health checks, among other inventions. Through cloud computing services such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), or Platform as a Service (PaaS), developers working with low budgets will be able to utilize the full power of Artificial Intelligence(AI) to drive the world to a more advanced civilization. Machine learning will continue playing a critical role to keep data centers running efficiently. 3. Increased Demand For Private, Hybrid Cloud, and Multicloud The argument to choose between private, public, or hybrid may never end. All cloud solutions have their portions of charm and poison in terms of performance, ease of use, data control, and security. Many organizations have learned the hard way that there is no one cloud solution that could work for all enterprises, thus turning into cloud deployment models that give them the freedom to do what they want. Public cloud is perfect for storage, private cloud is perfect for organizations dealing with sensitive data, and hybrid is for those that want a taste of both worlds. Due to the difference in services offered by cloud service providers, many organizations will be turning into multicloud in the near future. In fact, according to Gartner, 80% of customers will be adopting multicloud into their cloud strategy. 4. Rise of The Cloud Native As mentioned earlier, the rise of the multi-cloud is imminent. To activate the experience to be brought about by this change, cloud native technologies will need to be added to the equation. Here are some components that make up the cloud native technology stack: 1. Containerization With projected revenue growth of 24 million by 2024, container management repositories hold the most power when it comes to cloud-native capabilities. This is because they can perform tasks such as workload transportation between multiple channels (on-premise, the cloud, and on the edge.) 2. Serverless computing Being among the 5 best fastest-growing Platform as a Service(PaaS) cloud services in 2020, serverless computing depicts a cloud paradigm that enables developers to build applications across different clouds with different viewpoints. 3. Orchestration Platforms These platforms, like Kubernetes, reduce the complexity of container management across different cloud service providers. 5. Increased need for, Data security, privacy, and Regulations All the trends we have discussed earlier bring with them a whole new level of innovation, and opportunities, but also a high level of data security risk. According to LogicMonitor, IDC, 33.3% of organizations struggle with cloud adoption because of data security. There are many questions on how the integration of new technologies such as 5G, serverless computing, edge computing, and many others will affect the cloud in relation to cloud security. Cloud service providers are therefore expected to come up with sophisticated mechanisms that will ensure cloud data security. 6. Virtual Desktops May Be The Workplace of The Future Am writing this blog post on my Chromebook. Why do I tell you this you ask? Because this is a perfect example of what a virtual desktop means. Unlike Amazon and Microsoft who offer Desktop as a Service through workspaces and windows virtual desktop respectively, Google offers this through Chromebook devices. The idea behind this model is to have the entire workstation delivered to our devices. Not only does it improve productivity, but also cuts off operation costs. These, along with more advantages make it likely for this functionality to be adopted in 2021. 7. Public Cloud Revenue Will Skyrocket The pandemic reshaped and re-defined the cloud to enable businesses to be able to operate remotely. Many businesses found themselves desperate enough to sacrifice their customer experience and quality for cost-efficiency. This led to the accelerated growth of public cloud adoption, along with revenue. Forester predicts that this trend will continue to spike, mainly because the aftermath of the pandemic will likely be forwarded to 2021. The public cloud infrastructure revenue is expected to hit $120 billion in 2021 (35% increase). Embracing The Future Cloud With computer processing speeds doubling almost every 18 months, it is difficult to underpin the direction which leading technology components such as cloud computing will take in years to come. Despite the uncertainty, we still believe that cloud computing is the future and that it will shape society for the better in years to come.

7 Top Cloud Computing Trends That Will Transform the Tech Industry in 2021

Cloud Computing Trends

Blog written by Henry Garcia and posted on Server Space website.Sometime in the future, Covid-19 will be referred to in history as one of the ...

Guide to 2021 Cloud Computing Trends Guide to 2021 Cloud Computing Trends

December 8, 2020 by Consolidated Technologies, Inc.

Article published to Consolidated Technologies, Inc. on December 8, 2020 The cloud has existed on the Internet since the late 1990s, ...

Cloud Computing Trends
31 Cloud-Computing-Trends-Cloud-Computing-Trends jplist-topic-compute jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-transformations 0 506052 506052

Guide to 2021 Cloud Computing Trends

Cloud Computing Trends

Article published to Consolidated Technologies, Inc. on December 8, 2020 The cloud has existed on the Internet since the late 1990s, though it ...

25 cloud trends for 2021 and beyond 25 cloud trends for 2021 and beyond

March 4, 2021 from Accenture.com

Article from March 4, 2021. Published on Accenture.com "Data is currency." Over the past decade, this phrase has permeated corporate ...

Cloud Computing Trends
32 Cloud-Computing-Trends-Cloud-Computing-Trends jplist-topic-accenture jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-compute jplist-topic-transformation jplist-topic-2021 0 506045 506045 Article from March 4, 2021. Published on Accenture.com "Data is currency." Over the past decade, this phrase has permeated corporate culture from Silicon Valley to Stockholm to Sydney. Unlike Wall Street, data is traded on and through the cloud; tethering your ability to leverage your data to your cloud capabilities. Since 92 percent of organizations already are at least somewhat in the cloud, we've compiled an exhaustive list of cloud trends for 2021 and beyond to help you to make the most of this technology.Since 2010, the global cloud services industry has risen year over year to reach a $370 billion valuation in 2020, marking a growth of over 380 percent in ten short years. However, when put into context with the fact that 90 percent of the world's data in 2013 was created between 2011 and 2012, it's inevitable that more data would invite the need for more data storage. At the end of 2020, the virtual weight of all the information in the world was 44 zettabytes (trillion gigabytes), a figure featuring 21 zeroes. Not surprisingly, around 50 percent of all corporate data is stored in the cloud, as of 2020.The cloud is more than an efficient storage solution-it's a unique platform for generating data and innovative solutions to leverage that data. This intense focus on adaptability has facilitated a form of service-oriented thinking previously thought to be unattainable. The ability to specialize has expanded, allowing organizations to innovate their business models and processes in pursuit of their core competencies and business goals without compromising on agility.2020 has been a pivotal year for the cloud as it played a lead role in facilitating remote work solutions. It allowed organizations to fuse existing organizational processes with novel cloud technologies to allow for greater flexibility during these uncertain times. COVID-19 has facilitated a focus on cloud capabilities as companies compete to thrive in this new remote work environment. The cloud has become an essential part of continuing business and is the key to unlocking organizational growth. Worldwide spending on public cloud services is even forecast to grow 18.4 percent in 2021.Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 18.4 percent in 2021. [Source: Gartner]As we move closer to a cloud-based world, organizations looking to create an advantage for themselves must understand the ebbs and flows of the cloud services industry. We have compiled a list of 25 trends that we believe will help you contextualize your existing cloud capabilities and identify areas that could lead to future growth.Table of contentsSustainable cloudCloud costsEdge computingMulticloudHybrid cloudPublic cloudAs a serviceCloud securityCloud coalitionsCloud automationPrivate cloudCloud agnosticismContainerizationArtificial intelligenceData fabricsServerless solutionsIndustry-optimized cloudHuman cloudCloud realityBlockcloudCloud monitoringCloud-native applicationsApplication mobilityDistributed cloudOpen source cloud01. Sustainable cloud2020 has made it clear that consumers don't just view organizations as a catalog of their top goods or services, but also as a representation of values. Your approach to the environment will strongly determine how customers view your business. In fact, 80 percent of consumers list sustainability as the most important issue to consider when evaluating organizations-out of nine potential areas of concern. Creating value at the expense of values will antagonize you to a large subset of your audience, half of whom do not hesitate to abandon brands that violate their personal ethics.Our research indicates that higher environmental, social and governance performances endowed organizations with lower volatility and 4.7 times higher margins. 44 percent of CEOs are already planning net-zero futures for their organizations with this in mind, so it is going to be increasingly important for you to take advantage of the efficient cloud operations available to you.Companies we partner with have seen their energy consumption fall by up to 65 percent while simultaneously reducing their carbon emissions by up to 84 percent, simply by migrating areas of their infrastructure to the public cloud. Focusing your resources on your essential processes will significantly reduce your server requirements and consequently, your energy wastage.Public cloud migrations can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 59 million tons per year-the equivalent of having 22 million fewer cars on the road! This is an important cloud trend that will only become more important in years to come02. Cloud costsIn 2011, the cloud expenditure of an average company was roughly $6,500. In 2020, this number has risen to $10,000-per month. This is, in fact, a conservative estimate, as 33 percent of organizations had an annual cloud budget spanning between $2.4 million and $12 million. Internet of Things, Container-as-a-Service and artificial intelligence are the fastest-growing cloud services, corroborating IT professionals' claim that cloud optimization is the primary focus of their organizations.With 30 percent of cloud budgets being wasted, organizations are looking to streamline cloud costs and optimize cloud services. While some of the onus falls on cloud providers to deliver more cost-efficient architectural solutions, third-party optimization tools and services can expect to see significant investment as well. Nonetheless, your focus must remain on developing and strengthening your native optimization capabilities as you cannot leverage the array of solutions at your disposal without an analytical understanding of your priorities, prospects and deficiencies. The essential first step to optimization is configuring your unique baseline to your organizational terms.This is the step most businesses seem to be struggling with, on average under-budgeting their cloud requirements by 23 percent. With greater fluency in cloud operations, however, organizations will learn to plan and manage their budgets better.03. Edge computingOne weak point of current cloud computing is that it's handled by a limited number of providers who dominate the space. These large, centralized data-processing centers tie your computing and storage ability to the proximity, bandwidth and resources provided. With 127 new IoT devices connecting to the Internet every second, issues of latency, bandwidth, and security are inevitable. Intelligent technologies like AI and robotics require greater speed and processing power and edge computing is the answer to capitalizing on these advancements and shaping them in the years ahead.  Edge computing is an emerging cloud trend that involves building localized data centers for computation and storage at or near where they are needed. This offsets the load on the cloud and improves the deployment and running of a wide array of applications. Instead of relying on centralized networks, computing and management are handled locally.By bringing active management and data storage closer to the source, edge computing relieves the latency issues associated with communicating with a central server. It also increases bandwidth by storing locally and only connecting to the cloud when necessary. For businesses dealing with privacy and compliance issues, a locally managed data center means a higher level of information security. As connected devices and IoT developments continue to advance, edge computing will become essential to harnessing and managing these technologies.04. MulticloudWhile most organizations do not make the jump from on-premises to multi-vendor deployments in one go, 93 percent of enterprises have built up to a multicloud strategy. As more workloads are migrated to the cloud, the industry is becoming more sensitive to the unique requirements of different processes. An average of 3.4 public clouds and 3.9 private clouds are being deployed or tested per organization, allowing them to tailor their cloud capabilities to their cloud requirements.More organizations will develop entirely cloud-native applications with little to no architectural dependence on a specific cloud provider.Moving forward, more organizations will develop entirely cloud-native applications with little to no architectural dependence on a specific cloud provider. Cultivating a firmer understanding of their cloud needs and the cloud industry will teach organizations to develop with clearer intent than before. However, this paradigm shift is also dependent on the evolution of cloud capabilities, as time-to-market is steeply improving and the ability to integrate changing workloads enables organizations to take advantage of even the smallest trends.Tailoring cloud solutions to your individual processes is an ongoing process, but one that requires consistent governance and investment to translate into savings. Though this approach alone will not resolve your application portability issue, multi-cloud strategies focused on risk mitigation, functionality and feature acquisition will significantly improve your cyber posture.05. Hybrid cloudWhile a multi-cloud approach leverages the differing allowances of different providers-regardless of public or private cloud, a hybrid cloud approach categorically focuses on taking advantage of both, the private and the public cloud.A well-integrated and balanced hybrid strategy gives businesses the best of both worlds. They can scale further and faster at the behest of the public cloud's innovative and flexible services without losing out on the higher cost efficiency, reaction speed and regulatory compliance that go hand in hand with the capabilities of the private cloud.To keep pace with the development of cloud technologies, 87 percent of enterprises have already adopted hybrid cloud strategies and an estimated growth rate of 17 percent has the hybrid cloud industry pegged to inflate from a valuation of $44.6 billion in 2018 to almost $100 billion by 2023. Over that period, a major development will be the introduction of more hybrid technologies like Red Hat's Openshift that enables compatible working across platforms and clouds. The distinction between clouds could then shift from 'private' and 'public', to 'dedicated' and 'shared'.06. Public cloudOur research finds that migrating areas of your business to the public cloud can cut your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by as much as 40 percent. That number will only increase as top public cloud providers AWS, Azure and Google improve their services and prices to strengthen their competitive posture.However, harsher competition could be detrimental to the trend of interoperability, as cloud providers might look to create an edge for themselves by driving their customers to commit fully to their services. This would force businesses to compromise on certain capabilities by picking the provider that fits their key operations the best. Alternatively, public cloud providers could strengthen their existing capabilities and allow a greater range of choice to promote customer loyalty.Either way, the public cloud will evolve as the industry and its interaction with enterprises become more prevalent. 1 in 2 businesses has spent over $1 million for public cloud services to capitalize on this potential. Even migrating workloads that complement your key services will allow you to significantly improve your time to value by leveraging flexibility and machine learning. The industry's 24 percent annual growth rate suggests that commitment to the public cloud is only growing.07. As a ServiceFor organizations, one of the easiest points of entry into cloud use is the 'as a service' model. With the ease, flexibility, and choice of applications, employing the cloud as a service can greatly impact your organization and its goals. By enabling companies to provide new services and create applications faster, the cloud as a service helps you keep up with customer demand.In the aftermath of the pandemic, we've seen growth in key 'as a service' offerings as well as the emergence of some new applications. As business continues to adjust to hybrid work environments in 2021, these applications will only expand.  Platform as a Service (PaaS)Platform as a Service (PaaS) is also known as cloud application infrastructure services and includes hardware and software tools. Its use has been steadily rising as organizations invest in modernizing their 'old school' applications with cloud-native capabilities. The PaaS market is expected to grow 26.6 percent in 2021, Gartner forecasts, stating that the growth is driven by remote workers needing access to 'to high performing, content-rich and scalable infrastructure to perform their duties'.This area is only expected to grow as more organizations migrate their IT functions to the cloud in response to COVID-19. Enterprise adoption of platforms like Azure or Google Drive has skyrocketed as teams look for solutions to storing information and collaborating from a distance. In fact, 59 percent of enterprises expect cloud usage to exceed prior plans due to COVID-19. Software as a Service (SaaS)Software as a Service (SaaS) is one of the first and most successful 'as a service' cloud offerings. It includes all of the services and software offered through a third party on the internet, trading subscriptions for licensing fees. As one of the biggest cloud application services, SaaS now contributes $20 billion to the quarterly revenues of software vendors. The number is expected to grow by 32 percent each year.Competition between SaaS companies has led to a wide array of inexpensive solutions that ensure public cloud services will dominate the market for years to come. The next generation of SaaS offerings will also include machine learning as part of their services. While some applications may be better than others, rest assured, in the near future you'll be hard-pressed to find a SaaS product that is not labeled 'intelligent'.Disaster Relief as a Service (DRaaS)As organizations continue to operate more digitally, the cost of downtime has hit a premium. The average cost of cybercrime for an organization is around $13.0 million, while the average cost of IT downtime is close to $5,600 per minute. For e-commerce companies, this downtime can be disastrous as sales depend on online access. At the same time, stricter regulations are holding organizations legally responsible for the protection and care of customer data.This increased risk of operating online has caused some organizations to reevaluate their disaster relief strategies and look into Disaster Relief as a Service (DRaaS). This includes an automated disaster relief strategy that can respond to issues and breaches faster, reducing costs and liability. With the instability perpetuated by 2020, it's no surprise that this rapidly growing market is expected to reach $4.5 billion at the end of 2020 with a 15.4 percent through 2023.Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) has been around since the beginning of cloud services, but its potential is yet to be fully actualized. Organizations have been slow to adopt this technology, owing to a reported skill gap in the cloud migration process. However, thanks to an uptick in cloud education and understanding borne out of necessity, this up-and-coming cloud solution is expected to eventually outgrow SaaS in revenue.IaaS refers to pay-as-you-go services that organizations use for storage, networking, and virtualization. Many companies have taken the path of least resistance by adopting the 'lift and shift' approach to cloud migration, not adapting their workflows to get the most out of the cloud. In order to compete, organizations have discovered they must take a different approach - modernizing processes, investing in cloud-native development, and refactoring apps to achieve true cloud optimization.Workstation as a Service (WaaS)Traditionally, an employee receives a company laptop over which they have full control, but which can only be used in its full capacity for part of the workday. The use of this computer is dependent on on-premise applications like servers, workstations, and software. In response to this limitation, Workstation as a Service (WaaS) has emerged as a quickly growing cloud application.WaaS is a type of desktop that gives employees full access to their information and office applications at any time, from any device. It has everything needed to carry out office tasks including anti-virus software, backup capabilities, productivity apps, and accounting-already licensed and updated automatically. This gives employees freedom from physically connecting to their workstations, allowing them easy access to their work from wherever they are in the world. With the massive shift to remote work environments we've witnessed in 2020, this will undoubtfully remain an expanding area of cloud services.  08. Cloud securityBetween January and April of 2020, cybercrime saw a sharp increase by 630 percent as new ways of working created new vulnerabilities to exploit. Spreading workloads between various cloud providers presents organizations with a considerable issue of governance. No surprise that we found that 65 percent of senior IT executives believe security and compliance risk are the greatest barriers to realizing the benefits of cloud.Generating and acting on insights across platforms requires a proactive approach equipped with sensitivity to potential blind spots. This explains why 28 percent of enterprises consider security to be the most important criterion when picking a cloud vendor. Although the cloud's efficiency in terms of time and money is its most popular feature, organizations are realizing that cutting corners on the cloud can render their organizational processes opaque; opening a plethora of discreet entry-points for cybercriminals.A growing response to these concerns has been the acquisition of cloud security access brokers (CASBs). They provide software that operates between cloud users and platforms to enforce centralized security measures, implementing a consistent system of governance. Unfortunately, over 50 percent of organizations do not have the appropriate security management systems in place for their cloud applications, creating an adverse effect on their overall security infrastructure. Providers are tackling this through a series of security acquisitions aimed at protecting their clients and their own competitive posture. 09. Cloud coalitionsEnterprise cloud use rose close to 50 percent following the onset of the coronavirus as businesses scrambled to migrate their workloads. This also exerted significant pressure on the capacities of cloud providers who are attempting to satisfy this new demand through strategic partnerships. Such partnerships function to strengthen the existing capabilities of cloud providers and provide novel solutions to the dynamic threat landscape of the cloud.Since most organizational processes now require the ability to accommodate distances between employees and resources, enterprise solutions are expected to consolidate onto one platform over time. Strategic cloud-based partnerships serve to improve the competitive position of major providers by increasing the array of services on a provider's portfolio and furthering their ability to manage larger workloads.10. Cloud automationThe governance issues endemic to a multicloud approach have turned many enterprises onto automation as a means of simplifying the management of their public, private and hybrid cloud environments. Cloud agnostic tools like Terraform allow organizations the unique opportunity to develop identical infrastructure securely across platforms.Moving forward, functions like dashboards can be accommodated by such tools as technologists would benefit from the ability to view all of their splintered cloud services in one window. Such a provision would also open more avenues for machine learning.Especially in a multicloud or hybrid cloud environment, organizations are looking for analytics to help them compare the performance of their clouds. Operating without a clear understanding of their efficiency also renders your organization more vulnerable to the threat landscape. Leveraging machine learning capabilities can create more contingent data for your organization, allowing you to be better prepared for existing and potential threats.11. Private cloudAs interactions between the cloud and enterprises proliferate, a more organizational understanding of cloud capabilities is being developed. The lack of this expertise has been one of the biggest drivers of public cloud adoption as it was easier for businesses to outsource the services they could not manage or develop themselves. However, as this wealth of knowledge grows in abundance, more organizations will opt for their own private clouds to maintain greater control over their processes without trading in future flexibility.Although the private cloud industry saw no significant growth in 2020, we attribute this to the heightened ability of public providers to navigate organizations through the novel demands of the year. Moving forward, the power dynamic between the public and private clouds is likely to equalize to some extent. This will create a more democratic cloud industry guided by organizational needs rather than industrial fixtures.12. Cloud agnosticismIn 2020, we've seen several major cloud outages. On average, downtime resulting from these server issues is 117 minutes or almost two hours. The majority of surveyed organizations suffer, 98 percent, say that a single hour of downtime per year costs their company over $100,000. Bear in mind, those are only average statistics as 40 percent of enterprises even indicated to lose between $1 and $5 million in just one hour of downtime-exclusive of any legal fees, fines or penalties..CIOs are channeling their skepticism into contingencies, with hybrid cloud services being the most widely adopted solution. Even with the introduction of DraaS, organizations are recognizing that the key to cloud success is a cloud-neutral strategy. Splintering core business services across cloud providers mitigates the risk of downtime from prolonged outages and optimizes your ROI. This is why decision-makers in the IT sector consider flexibility to be one of the most important considerations when choosing a provider.13. ContainerizationWhen shipping containers were introduced in the 1950s, they revolutionized the global economy. Finally, there was a standardized way to package loose items and transport them from one location to another. Fast forward 70 years and containerization is all the rage again, only this time it's on the cloud.Containerization involves packaging an application and all its dependencies in a lightweight, uniform set of libraries and APIs. It's a standardized way to store and ship all components, ensuring an app runs quickly and reliably in multiple computing environments. Because each container is only tens of MBs in size, a single server can host multiple applications-saving costs toward hardware and maintenance.Container applications are offered by many cloud providers as part of their consumable services and can be deployed by DevOps directly on top of the cloud application layer. Because each app is wrapped separately in a standardized configuration, this approach significantly improves security, scalability, and load times."A well-integrated and balanced hybrid strategy gives businesses the best of both worlds"It also allows applications to be easily transported between platforms. This sleek, efficient alternative to virtual machines has garnered the interest of organizations as the answer to the complex deployment and operational challenges of the hybrid cloud. So much so that Gartner predicts that by 2023, 70 percent of global organizations will be running more than two containerized applications in production, up from less than 20 percent in 2019.14. Artificial intelligenceCloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) have a symbiotic relationship. While AI powers cloud computing - managing data, revealing insights, and optimizing workflows - cloud computing increases the impact and scope of AI.  By 2025, the global market value of AI is estimated to surpass $89 billion annually, meaning that organizations that don't embrace this trend will find themselves lagging behind their competition.Cloud services are democratizing AI, making it accessible to organizations who struggle with the high barrier to entry. Traditionally, investing in AI requires top technical skill, computing power, and a massive amount of capital. However, with AI offered via cloud services, companies are able to implement and benefit from the technology without making a large upfront investment.Combining AI and cloud services enables businesses to get the most out of both applications. The cloud provides a cost-effective solution to the expensive on-site hardware and software while constant data backup and recovery in a virtual environment makes it a reliable alternative to traditional setups. At the same time, AI helps the cloud manage data as well as gain insights into information that can then be distributed as system-wide learnings.15. Data fabricsOne of the key implications of cloud adoption is the desegregation of Information Technology as security, optimization and interpretative services increasingly require interoperability. This separates the term 'data fabrics' from its analytical roots and recontextualizes it as a key prospect for the cloud industry. Simply put, a data fabric is a string that functions to connect separated locations, types and sources of data while simultaneously serving as an access point.By 2022, information will be a critical organizational asset for 90 percent of organizations, solidifying analytics into a core competency. Data fabrics employ APIs to dissolve siloes down to their fundamental cores, offering organizations consolidated data access, management and security across cloud providers. Such centralized data management frameworks reduce vendor lock-in and allow organizations to leverage their distributed services for a unified insight into their operations.16. Serverless, eventfulThe exponential rate of growth for enterprise cloud use is likely to become an entry barrier for SMEs, but solutions are already available. Start-ups and smaller organizations looking to create a competitive advantage can leverage serverless architectural solutions to achieve rapid growth without significant capital investment. Not only do serverless infrastructures scale fast automatically, but they only incur costs based on usage, allowing businesses that use them to spend for the exact cloud services they require.Between 2020 and 2025, this demand is expected to grow the serverless industry by 25 percent. Another key component of its appeal is the ability of serverless architecture to provide safe sandboxes for organizations to implement their code. Eliminating the risk of severe back-end failure allows developers the freedom to experiment with their cloud services and develop contingencies for potential events. Event-based architecture only functions when triggered by specific occurrences, requiring little to no human feedback in case of emergency. Our clients have saved millions by outsourcing alert outage system costs and adopting event-driven serverless architecture.17. Industry-optimized cloudCloud providers drive their value proposition on the laurels of their ability to provide tailored services to organizations. However, businesses in sectors such as healthcare, legislation, and finance face stricter regulations and privacy restrictions, limiting their ability to leverage traditional cloud services. Hundreds of cloud vendors have responded to this challenge by optimizing their cloud capabilities to comply with the regulatory requirements of these high-value industries.These migrations encompass public, private and hybrid cloud environments, with the healthcare cloud market alone accounting for over $22 billion in 2019. Administrative and clinical data's automation enables healthcare providers to optimize their intake and discharge procedures-a cloud trend we can all benefit from.18. Human cloudThe so-called 'human cloud' consists of talent platforms that provide enterprises with on-demand access to a flexible workforce. In 2019, this industry generated $178.5 billion in revenue by connecting dispersed, skilled workers to various roles and organizations. The human cloud endemically develops crowd-based networks of workers and recruiters, providing an organization with multiple resources at low overhead cost. Supported by staffing curators, these cloud-based platforms can offer greater labor compliance, quality, and customer service than traditional staffing methods.Moving forward, the online job marketplace is likely to integrate deeper into the cloud, offering workers and organizations a clearer, more synthesized view of the skillsets, opportunities and projects available.19. Cloud realityDespite the tremendous potential of virtual and augmented realities, their dependency on source computing devices has limited their penetration into the market. In combination with 5G networks, the cloud can bypass the hardware requirements of AR/VR to allow applications to be rendered, executed and distributed through the cloud to a larger audience. High capacity, low latency broadband networks will be the key to unlocking real-time displays, renders, feedback and delivery, maximizing the potential of both, cloud and AR/VR solutions.The AR Cloud is developing digital replicas of the world to visualize information as quickly and conveniently as possible; it's only a matter of time before technological innovation accommodates this revolution.20. BlockcloudThe centralization of major cloud servers presents a security challenge. Widely exposed data prone to unauthorized access leaves organizations vulnerable to the threat landscape. This is why senior executives consider cloud computing to be the greatest emerging threat to organizations. With the rise of new regulations like GDPR, compliance on public servers is expected to increase cloud costs and reduce cloud control.Recognizing this threat, developers are redefining the infrastructure of cloud computing with solutions like edge computing. Many CIOs expect blockchain to fundamentally alter the cloud industry by offering information permanence, a guarantee that the current cloud capabilities cannot make. Certainty regarding the location and access of your information will allow you to develop contingencies with greater certainty, improving your overall cybersecurity."Many CIOs expect blockchain to fundamentally alter the cloud industry by offering information permanence, a guarantee that the current cloud capabilities can't make"The endemic reward mechanism of blockchain systems was a significant factor in the success of cryptocurrency. Such an affordance in the cloud industry would enable the implementation of more sweeping data security and management. In order to position themselves to maximize this potential, '57 percent of respondents investing in blockchain technology agreed that their organization should adopt blockchain technology to remain competitive'.21. Cloud monitoringTrends like cloud coalitions, machine learning, and data fabrics enable the cloud industry to hone one of its key components: monitoring. Facing pressure to quickly migrate workloads to the cloud, companies are now challenged by the task of consolidating metrics on their various cloud servers to generate monetizable insights. This pursuit is expected to grow the cloud monitoring industry annually by 22.7 percent between 2020 and 2026, when it will be valued at approximately $4.5 billion.End-user services are leveraging available technologies to develop facilities that monitor and manage applications across cloud platforms. As new regulations are enforced over the management of information and clouds shift to HTML5, existing monitoring services will also have to display ingenuity and flexibility.22. Cloud-native applicationsCloud-native applications are applications born in the cloud, not just reworked to be compatible. These applications run on cloud infrastructure, as opposed to being installed on an OS or server. This means that instead of demanding compatibility, cloud-native applications can dictate their environment by interacting directly via APIs.Such independently linked applications are more resilient and manageable, enabling organizations to build and scale quickly and efficiently. It's becoming clear that cloud-native architecture is the future of application development in an increasingly fast-paced and dynamic time. The use of cloud-native projects in production continues to grow, with many projects reaching more than 50 percent use in production.2021 will see the cloud-native market mature and consolidate, with smaller solutions absorbed by key players. In order to extract the full benefit of cloud technologies, organizations need to ditch the 'lift and shift' model and trade in the old-world architecture for agile, cloud-native applications. Once they do, they will be able to take full advantage of numerous cloud benefits, including faster time to market, greater resilience and flexibility, and the ability to scale rapidly.23. Application mobilityFor organizations focused on agility and transformation, the runtime environment for apps is liable to change constantly as technology rapidly matures. This has created a greater need for application mobility-freeing apps from any one data center or infrastructure and enabling organizations to select the best platform for their needs. By decoupling applications from their runtime environment, IT teams can migrate between hypervisors, public cloud, and container-based environments without losing data or risking excessive downtime.Application mobility enables organizations to have more control over their applications, benefiting them in a number of ways.Not locked into any one platform: Data center managers can select the best infrastructure for them and easily migrate if conditions change.New technology adoption: Organizations can embrace emerging technologies like containerization and public cloud services without the risk of being tied to an obsolete platform.Focus on the application: Administrators can choose platforms that are easy to operate and don't require extensive training so the focus can remain on managing the application.In 2021, application mobility will continue to be a top priority for organizations looking to break free from platform dependencies and safeguard their data. Application mobility enables the development of modular and portable applications that automatically save and backup data, allowing you to pick up right where you left off in the event of a disaster.24. Distributed cloudThe cloud derives its name from its omnipresence and lack of physicality. Most CIOs have observed issues due to its lack of presence, either from the server or in the speed of transmission. However, as the cloud solidifies its position in enterprise operations, the consequences of latency issues grow. At any one point, your website is just a 2-second delay away from racking up a 100 percent bounce rate.Gartner speculates that the distributed cloud could solve several of these issues. A component of edge computing, the distributed cloud has origins in the public and hybrid cloud environments. Public cloud providers have the opportunity to package their hybrid services and distribute them to different locations, easing the tension from their central servers and enabling them to better serve high-value clients.Operating physically closer to clients with large workloads resolves most latency issues and mitigates the risk of total server failure. The widening of compute zones could also democratize cloud services as smaller businesses close to the distributed locations could avail the services without incurring traditional server costs.25. Open-source cloudOpen-source applications employ source code that is publicly accessible to inspect, edit and improve. 'As a Service' cloud solutions built with such code can be dispersed across private, public, and hybrid cloud environments.There are several reasons why 77 percent of IT leaders intend to utilize open-source code with greater frequency. Royalty-free source codes will be a significant deterrent to vendor lock-in as data transferability and open data platforms will allow for services and analytics to be interoperable. Reusing software stacks, libraries and components will also create more common ground between applications for interoperability.The longevity of cloud transformations often leaves organizations vulnerable to vendor lock-in and risks technological obsoletion. Cloud agnostic services developed with open, common standards can push the standard of cloud proficiency and allow companies greater control over their enterprise cloud solutions.Getting your head into the cloudWith an increasing prevalence of cloud services in existing business operations, it is clearer than ever that the cloud is the future. More than just a storage solution, it's a competitive imperative. Understanding the leading trends in cloud computing enables you to improve your cybersecurity, data management, and accessibility while giving you a competitive edge.This list will not just bring you up to speed with what's going on in the industry, but also help you anticipate future trends and align your organization to be able to take advantage of them:About half of the population's demand for sustainability outweighs their brand loyalty. Cloud operations will be essential for achieving a net-zero future.As cloud spend inflates, organizations are struggling to use their finances efficiently. Optimization tools and greater fluency with the cloud are being developed as an answer.Edge computing is the answer to latency, bandwidth, and security issues of centralized data centers. With greater speed and processing power being used, computing at the edge is becoming essential.Most businesses on the cloud have deployed multicloud solutions to leverage the offerings of various providers and circumvent vendor lock-in.Novel platforms are attempting to integrate public and private cloud environments through hybrid cloud solutions to offer consolidated access and insights.Public cloud migrations continue to save businesses the cost of ownership, driving greater adoption rates. Competition among providers is increasing concerns of vendor lock-ins.As a Service remains one of the easiest points of entry into the cloud. In the wake of COVID-19, we've seen a rise in new applications as organizations learn how to operate in a changing world.Since more employees started working at home, cybercrime has exponentially increased. Providers are finalizing security acquisitions to address cloud security concerns and improve their cybersecurity posture.Strategic partnerships are the emerging solution for providers as they look to accommodate greater workloads without compromising on processing and reaction speed.Cloud automation is presenting new ways to collate, visualize and analyze data across providers as multicloud adoption drives the demand for consolidated access.Greater proficiency on the cloud will allow organizations the insights needed to develop their own private clouds and produce independent applications.Cloud agnostic architecture untethers applications from their native environment, enabling more flexible operations in times of uncertainty, server overloads and expensive downtimes.Containerization isn't just for shipping material goods. When it comes to applications, containerization ensures that an app is self-contained and standardized-improving security, scalability, and load times.Artificial intelligence is a trend that runs parallel to the cloud, as both benefit and build off of each other. The cloud provides a low-cost, reliable solution to traditional hardware and software while AI helps to manage data and gain insights.Data fabrics provide an opportunity to consolidate applications and their data across platforms, allowing organizations to trade data as an organizational asset.Serverless architecture provides sandboxes for safely executing front-end changes and can be leveraged by smaller companies to maintain a competitive position without significant capital investment.Stricter regulations on data trading are spearheading the optimization of industry clouds which are designed to comply with industry-specific requirements.Vacancies and prospects can be shared across the human cloud to find ideal candidates across borders. Machine learning and automation are key vertebrae of this industry.Cloud reality is the hosting of AR/VR applications on the cloud. Faster displays, renders and feedback via the cloud can allow real-time adjustments to calibrate digital realities.The integration of blockchain into cloud architecture is expected to repatriate control over cloud platforms to companies and incentivize appropriate cybersecurity behaviors.Unified dashboards to monitor data across cloud servers is a growing enterprise demand. Technological development and regulatory stringency are driving innovation in this field.Cloud-native applications are the future of application development. Born in the cloud, these applications are more resilient and easily managed, granting organizations the ability to scale rapidly.Application mobility allows organizations to select the best platform for their needs, freeing them to embrace new technologies with greater recovery and management capability.Latency issues and concerns of server overloads are driving physically distributed cloud services as the cost of downtime increases.The imperative of flexibility is driving a movement of open-source clouds, punctuated by interoperability and retrospective, long-term transformations.

25 cloud trends for 2021 and beyond

Cloud Computing Trends

Article from March 4, 2021. Published on Accenture.com "Data is currency." Over the past decade, this phrase has permeated corporate culture from ...

Cloud Trends Coming up Over the Horizon: What to... Cloud Trends Coming up Over the Horizon: What to...

Blog posted to VNT website.Cloud Trends Coming Up The explosion of the cloud has changed the face of how enterprises do business, and it's ...

Cloud Computing Trends
33 Cloud-Computing-Trends-Cloud-Computing-Trends jplist-topic-blog jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-solutions jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-transformation jplist-topic-digital jplist-topic-compute 0 506041 506041 Blog posted to VNT website.Cloud Trends Coming Up The explosion of the cloud has changed the face of how enterprises do business, and it's not slowing down any time soon. In fact, Cisco believes that cloud data centers now process as much as 94% of all workloads. Let's take a look at some of the most important cloud trends and how you can stay on top of the latest cloud trends to make your cloud strategy more successful.  Cloud Trends 1: Multi and Hybrid Cloud Environments Will Continue to Grow Businesses recognize that cloud data management isn't about having one specific platform or infrastructure, it's about choosing the solution that's right for the job at hand. In some cases, this isn't cloud at all, it might be on-premises or even legacy systems, especially where enterprises are locked into specific systems for business-critical solutions that are cumbersome or complex to adapt.  In 2021, the emerging cloud trend is that enterprises are becoming less worried about sticking with one cloud vendor, and are embracing a multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud offering where they can get the best out of each solution. According to Global Channel Chief at Google, Carolee Gearhart, "Gartner is estimating that by 2021, 75 percent of midsize and large organizations will have adopted multi-cloud or a hybrid strategy." IDC affirms this in their 2021 report, stating that by 2022, over 90% of enterprises will be relying on a hybrid cloud solutions model that includes on-prem, dedicated private clouds, multiple public clouds AND legacy platforms.  Cloud Trends 2: Retaining Compliance in an Increasingly Complex Environment In order to join this cloud trend, businesses need to have a vendor-agnostic approach and look for SaaS solutions that reduce bottlenecks or blind spots. Visibility across a heterogeneous environment will be more important than ever, ensuring that organizations can achieve the same level of insight across the board, in various instances and platforms, without gaps.  If this is unsuccessful, these blind spots could be leveraged by cyber-attackers, or could leave issues for internal governance and compliance. At the moment, data privacy and security are cited as the top roadblocks for enterprise cloud adoption, and introducing additional infrastructure into the mix further complicates the matter.  Cloud Trends 3: Organizations will make it a Priority to Control Cloud Costs According to Gartner, the worldwide revenue from public cloud will grow by 17% this year to $266.4 billion. A record-breaking 60% of organizations will be using an external cloud provider's managed services offering by 2022, doubled from 30% in 2018 - growth is an undeniable cloud trend. The decentralized model of consumption has raised costs for organizations exponentially, and often without any control over the spiraling bottom line. Businesses will have to start to get a handle on these costs as cloud usage grows, streamlining the expenditure that they are not utilizing to full effect, and cutting out duplicate spending or unnecessary overheads.  As different cloud and hybrid services have different pricing and billing models, and costs can change from month to month, this could be a tall order. Innovative third-party solutions that can support organizations in getting granular insight into their hybrid network and provide unified management of costs will rise to the top.   Cloud Trends 4: Solution-focused Partners As businesses continue to move their infrastructure using SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, one cloud trend is that there will be a continued need for third-party vendors who really specialize in meeting specific use cases and problem-solving new cloud challenges. While your cloud provider will be responsible for infrastructure needs such as storage, outsources will be taking care of compute and networking, specific needs such as data, visibility, AI and ML technology, or IoT. These external partners will need to have a strong insight into how cloud computing and its associated technologies work, leaving the hardware element to AWS or the other infrastructure leaders, but well-versed in how to get the best solutions on both the cloud and on-premises for specific organizational needs.  Cloud Trends 5: A Continued Shift to Tech on Demand As cloud costs get taken under control, businesses will have more revenue at their disposal to take advantage of these solutions that beat their specific industry challenges. In turn, providers will look to push out innovation that is easily accessible to a wide audience, has a low learning curve, low-code interface, and is more democratized overall, so that anyone can reap the rewards. Without the need for a team of data scientists, organizations will begin to see the benefits of Machine Learning, AI, and automation in a very tangible way to solve and enhance business strategy and an exciting cloud trend in 2021. This is only reiterated by the offerings that cloud providers are pushing to the masses, such as Azure's Machine Learning Experimental UI, the focus on AI and ML at AWS Innovate, and GCP's Auto ML.  What's Next for the Cloud? The cloud has started to reach its full potential, as a conduit for organizations of all sizes to realize huge amounts of value. The first step is already here, as businesses can now utilize infrastructure that has resources that they could never have achieved on their own.  The next level of cloud trends that we're going to see as we move through 2021 and into 2022 is organizations getting ahead of the challenges of compliance and security, and partnering with smart, innovative external solutions. These companies will already have a deep understanding of the new hybrid reality, and therefore allow forward-thinking customers to see an immediate benefit from their targeted skills and expertise.

Cloud Trends Coming up Over the Horizon: What to Look out for in 2021

Cloud Computing Trends

Blog posted to VNT website.Cloud Trends Coming Up The explosion of the cloud has changed the face of how enterprises do business, and it's not ...

The Latest Cloud Computing Trends - 31+ Telling... The Latest Cloud Computing Trends - 31+ Telling...

February 6, 2021 by Nick Galov

Blog written by Nick Galov on February 6, 2021. Published on Hosting Tribunal website.Cloud computing is booming and there are many trends ...

Cloud Computing Trends
34 Cloud-Computing-Trends-Cloud-Computing-Trends jplist-topic-internet jplist-topic-cloud-computing jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-emerging jplist-topic-technology jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-transformation 0 506039 506039

The Latest Cloud Computing Trends - 31+ Telling Facts

Cloud Computing Trends

Blog written by Nick Galov on February 6, 2021. Published on Hosting Tribunal website.Cloud computing is booming and there are many trends to be ...

Cloud Computing Trends: 2021 State of the Cloud... Cloud Computing Trends: 2021 State of the Cloud...

March 15, 2021 by Tanner Luxner

Article posted by Tanner Luxner on March 15, 2021 to Flexera.com The 2021 trend of cloud computing results show that enterprises continue ...

Cloud Computing Trends
35 Cloud-Computing-Trends-Cloud-Computing-Trends jplist-topic-internet jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-computing jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-technology 0 506033 506033 Article posted by Tanner Luxner on March 15, 2021 to Flexera.com The 2021 trend of cloud computing results show that enterprises continue to embrace multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies and are increasing spend with vendors across the board, citing a higher-than-expected cloud usage due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions throughout 2020. Respondents have a higher cloud spend than ever this year, but they continue to struggle to forecast spend accurately as they significantly exceed their cloud budgets. As a result, optimizing existing cloud use remains at the top of companies' 2021 priority list for the fifth year in a row, followed by migrating more workloads to the cloud. With cloud computing usage growing at its fastest rate yet, respondents' adoption of Azure continues to draw closer and closer to leader AWS. Google Cloud adoption grew as well, beginning to reach numbers near Azure and AWS. The data in the report comes from the largest and longest-running survey on the use of cloud infrastructure that is focused on cloud buyers and decision makers. Their answers provide a comprehensive perspective on cloud computing trends in 2021. Data in the Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report-formerly known as the RightScale State of the Cloud Report-is based on a survey of 750 vetted IT professionals conducted in October and November 2020.   Selected highlights of 2021 cloud computing usage trends: Enterprises embrace multi-cloud  92 percent of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy; 82 percent have a hybrid cloud strategyOn average, respondents use 2.6 public and 2.7 private clouds Public cloud adoption continues to accelerate 36 percent of enterprises spend more than $12 million per year on public clouds90 percent of enterprises expect cloud usage to exceed prior plans due to COVID-19 Organizations struggle to get a handle on growing cloud spend  Respondents estimate organizations waste 30 percent of cloud spend61 percent of organizations plan to optimize existing use of cloud (cost savings), making it the top initiative for the fifth year in a row Public cloud adoption is evolving  The top three public cloud providers for enterprises remain AWS, Azure and GoogleAzure is rapidly continuing to narrow the gap with AWS Enterprises embrace multi-cloud Enterprises have almost entirely embraced multi-cloud; 92 percent of respondents reported having a multi-cloud strategy. Eighty-two percent are taking a hybrid approach, combining the use of both public and private clouds.   Organizations currently use multiple clouds Organizations currently are using 2.6 public and 2.7 private clouds on average. Also, they're experimenting with an additional 1.1 public clouds and 2.2 private clouds.  Enterprise cloud spend is growing Thirty-six percent of enterprises said their annual spend exceeded $12 million, and 83 percent reported that cloud spend exceeds $1.2 million per year. These figures represent a large increase over last year in which 20 percent of enterprises reported an annual spend of more than $12 million, and 74 percent reported yearly spend of more than $1.2 million.  Most believe COVID-19 will increase their cloud usage The emergence of COVID-19 during last year's 2020 State of the Cloud survey prompted Flexera to add a question gauging how the pandemic might affect cloud plans. Virtually all countries implemented stay-at-home policies for consumers, work-from-home policies for employees and shutdowns of nonessential businesses throughout the majority of 2020, continuing into 2021. Some industries experienced massive economic impacts as a result of the pandemic. Ninety percent said cloud usage is higher than initially planned. Some of the increase is a result of the extra capacity needed for current cloud-based applications to meet increased demand as online usage grows. Other organizations may accelerate migration from data centers to cloud in response to reduced headcount, difficulties in accessing data center facilities and delays in hardware supply chains. As the pandemic runs its course, some organizations may also find that public cloud providers offer a more reliable option for business continuity. Organizations struggle to get a handle on growing cloud spend Organizations are continuing to increase their cloud spend rapidly. In doing so, they struggle to forecast their fast-growing cloud costs accurately. Respondents reported their public cloud spend was over budget by an average of 24 percent. Moreover, respondents expect their cloud spend to further increase by 39 percent in the next twelve months. This cloud computing trend means it's more critical than ever to get a handle on forecasting and cost optimization.   Organizations waste significant cloud spend Wasted cloud spend is a significant issue, becoming more critical as cloud costs continue to rise. Respondents estimate their organizations waste 30 percent of cloud spend. However, spend is likely less efficient as many organizations tend to underestimate the amount of waste. In working with customers to identify waste, Flexera has found that actual waste is 35 percent or even higher on average. Optimizing spend is top cloud initiative for the fifth year running For the fifth year in a row, optimizing the existing use of cloud (cost savings) is the top initiative for the year ahead, followed by migrating more workloads to cloud and better financial reporting on cloud costs. Major public cloud provider use shifting among enterprises Among enterprises, Azure is tied with AWS for breadth of adoption. Google Cloud, Oracle and VMware Cloud on AWS round out the top five. Among the top three, Google (49 percent running workloads) exhibited the most growth over 2020. The highest percentages for experimentation are with VMware Cloud on AWS and Oracle, which could drive more adoption in the future. AWS and Azure adoption rates rose somewhat among enterprises over the previous year. Azure is now at 96 percent of AWS adoption among enterprises. Google adoption rates rose by 44 percent. Enterprises are growing their public cloud footprint Cloud-first policies and cloud migration are top of mind for senior IT leaders, particularly in enterprise environments. As a result, enterprises are rapidly increasing public cloud spend and workload volumes. Cloud spend is a good indicator of how much an enterprise is using a public cloud provider. Fifty-three percent of enterprises spend $1.2 million or more annually on AWS. By comparison, 48 percent spend $1.2 million or more annually on Azure, indicating Azure's footprint is approaching that of AWS. Thirty-two percent of enterprises reported spending $1.2 million or more annually on Google. Most heavily used PaaS services have shifted Organizations are increasingly leveraging the many PaaS services offered by cloud providers. The top three are data warehouse, relational database as a service (DBaaS) and container-as-a-service. Organizations are driving this shift due to their growing interest in leveraging containers to speed deployment, scale operations and increase the efficiency of workloads running in the cloud. Summary The Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report reveals COVID-19 had a significant impact on cloud adoption in 2020. Multi-cloud continues to be the dominant strategy, adopted by nearly all surveyed enterprises. The most common multi-cloud approach among enterprises is a mix of multiple public and multiple private clouds. The report also indicates that organizations are becoming increasingly comfortable putting even sensitive data in the cloud. Due to its complexity and dynamic nature, the multi-cloud environment brings many challenges, such as assessing the suitability of on-premises apps for migrating to the cloud. The use of public clouds continues to grow dramatically in all organizations. This growth has driven a significant increase in public cloud spend, and the COVID-19 outbreak may have driven that spend even higher. As a result of continually increasing cloud spend, optimizing the existing use of cloud (cost savings) continues to be the top cloud initiative for all organizations for the fifth year in a row. Organizations are leveraging automated policies to continually scan and optimize their cloud costs. Organizations are moving to the cloud because of its scalability, economy and reach, and are using a variety of metrics to measure the resulting business value of cloud. The many advantages delivered by the cloud have proven to be especially valuable as organizations adapted over the past year to meet the rapidly evolving needs presented by the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on business.

Cloud Computing Trends: 2021 State of the Cloud Report

Cloud Computing Trends

Article posted by Tanner Luxner on March 15, 2021 to Flexera.com The 2021 trend of cloud computing results show that enterprises continue to embrace ...

10 Future Cloud Computing Trends To Watch In 2021 10 Future Cloud Computing Trends To Watch In 2021

November 20, 2020 by Donna Goodison

From the article by Doona Goodison, CRN Senior Editor Cloud computing, which underpinned the world's economy, global supply chains and ...

Cloud Computing Trends
36 Cloud-Computing-Trends-Cloud-Computing-Trends jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-compute jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-future jplist-topic-saas 0 506025 506025 From the article by Doona Goodison, CRN Senior Editor Cloud computing, which underpinned the world's economy, global supply chains and remote workforces during the coronavirus pandemic, will continue to be an essential target for organizations looking for increased scalability, business continuity and cost efficiency in 2021. "The effects of COVID-19 will linger throughout 2021, as businesses will look to lay a foundation for increased agility," said Dustin Milberg, field chief technology officer for cloud services at InterVision, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based IT service provider and AWS Premier Consulting Partner. "Cloud will take a key focus in this goal, given its benefits of improved accessibility, scalability and flexibility." But those companies who view cloud as a journey and not a destination will see more success, according to Milberg. "This is because simply 'getting to the cloud' doesn't automatically mean you'll see improved performance and spending," he said. "Instead, cloud is an iterative process of optimization and creating security by design to match your company's goals, both now and in the long term." Enterprises' technology needs have increased in complexity over the past year, as workplaces quickly became decentralized during the pandemic, with remote workers across the globe, noted Steve Miller-Jones, vice president of edge strategy and solution architecture at Limelight Networks, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based content delivery network (CDN) service provider. "At the same time, exciting new technologies are making it easier to instantly generate, process and analyze data for better business performance," he said. "These operational demands are shifting how businesses leverage cloud computing." Here's a look at some of the cloud computing trends expected to loom large in 2021. Global Public Cloud Infrastructure Market Hits $120B The global public cloud infrastructure market will grow 35 percent to $120 billion in 2021, as the cloud continues to "take center stage" in the recovery from the pandemic, according to Forrester Research. "The aggressive move to cloud, already proceeding at a healthy clip before the pandemic, will spike in 2021, yielding even greater enterprise adoption, cloud provider revenue and business value," the Cambridge, Mass.-based market research company said in its "Predictions 2021" report. Forrester previously forecast the public cloud infrastructure market would increase 28 percent to $113.1 billion next year. The percentage of worldwide IT spending that's dedicated to the cloud will continue to accelerate in 2021. Gartner, the Stamford, Conn.-based research and advisory firm, projects that worldwide public cloud spending by end-users will grow 18 percent next year to $304.9 billion, up from $257.5 billion this year. "The pandemic validated cloud's value proposition," Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner, said in a report this week. "The ability to use on-demand, scalable cloud models to achieve cost efficiency and business continuity is providing the impetus for organizations to rapidly accelerate their digital business transformation plans. The increased use of public cloud services has reinforced cloud adoption to be the 'new normal' now more than ever." While software as a service (SaaS) still will be the largest market segment for end-user cloud IT spending - it's expected to grow approximately 16 percent to $117.8 billion -- application infrastructure services (PaaS) is expected to grow at a higher 26.6 percent rate to about $55.5 billion, according to Gartner. The growth in PaaS will be driven by remote workforces' continued need to access to high-performing and scalable infrastructure via modernized and cloud-native applications, it said. "The cloud is being used to facilitate much of our remote work environments, so companies will continue to migrate workloads and begin using more PaaS resources to take maximum financial advantage of these somewhat forced changes," said George Burns III, senior consultant for cloud operations at SPR, a Chicago-based technology modernization firm. Cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS) spending is projected to increase 26.9 percent to $65.3 billion. Reshuffling Of The Big Three Cloud Providers There will be a reshuffling of the top three public cloud providers in 2021, with China's Alibaba Cloud displacing Google Cloud to take the No. 3 spot for revenue in the global public cloud infrastructure market. behind No.1 Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, according to Forrester. Alibaba's cloud computing revenue grew 59 percent year-over-year to $2.19 billion for the quarter that ended Sept. 30, driven by the acceleration in digitalization across industries and businesses of all sizes in China, the company disclosed this month. Revenue from customers in the internet, finance and retail industries were the primary growth drivers. Google Cloud's revenue -- which includes sales from Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) productivity tools and other enterprise cloud services - increased to $3.44 billion, compared to $2.38 billion in the same quarter last year. "Google (Cloud) establishes itself as an enterprise-friendly cloud as the work it has put into ERP (enterprise resource planning) workloads, analytics and account management pay off in 2021," said Hyoun Park, CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights, a technology advisory firm in Berkeley, Calif. Amalgam expects Google Cloud to achieve healthy 40-plus percent growth next year. "(Google Cloud CEO) Thomas Kurian has had a strong two-year run so far...in translating Google's technology into defined enterprise products, services and relationships," he said. Amalgam, which estimates AWS has more revenue than its next three largest competitors combined, expects AWS revenue will grow less than the combination of Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure in 2021. "This is great news for the business world, as it means that the cloud market is finally a competitive one rather than Amazon vs. the dwarves," Park said. AWS will further its progress in providing services for operations management, building on top of communications, messaging, and operations services such as Amazon Chime, Amazon Simple Queue Service, AWS Chatbot and AWS RoboMaker, according to Park said. "Although AWS provides the technology to scale, the larger Amazon company has a combination of processes, operations and logistics that have led to meteoric growth," he said. "AWS is in a position to share more of the Amazon core DNA as services and software to further grow the AWS business." Microsoft, meanwhile, will exceed $25 billion in Azure cloud revenue in fiscal year 2021 -- driven by secular market demand for cloud and "partner trust that Amazon and Google cannot match" -- and finally break out Azure revenue in its annual reports, Park projected. Edge Is the New Cloud Edge is the new cloud, and new edge vendors will trim 5 points from public cloud growth next year, according to Forrester's predictions. "In 2021, we will see new business models emerge that facilitate the deployment of edge, efforts by cloud platforms to compete, and AI and 5G facilitating the expansion of edge use cases," Forrester said. Large vendors including Dell, HPE, IBM and Intel are doubling down on the edge with cloud-like solutions deployable to anywhere, according to Forrester, and content delivery networks and data center colocation vendors are offering edge compute services across hundreds or thousands of local points of presence. "Over the next three years, buyers will shift their cloud strategies toward the edge to capture all this innovation and become more connected," Forrester said. "While public clouds will play a part, we do not think they will dominate, as their culture is based on massive data centers and tight control of the architecture -- the exact opposite of what firms need to serve customers locally." While the centralized cloud isn't going anywhere, developments in serverless computing models and the creation of distributed service layers around the cloud are powering new real-time IT applications, according to Miller-Jones. "Enterprises are looking to the network edge to bridge the gap between the centralized cloud and end-users, providing low-latency application and content performance for all users, wherever they are working from, Miller-Jones said. "Integrating a distributed edge strategy within a broader cloud computing effort is key to continued innovation in 2021," he said. "Environments at the network edge that scale when needed, are instantly accessible and that are consumed as a service are key developments in this new paradigm." Miller-Jones pointed to two pivotal ways the network edge will transform and expand cloud computing next year. "By integrating the network edge into their cloud strategy, developers have the ability to easily deploy services at the edge without having to be concerned with the operational overhead of managing more infrastructure," he said. "With integrated development and deployment pipelines, developers can move application services and functions from the cloud into network edge locations. This will help create more responsive and dynamic applications." In 2021, Miller-Jones also expects to see a bigger emphasis on enterprise network edge security and protecting users, services, applications and data, as enterprises embrace distributed application environments. "Achieving high levels of security throughout the network edge and into the last-mile of distribution is a key challenge for the enterprise and will be enabled by security services at the network edge," he said. Artificial Intelligence Engineering Organizations need a strong artificial intelligence (AI) engineering strategy to ensure their AI projects don't fail, Gartner said in its "Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2021" report. "Without AI engineering, most organizations will fail to move AI projects beyond proofs of concept and prototypes to full-scale production," Gartner said. AI projects often are not successful because of maintainability, scalability and governance issues, but a strong AI engineering strategy will help the performance, scalability, interpretability and reliability of AI models while delivering the full value of AI investments, according to Gartner. AI engineering makes AI a part of the mainstream DevOps process rather than a set of specialized and isolated projects. "AI engineering stands on three core pillars: DataOps, ModelOps and DevOps," Gartner said. "DevOps deals mainly with high-speed code changes, but AI projects experience dynamic changes in code, models and data, and all must be improved. Organizations must apply DevOps principles across the data pipeline for DataOps and the machine learning (ML) model pipeline for MLOps to reap the benefits of AI engineering." In terms of governance and AI engineering, responsible AI is emerging as an umbrella term for certain aspects of AI implementations to deal with AI risk, trust, transparency, ethics, fairness, interpretability, accountability, safety and compliance, according to Gartner. "Responsible AI signifies the move from declarations and principles to the operationalization of AI accountability at the organizational and societal levels," it said. Multi-Cloud And Joint Cloud Provider Offerings Next year will see the beginnings of multi-cloud and joint provider cloud offerings, as providers realize they can partner to accelerate go-to-market launches, capitalize on mutual strengths and "take on the 800-pound gorilla" that is AWS, according to Park. "This idea was anathema to cloud providers for most of the 2010s, as the goal of having a cloud platform was theoretically to be the one and only platform that a company uses," Park said. "However, as multi-cloud environments have started to develop, vendor competition has evolved and massive cloud markets continue to exist, cloud vendors must reconsider how they go to market." The Oracle-Microsoft interconnect relationship that started in June of 2019 is an example of a relationship that could be expanded to take advantage of Oracle's networking and Microsoft's ML capabilities, Young said. Rivals Microsoft and Oracle last year announced they were linking their clouds to allow joint customers to migrate and run their enterprise application workloads across Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. The move was seen as a bid by Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft -- the No. 2 cloud provider -- and Redwood City, Calif., cloud underdog Oracle to better compete against AWS. Going Serverless Serverless is the next evolution from monolithic application architecture after service-oriented architecture and micro-services architectures, said Derek Swanson, chief technology officer of Needham, Mass.-based Silk, whose cloud data platform enables companies to adopt hybrid cloud. Serverless was among the top five fastest-growing PaaS cloud services for 2020, according to the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud report. "Serverless is a true cloud computing paradigm, and it is hard to overstate how much it will impact how much cloud is consumed going forward," Swanson said. "It is such a compelling model, that applications will be designed and developed going forward to work with serverless, rather than serverless being developed to work with the way we currently develop applications." The industry already is on this journey with containers and cloud-hosted common applications as they drive the need for applications to be made up of smaller components that can be given different treatments, including running in different locations, according to Swanson. Serverless is a boon for developers of all kinds, he said. "Up until now, having knowledge of AWS, Azure or GCP capabilities was a key requirement of a cloud application developer," he said. "These resources were in high demand. Going forward, this level of detailed knowledge is mooted by serverless, with the serverless interface in cloud becoming the interface developers interact with, not the lower-level interfaces." Automated Cloud Orchestration And Optimization Cloud platforms will continue to develop automated cloud orchestration and optimization as the complexity of managing both the quantity and quality of interconnected services across applications and services overwhelms even the savviest of IT organizations, according to Park. "Automated service and performance management must be one of the most important aspects of choosing a cloud provider in 2021, as companies may have to manage a hundred or more services from a single cloud provider," Park said. The Growth Of SASE Adoption While it's at the peak of Gartner's "Hype Cycle," secure access service edge (SASE) will continue to gain adoption as organizations move past the quick response measures they enacted this year for their massive and unexpected increase in remote worker connectivity, according to Derek Brost, director of professional services for security and compliance at InterVision. Pronounced "sassy" and primarily delivered as a cloud-based service, SASE is a network architecture that combines software-defined WAN capabilities and cloud-native network security services including zero-trust network access, secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers and firewalls as a service. "Many IT networking groups unfortunately found the strain and limits of their remote access VPN concentrators and, even after overcoming or addressing those breaking points, they next coped with emerging issues in their bandwidth constraints, lack of network segmentation, weakness in endpoint security solutions and myriad untrusted devices connecting to sensitive corporate systems," Brost said. "Wise IT groups will budget and start planning for a more converged and integrated cloud-based approach to remote device, workforce and distributed security technology." 'Perfect Storm' Of Data Privacy And Cloud Migration The combination of the coronavirus pandemic and an increase in cloud infrastructure will create the "perfect storm" for data governance and compliance in 2021, according to Balaji Ganesan, co-founder and CEO of Privacera, a data governance and security solution provider, and co-founder of Apache Ranger. Organizations will continue to initiate projects to ensure secure data migration to the cloud -- i.e. encryption of all data that is required by the enterprise data governance team before their IT or data teams are allowed to move data from on premises to the cloud, Ganesan said. "In 2021, data governance will become an ever more prevalent topic for CIOs, CISOs, and CDOs to ensure responsible use and availability of cloud data," he said. Next year will spell the end of what Ganesan called the "wild west of information sharing." Regulatory legislation around the world will move toward increased control of personally identifiable information (PII) data to safeguard consumer privacy, as countries increasingly following the lead of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). "The latest politicization of coronavirus data -- combined with the manually and bot-assisted dissemination of information and misinformation based on personal data leveraged out of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter --portends the end of the 'wild west' of personal information on the internet and will begin a new era of consumer privacy," Ganesan said. Standalone data security and governance tools finally will become an integral part of mission-critical business processes, according to Ganesan. "In 2021, security, privacy and governance will be embedded early in business processes," he said. "Developers and technical teams will incorporate these requirements early when building new systems. IT teams will invest in tools to provide secure access to data while balancing ease of use and performance. As a result, data security, governance, privacy would become table stakes in all IT strategy." Increased Cloud Management And Cost Containment Challenges For many enterprises, moving workloads to the cloud has greatly improved some operational efficiencies and collaboration, but it has also proven costly. "We are seeing that customers are much too immature in their skills sets and are using their cloud infrastructure in an inefficient manner compared to how they use their traditional legacy infrastructure," Swanson said. "In fact, cloud wastage is a problem that hinders cloud adoption. Operational inefficiencies are still too great, and customers are not seeing the cost curves being bent down, but staying at a 1:1 ratio." Beyond cloud waste, system platform and management vendors want to be relevant to the rapidly growing cloud computing market, and they understand that managing and operating cloud computing is a new operating paradigm that requires new platforms and tools, according to Swanson. "While many new companies have sprung up dedicated entirely around cloud cost control, look for these tools to become consolidated and extended natively into production application stacks, as vendors look to make their offerings more appealing through built-in cloud efficiency and cost-management elements," he said.

10 Future Cloud Computing Trends To Watch In 2021

Cloud Computing Trends

From the article by Doona Goodison, CRN Senior Editor Cloud computing, which underpinned the world's economy, global supply chains and remote ...

2021 Managed IT Services Trends 2021 Managed IT Services Trends

December 17, 2020 By Dan Lapinski

2021 Managed IT Services TrendsIT has been an integral part of business operations for decades now, but 2020 increased the demand.Before ...

MSP Trends
37 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505700 505700 2021 Managed IT Services TrendsIT has been an integral part of business operations for decades now, but 2020 increased the demand.Before the pandemic, most employees require a desktop or laptop, desk phone, and any industry-specific solutions. Once the pandemic hit, employees required a way to work remotely and virtually connect with customers and colleagues. The KR Group worked with our managed IT services customers during the first part of the year as they transitioned to telecommuting. While most of us are excited to leave 2020 behind, the past year will undoubtedly shape the next one, including how we use IT. Some of the questions we're examining as this year comes to an end: How will MSPs continue to support the remote workforce?How are MSPs responding to shifts in IT?What are MSPs predicting for 2021?What makes switching or sticking with managed services a good option? Whether you're looking for your first MSP, planning to switch providers, or continuing a contract with us, it's important you know how we plan to support our customers in the next year. Continued support of the remote workforce In a recent study from economists at Harvard Business School, after the pandemic, one in six employees will work from home full-time or at least two days a week. If the remote workforce isn't going away, that means the way MSPs support teleworkers has to adapt.  MSPs have always supported a variety of customers across multiple locations. Supporting a business with employees working from various locations is just another layer to the structure MSPs already implement. (For information on everything an MSP can do, check out our ultimate guide.) The increase in the remote workforce also changes how MSPs provide on-site support since customers may have fewer or no employees working and needing support in the office.  Traditionally, one of the perceived problems with managed IT services is MSPs can't provide continuous, hands-on service. However, even internal IT engineers are limited to how hands-on they can be when resolving issues with remote users. If this reason influenced your decision to move to or continue with managed IT services in the past, re-evaluate. With hands-on support less of a concern, managed services might make more sense for your business now. Responding to shifts in IT The mass increase of remote workers isn't the only change MSPs weigh when thinking about service in 2021. The need for remote access and movement away from in-office employees created the perfect storm for many businesses to consider moving to the cloud.We believe 2020 was just the beginning of a large influx of cloud migrations. As businesses move to the cloud for various services, MSPs will need to support the migration and ongoing service. Looking ahead, organizations realized the need to deploy solutions that were accessible to users who continued to work remotely. Additionally, if companies were considering downsizing or eliminating office space, a smaller physical IT footprint was an appealing factor. MSPs come into the equation by providing support for these cloud services as well as advising whether a customer is a good fit or not. If you have moved or will move to the cloud, the host will handle hardware issues. However, that doesn't negate the need for support from your MSP. Regardless of where your solutions are hosted, MSPs can address software and application issues related to your devices, as well as network issues, computer hardware issues, and computer connection issues. In other words, the need for end-user support does not go away when your business migrates to the cloud. Predictions for 2021 The most significant thing to watch for when it comes to managed services is how providers adapt to include advanced cybersecurity protection. MSPs will need to incorporate cybersecurity measures, such as security software-as-a-service or bundled applications, to prevent their customers from being victims of malicious threats. 2020 was an unprecedented year in cyberattacks. Ransomware attacks have increased by 105%.Email phishing attacks increased by 667% and are the most common data breach for users working at home.The number of unsecured remote desktop (RDP) machines rose by more than 40%.Brute-force attacks on RDP machines grew 400% in March and April alone. These statistics should give every business owner a wake-up call if they weren't already prioritizing cybersecurity. At The KR Group, we've seen first-hand that attacks have increased in frequency and become more difficult for software and humans to detect. This is why MSPs, including The KR Group, are expanding our managed services offerings to include security services and solutions. In 2021, we anticipate seeing more MSPs offer cybersecurity and continue to secure home office setups, including implementing firewalls and segmenting home networks. Why should you use managed IT services in 2021? Whether you're an existing or prospective managed IT services customer, working with an MSP offers an efficient way to adapt to changes in how and where you work. An MSP can help you navigate additional shifts in technology, such as cybersecurity, and cloud migrations. We'll also keep you in the loop on emerging technology and if your business could benefit from it. While we all hope 2021 will be more predictable than 2020, know that an MSP will help your IT environment adapt to any changes. If you're an existing customer, we encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on what's happening in the managed IT services, cybersecurity, and IT industries.

2021 Managed IT Services Trends

MSP Trends

2021 Managed IT Services TrendsIT has been an integral part of business operations for decades now, but 2020 increased the demand.Before the ...

Business Trends Every MSP, And MSSP Must Look Out... Business Trends Every MSP, And MSSP Must Look Out...

Brad Slavin | Mar 12, 2021

Business Trends Every MSP, And MSSP Must Look Out For In 2021 & AheadManaged Service Providers are the backbone of the IT industry ...

MSP Trends
38 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505699 505699

Business Trends Every MSP, And MSSP Must Look Out For In 2021 & Ahead

MSP Trends

Business Trends Every MSP, And MSSP Must Look Out For In 2021 & AheadManaged Service Providers are the backbone of the IT industry currently. ...

5 BUSINESS TRENDS SHAKING UP THE MANAGED SERVICES... 5 BUSINESS TRENDS SHAKING UP THE MANAGED SERVICES...

Posted by Kevin Clune | Feb 15, 2021

5 BUSINESS TRENDS SHAKING UP THE MANAGED SERVICES PRICING MODEL IN 2021While the "work-from-home" transition seemed to hog all the ...

MSP Trends
39 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505696 505696 5 BUSINESS TRENDS SHAKING UP THE MANAGED SERVICES PRICING MODEL IN 2021While the "work-from-home" transition seemed to hog all the spotlight during the 2020 pandemic, there were numerous other trends taking shape in the small-medium business world. Many of these pivots (some more subtle than others) have occured over time and have been accelerated by our change in workflow and the digital transformation that came with it. Here are few of these trends that will ultimately change the way MSPs price and package their services now and in the future: CO-MANAGED OPPORTUNITIES With larger organizations suddenly going remote, many have found themselves with a de-facto remote (in-house) IT team keeping them afloat. As this became status quo and physical presence has shrunk in demand, it has appeared that many larger organizations are growing more comfortable with the idea of outsourcing a portion of their IT department to MSPs or staffing organizations. This is because bolting Co-Managed IT services onto an existing technical team has proven to add flexibility, scalability and profitability to an otherwise costly situation As more larger organizations grow comfortable with Co-Managed IT, we can expect to see MSPs adapt as a result. Why wouldn't they alter their business model to accommodate new high-value opportunities? For many, this will mean throwing out their typical all-or-nothing bundles and going to market with a menu of services that can fit whatever unique needs the customer may have. Afterall, these are premium customers and with luxury comes accommodation.GROWING SECURITY NEEDS In my peak as an MSP I can honestly say that we were not a security-first organization. Yes, we fielded tickets related to security incidents on a daily basis and provided some preventative software and support as part of our bundles, but this was not always at the forefront of our customers needs. Many veterans in the industry will have a similar story, as the priorities have been gradually shifting toward a security-centric offering and this has now become a primary driver of new business. MSPs re-evaluating their pricing and packaging strategies will have to take a long look at both their capabilities and the needs of their customers to make sure that these are constantly in alignment. In many cases, MSPs will discover the need for outsourced network and security operation centers to increase their talent-pool and availability. Those who prefer to go "all-in" on security may even cross over from MSP to MSSP where they will be able to command higher rates and take a more consultative approach. EXPANDING ACTIVE HOURS One of most symbolic traditions to be impacted as of late is the "9-5" workday. With offices and schools closed, many businesses have been forced to offer their workers a more flexible work schedule. It is to be determined whether this trend will continue when the ability to maintain a routine becomes easier, but until that time there will certainly be an increased need for Help Desk support outside of normal office hours. Several MSPs that I have spoken to are reacting to this situation by engaging with third-party Help Desk services to route tickets through when their technicians are unavailable. The MSPs that have been hurt the most by this change are those who included 24/7 support in their standard MSA. Until recently, this was likely a benefit that was under-utilized and may have been used as a sales tool to differentiate from the "9-5" competitors. Nevertheless, just about every MSP is re-evaluating their needs in terms of active hours and are considering the costs and benefits associated with taking the "always on" approach.ENDPOINT AUDIO/VISUAL USAGE The popularity of video meetings, content creation / podcasts, and virtual events has created a frenzy that boosted the sale of webcams, microphones, ring lights and other A/V technology in a way that the industry has never seen. While everyone rushed to purchase the "best available" device on Amazon, it has left MSPs with one glaring problem to deal with; the complete lack of standardization. The real question is, who is responsible for supporting these devices and how will affect the relationship as a result? Thanks to Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, MSPs now have some value in the growing collaboration market, but it is to be determined whether this makes its way down to the bottom line as well. Nevertheless, MSPs will have to get creative to standardize endpoint level A/V hardware and support new collaboration software at a profit, without this just becoming a nagging drain on their resources. This may result in new collaboration-as-a-service hardware / software bundles, an expansion of T&M exclusions, or simply an increase in rate to account for this growing category of support incidents. CONTRACT REQUIREMENTS The best thing about being an MSP is that customers rarely leave. Or at least that was the case for the majority of the last decade when getting your customer to sign a 3-5 year contract was no sweat and retention during this period was almost implied. What I learned by observation over the past 6 months was that if customers want out of a contract, they will get out, and that many business owners are coming to the realization that the transition from one MSP to another is hardly the traumatic experience they feared it would be. I have yet to come across any hard data that would indicate that the desired contract length for SMBs is shrinking or that average rate of retention has gotten shorter, however logic would tell me that both of these would likely be true if surveyed today. For MSPs, this means that you can no longer make your profit on the back-end of a contract and profitability must be accounted for from day one. This may also lead to the implementation of onboarding fees, billable projects, and other charges that may have been previously swept under the rug as the cost of doing business.

5 BUSINESS TRENDS SHAKING UP THE MANAGED SERVICES PRICING MODEL IN 2021

MSP Trends

5 BUSINESS TRENDS SHAKING UP THE MANAGED SERVICES PRICING MODEL IN 2021While the "work-from-home" transition seemed to hog all the spotlight during ...

Predicting 7 MSP trends in technology for 2021 Predicting 7 MSP trends in technology for 2021

By John Moore, Senior Feature Writer, 06 Nov 2020

Predicting 7 MSP trends in technology for 2021It's all connected. The consulting and MSP trends expected to shape 2021 demonstrate how ...

MSP Trends
40 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505694 505694 Predicting 7 MSP trends in technology for 2021It's all connected. The consulting and MSP trends expected to shape 2021 demonstrate how interwoven maturing technologies and emerging developments have become. Service provider companies can anticipate a continuation of important 2020 patterns, such as the ongoing evolution of cloud computing. Cloud, however, will set the stage for other developments, including AI and machine learning. Cybersecurity will play a central in the normalization of remote work. And robotic process automation (RPA), initially viewed as a distinct technology, will become increasingly embedded in core business applications. Read on for the details regarding seven pivotal tech trends, based on IT executive interviews and recent industry conferences: 1. Managing cloud complexity   Cost and management problems have shadowed cloud companies' popularity. The growing number of cloud options available and the arrival of multi-cloud deployments spanning data centers, private clouds and public clouds add to the headaches. Service providers can expect cloud complexity to be an important issue in 2021 -- and an opportunity for providing operations and management expertise.The rush among many organizations in 2020 to adopt the cloud amid COVID-19 has only intensified matters. Seventy-one percent of senior IT professional reported "negative effects" due to the rate of cloud transformation, according to a study published by Aptum Technologies, an MSP and hybrid multi-cloud provider based in Toronto. Organizations moved to the cloud "too quickly ... without adequate planning," said Craig Tavares, global head of cloud at Aptum.David Linthicum"2021 is going to be the year that everyone starts normalizing some of their architecture and the architectural mistakes they made in moving so fast," said David Linthicum, chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte. "We will hit the complexity wall."The diversity of cloud technologies results in higher costs and lower efficiency, he noted. Groups within a business might maintain dozens of disconnected cloud projects, differing tools and multiple security platforms. The upshot: expensive redundancy and greater security risk due to complexity. Consultants and service providers are taking steps to mediate this complexity. Deloitte, for instance, offers a cloud cost complexity calculator to help customers understand the scope of the problem. The objective is to create an architecture that establishes common governance and security layers.2. Branching out to AI and machine learning   Organizations that get their cloud house in order can begin thinking about layering services on top of that infrastructure -- and might do so in 2021.In the federal market, the defense sector's mandate is to get to the cloud as quickly as possible, noted Paul Wilkinson, executive vice president at 1901 Group, an IT services  provider based in Reston, Va., that focuses on government clients. But the cloud won't be the final destination."Cloud is the way in which [agencies] are going to move into a better environment that will enable them to do things like machine learning and AI," he said. "Our customers know this is the catalyst for transformation."Wilkinson said agencies will likely tap cloud-native services, such as AWS' SageMaker, to start using AI and machine learning. Cloud-agnostic infrastructure-as-code tools such as HashiCorp's Terraform, Progress' Chef, Ansible and Puppet will also come into play.Shawn MillsShawn Mills, CEO at Lunavi, an MSP and technology consulting firm based in Cheyenne, Wyo., sees the future in AI, machine learning and smart applications, but only after organizations have built a solid data platform. "Most people aren't ready for machine learning," he said. "They need to learn what data they have and what data they can get."Solving data access leads to another challenge: how to tie it all together. To that end, Lunavi is building an agile approach to data management and integration, so customers can quickly obtain value from their data, Mills said.Accordingly, Lunavi will focus on building data platforms for customers during the first part of 2021, he said. Minimum viable product (MVP) will be part of the company's approach."Let's [create] the MVP for our customers to get value within a month, not a massive data platform that takes two years to build," Mills said.By the end of 2021, Lunavi will start using the agile data platforms to build intelligence into applications. The company, a Microsoft Azure Expert MSP, plans to take advantage of Azure's machine learning technology. 3. Pushing cybersecurity to the edge  The tremendous increase in the remote workforce amid COVID-19 has fostered the concurrent growth of cloud services and the need to secure them. Employees accessing cloud-based collaboration tools and applications have expanded corporate network boundaries to the individual home -- the branch office of one. Against that backdrop, customers and their service providers must refocus their cybersecurity efforts in 2021, if they haven't done so already.Ben NiernbergBen Niernberg, executive vice president at MNJ Technologies, an MSP based in Buffalo Grove, Ill., said 80% to 90% of the discussions he has with customers already revolve around security. He stated the key question for customers needing to protect remote work: "How do you secure the data at the actual edge of your network versus a single massive firewall in your data center?"Organizations have a couple of options for extending security. One approach involves technologies installed in the employee's home: those include content filtering products, a remote worker gateway appliance that includes a firewall and compact SD-WAN appliance that connects the remote worksite to the main office and its security features.The other option, Niernberg added, is to route traffic to and from cloud-based applications to a private cloud or colocation facility equipped with a data center-grade firewall. "You are now dealing with one firewall vs. 50," he said. "Backhauling traffic ... makes [home offices] a little easier for an MSP to secure."Gartner outlined yet another approach for dealing with shifting boundaries. The company listed "cybersecurity mesh" as one of its top strategic technology trends for 2021. The market researcher defines mesh as an architectural approach for providing flexible cybersecurity control."Many assets now exist outside of the traditional security perimeter," Gartner noted. "Cybersecurity mesh essentially allows for the security perimeter to be defined around the identity of a person or thing." 4. Exploring immersive technologies   Augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), once fringe technologies, will be pressed into service to help retailers and purveyors of physical experiences amid the in-person experience limitations of COVID-19. IT service providers should look out for AR/VR opportunities in 2021 and beyond.An Accenture study found 64% of leading consumer brands have begun to invest in AR/VR, 3D content and 360-degree video. Rori DuBoff, managing director of strategy and innovation at Accenture Interactive, said she was surprised by the percentage of brands pursuing such immersive technologies."We are seeing momentum," she said. "This is the next evolution of where commerce is going."Accenture's report cited retailers' uploading 3D models to product pages and hosting virtual fashion shows as examples of use. Some of the technologies driving immersive experiences come from unconventional sources such as video game engines like Unity and Epic Games' Unreal Engine. "They are aggressively pursuing [opportunities] way beyond gaming now," DuBoff said.Daryl PlummerGartner's list of strategic predictions, published in October, cites immersive experiences as one of 10 key developments. By 2025, 40% of physical-experience businesses will boost their financial results by expanding into paid virtual experiences, said Daryl Plummer, vice president and chief of research at Gartner, speaking at the company's IT symposium. And in the nearer term, by 2022, at least three leading providers of physical experiences will drive more than 10% of their revenue from virtual experiences, he added.Companies offering rock climbing or rafting in the physical setting, for example, "are going to allow you to have a virtual reality experience that might even rival the physical experience," Plummer said. 5. Implementing pervasive RPAConsultants and service providers that built practices around RPA vendors could be in for a significant boost in 2021. Gartner predicts 19.5% growth for RPA next year, when the worldwide market is expected to reach $1.89 billion. Growth is set to continue at a double-digit pace through 2024, according to the market watcher's RPA forecast.The pandemic contributes to what was already a rapidly expanding field. Fabrizio Biscotti, research vice president at Gartner, said COVID-19 has fostered a sense of urgency among organizations that were thinking about RPA adoption. Business processes that involved significant human participation "need to be redesigned very quickly," he said.RPA has become an important tool for doing so. Service provider companies can expect to see activity across a range of industries."I think in several sectors we are witnessing an acceleration of adoption," Biscotti said. He cited banking, insurance, professional services, telecommunications and portions of the manufacturing sector, such as high-tech, as examples.At 1901 Group, RPA plays internal and customer-facing roles. "We are leveraging RPA ourselves to automate the way in which we deliver managed services for our customers," Wilkinson said. RPA lets the company extract data from cloud platforms for reporting on resource provisioning and utilization, for instance.RPA also helps customers seeking higher efficiency, Wilkinson said, noting RPA is often embedded within platforms such as ServiceNow.That nesting of RPA within such application platforms is poised to become more common. Forrester Research forecasts embedded RPA as a 2021 trend."Like machine learning, RPA will become an embedded feature of many platforms by the end of 2021," according to Forrester's "Predictions 2021: Automation" report. Forrester said RPA will be available from nearly 200 "software workflow transformation solution vendors" in addition to pure-play vendors such as Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and UiPath. 6. Providing VoIP and unified communications  Businesses still relying on legacy PBX systems, which offer no remote capabilities, will be looking to VoIP offerings."Voice over IP looks like a huge market that is untapped," said Robin Chow, CEO of Xbase Technologies Corp., an MSP based in Toronto. Chow, speaking at the MSPAlliance conference, said moving to hosted VoIP "will be a quantum leap" for customers in need of modernization, he added."We have seen a lot of interest in IP-based phone offerings," said Luca Jacobellis, president and COO at 1Path, an MSP based in Atlanta. Customers are jettisoning legacy PBXs, he said, noting systems confined to offices can't support home-based workers.The explosion of a remote workforce is something many organizations will integrate into their new normal, possibly forever.Jeff TonStrategic IT advisor, InterVisionNiernberg said legacy PBXs are harder to manage and not nearly as flexible as a cloud phone offering from vendors such as 8x8, Cisco and RingCentral. "It's easier to diagnose and maintain that type of system ... than a legacy PBX," he noted.VoIP and cloud calling fit into the broader context of unified communications, which will continue to see demand in 2021 given the ongoing need for remote work technology.Jeff Ton"The explosion of a remote workforce is something many organizations will integrate into their new normal, possibly forever," said Jeff Ton, strategic IT advisor at InterVision.Ton said 2021 will see many CIOs reevaluating workforce enablement tools, including their collaboration stack, SaaS applications in lieu of legacy on-premises applications and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). As for the latter, Ton called remote workforce enablement "a use case that screams for VDI." 7. Deploying technology at speed: the pandemic's effect on the MSP marketCOVID-19 will not only influence the technologies in demand in 2021, but how organizations will deploy them.Organizations are adopting what Ton called "pandemic mode." The antithesis of incrementalism, this approach calls for faster decision-making, more responsiveness from IT and a reduction in onerous processes, he said."This is a much faster pace than many businesses and IT shops are accustomed to working," Ton said. In pandemic mode, more companies will adopt agile methodologies to keep up with the pace of change, he added.Lunavi's Mills also cited speed as important factor in 2021. "People are really focused on trying to drive value now," he said. "The traditional waterfall [model] and waiting six to 12 months is not an acceptable path any longer."Technologies that dovetail with fast-tracking methodologies should also see demand in 2021. Low-code platforms, for example, will experience high growth, according to Forrester. An uptick in low-code adoption has already occurred in 2020, as organizations tried to react more quickly to changing circumstances."During the pandemic, many organizations embraced low-code platforms to build and deploy new apps fast," wrote Jeffrey Hammond, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, in a blog post. "These experiences will drive most development shops to adopt low-code tools and more."

Predicting 7 MSP trends in technology for 2021

MSP Trends

Predicting 7 MSP trends in technology for 2021It's all connected. The consulting and MSP trends expected to shape 2021 demonstrate how interwoven ...

6 Big Trends Shaping the Managed Services Market 6 Big Trends Shaping the Managed Services Market

Written by Bobby DeMarzo March 31, 2021

6 Big Trends Shaping the Managed Services MarketThe single most-often asked question of us is, "What are the trends shaping the managed ...

MSP Trends
41 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505693 505693 6 Big Trends Shaping the Managed Services MarketThe single most-often asked question of us is, "What are the trends shaping the managed services market?" It's a question asked of us every day regarding the health and well-being of companies that deliver managed services to customers of all sizes. With so much of today's IT being consumed via managed services on a recurring or subscription basis, monitoring the state of the MSP market has become our industry's pastime. It won't replace baseball anytime soon, but it is still fun watching the day-to-day market gyrations of our MSP 501 and the greater managed services market. So below are answers to some of the most pressing issues of the day when it comes to the MSP market. What's Not Changing? Well, there are some things that aren't changing, perhaps for the better. Over the past few years, security and cloud have been the main growth drivers for most MSPs. Based on our ongoing conversations with the MSP 501, along with our managed services research, we don't see that changing any time soon. We will be the first to admit those are very broad category definitions which deserve more detail, but for anyone who wants to know where MSP leaders exude the most confidence, it would be around cloud and security solutions. Do All MSPs Think and Act Alike? Don't lump all MSPs together. Another major trend we are examining is the distinction between small, medium and large MSPs in terms of their market outlook and behavior. We're finding some very real differences in the opinions of leaders of small, fast-growing MSPs and those of much larger organizations. Let's dig a little deeper on this point. When we asked the MSP 501 about their top revenue producing solutions, about one-fifth cited infrastructure-as-a-service. However, the number of large MSPs driving IaaS sales to new heights with storage and server technologies was nearly double that of smaller partners. Of course, one could argue that IaaS is a better fit for enterprise customers. But either way it does show a sharp contrast. The same is true for MSPs who said data center services. So, no, not all MSPs move in the same direction. What's Going on with the MSP Market and IT Security? Even though IT security overall is one the fastest-growing segments for MSPs, there are some variations. While MSPs of all sizes are seeing similar growth prospects for endpoint, network and managed detection and response, the same cannot be said for identity access management. When it comes to that segment of IT security, nearly twice the number of large MSPs see identity access management as big source of growth. Are MSPs Focused on Midmarket Opportunities? We are huge fans of middle market - you know, those companies with 100 to 1,000 seats that make up the backbone of the U.S. economy. But it's in this customer segment that differences among MSP business models get really interesting. While the majority of MSPs serve customers that are similar to their size - e.g., small MSPs overwhelming sell to small businesses - there are some huge market gaps. This has major implications for vendors, tech suppliers and distributors who look to their MSP partners for revenue growth. The data show the upper end of the midmarket is  not being served well by the channel. This a total missed opportunity, as senior IT leaders from midsize companies prefer to partner with and purchase from MSPs and solution providers. Only 17 percent of the small organizations surveyed as part of the MSP 501 said they sell to midmarket companies with 501 to 1,000 employees. What was even more shocking is the revelation that only one-quarter of the midsized MSP 501 companies target the larger upper tier of the midmarket. And guess what? Even the large MSPs are not as focused on the midmarket as they could be. The result is a missed channel opportunity to address the midmarket What's Going on in the Education Vertical? The market which that received the most attention during the pandemic has been education. Vendors and channel partners have helped many K-12 schools, colleges and universities respond to needs for remote learning, security management and infrastructure updates, and much more. While the 2020 MSP data predated the pandemic, it did show that many small MSPs need to step up their sales and marketing focus on the overall education market. Many MSPs said they were not selling into that sector - another missed opportunity. Even their midsize brethren were leaving money on the table when it comes to serving higher education. Are MSPs Just Selling to IT Managers or Engaging with Line of Business? We'll leave you with one last observation that addresses the heart of an ongoing debate in the IT industry. Some senior channel leaders believe tech budgets and influence have shifted to line-of-business managers. On the other of the debate are those who believe IT managers still hold the vast majority of the tech spend for products and services. Each side has a point with significant evidence to show that LOB professionals are worthwhile sales targets for tech spend. But midsize and large MSPs need to develop a better game plan to address line of business. Nearly half of the MSP 501 companies we spoke to said they did not have a line-of-business focus at the time of our survey. Those that did, however, are reaping rewards and new sales leads.

6 Big Trends Shaping the Managed Services Market

MSP Trends

6 Big Trends Shaping the Managed Services MarketThe single most-often asked question of us is, "What are the trends shaping the managed services ...

Three 2021 Predictions that MSPs Can Bank On Three 2021 Predictions that MSPs Can Bank On

Barracuda MSP Guest Blogger, December 16, 2020

Three 2021 Predictions that MSPs Can Bank OnAmong 2021 predictions, this one is almost guaranteed: Cloud, security, and training will ...

MSP Trends
42 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505692 505692

Three 2021 Predictions that MSPs Can Bank On

MSP Trends

Three 2021 Predictions that MSPs Can Bank OnAmong 2021 predictions, this one is almost guaranteed: Cloud, security, and training will remain key ...

What's Your General Outlook for the MSP Industry... What's Your General Outlook for the MSP Industry...

BY PROJECTINDIANA, NOVEMBER 24TH, 2020

What's Your General Outlook for the MSP Industry in 2021?All of us, MSPs and channel vendors alike, want to get a feel for what's coming up ...

MSP Trends
43 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505691 505691 What's Your General Outlook for the MSP Industry in 2021?All of us, MSPs and channel vendors alike, want to get a feel for what's coming up next. After all, the better handle you have on the business environment, the better decisions you can make. It would be tempting to think, after the year we've just had, that such prognostications are a mug's game. But that's not entirely true. Think about where good data comes from. 2020 was clearly an outlier, so it's not necessarily indicative of the long-range trends that drive our industry. To understand those trends, however, you still want to get a large enough sample size of experts, diversify the opinions a bit, and that's precisely what we did. We asked ten different industry influencers what they think about four critical issues in the MSP space. This week, we're talking about the general industry outlook. The Good News Here's the good news - everybody is positive. As Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola points out "The COVID-19 pandemic showed small and medium sized businesses just how indispensable technology is to operate their businesses safely and effectively. It became clear that technology not only helps SMBs fight the economic challenges they face today, but that it is also their best weapon against a recession. Gary Pica, President of TruMethods, points out that even though the overall economy is likely to continue to struggle, "SMB technology spending will continue to increase. This means that MSPs will have a growing addressable market." So that's the good news - even with so much unsettled regarding next year, you're in the right business. And here's why that matters. A lot of businesses are growing First, several industries are poised to do very well coming out of the recession. Nigel Moore of Tech Tribe calls out "pharma, education, health and e-commerce in particular. Paul Dippell, CEO of Service Leadership, notes that managed services can thrive in recessions because "smart businesses realize they should focus on their core expertise and not try to run their own IT in a challenging economy." And MSP marketing expert Erick Simpson also points out that "once vaccines have been deployed and businesses return to a sense of normalcy; possibly by Q3, we should see projects that had been placed on hold begin to gain approval to commence or continue." Which MSPs will gain the most? Our panel was universally bullish on the MSP space, and each member of the panel provided a strong case as to why.  In addition to the reasons above, a couple of our panel pointed out that less mature MSPs probably dropped the ball in 2020 and are going to shed customers as a result, with more mature MSPs set to pick up those gains. Those less mature MSPs could struggle, Todd Kane of Evolved Management argues, and M&A activity will accelerate as "less stable MSPs look to be acquired by stronger operators in the market." What this says is that while the outlook is positive for the industry as a whole, the gains are probably going to be concentrated among the MSPs that are the most mature, and the most competitive in their markets. Next week, we'll take a look at what our influencers think about how the pandemic has altered the MSP marketplace, a rather salient question since it looks like a lot of those changes are going to be baked into the way things are done going forward.

What's Your General Outlook for the MSP Industry in 2021?

MSP Trends

What's Your General Outlook for the MSP Industry in 2021?All of us, MSPs and channel vendors alike, want to get a feel for what's coming up next. ...

Starting Off In 2021: 6 Eye-Popping Industry... Starting Off In 2021: 6 Eye-Popping Industry...

By Zomentum

Starting Off In 2021: 6 Eye-Popping Industry Predictions For The MSP Community2020 was overwhelming for the world as businesses struggled ...

MSP Trends
44 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505070 505070 Starting Off In 2021: 6 Eye-Popping Industry Predictions For The MSP Community2020 was overwhelming for the world as businesses struggled to stay afloat when the pandemic had hit them hard. The eminent health crisis and a sudden shift to working remote forced companies rethink how to stay agile and lean.  The fact that organizations need to adopt new technologies to adapt to this changing landscape is quite evident. Also, hiring experts for every new technology isn't feasible on a monetary level.  The managed services industry is helping global companies acquire the expertise to deal with these innovations, thereby adding more value and keeping costs and employee agility in mind. This pattern will continue in 2021 as there is no certainty when (or if) things will return to normal for many businesses.  There are several new MSP trends and opportunities that will likely come to fruition this year. Let's take a look at those inclinations.   1. Financial growth for managed services business owners  The Global Managed Services Market report 2021 suggests that the MSP market, which was valued at $155.91 billion in 2017, will reach $296.38 billion this year. This growth indicates that managed services and MSSP firms will experience a rise in annual recurring revenue. As more and more businesses start to invest in cloud services, automation, and IT upgrades, demand for these companies' services will continue to soar.  Another important aspect is that businesses are shifting their IT financing model away from capital expenditures to operational costs, contributing further to the MSP market's growth. 2. Growing reliance on cybersecurity  With remote working comes higher risks. Amidst the COVID19 pandemic, cyber crimes have grown significantly, with the target shifting from individuals and small businesses to major corporations, governments, and critical infrastructure. Therefore, companies and their service providers must refocus their cybersecurity initiatives in 2021.  This reliance on data and network protection will be a blessing in disguise for the service providers who can use different ways to extend security. Some of the popular cybersecurity services would be Patch management and updates, Antivirus, Backup and disaster recovery, Firewall monitoring and updates, spam filtering and several more.  3. The increasing value of managed service providers  Most companies understand that early adoption of new technologies can help them stay ahead of the competition. However, the need to comprehend all the fine details of SaaS applications and cloud security and remain competent in migration projects can be a roadblock. Hiring and training staff to gain such insights is costly and time-consuming, and even if they decide to attempt to go that route, more agile competitors can leave them behind in that race. Smart businesses will increasingly look to MSPs to provide back up or serve as the primary IT experts. 4. Simplify talent sourcing post-pandemic  Before COVID19, there was a shortage of technical talent in the MSP industry. However, this scenario changed drastically over the past year due to staff reductions, pay cuts, and small business failures in specific sectors. Those developments should make it easier for MSPs to recruit skilled technical professionals to enhance their teams in 2021. 5. Marketing initiatives become prevalent Most MSPs realise that generating qualified leads for their business is not easy, especially amidst the pandemic. Many may rely extensively on referrals from their existing clients, but they might not reach their MRR goals just utilizing that methodology alone. For those MSPs, 2021 will be the right time to start ramping up online marketing efforts. That process includes defining their ideal customer and connecting online, publishing informational content relevant to their businesses, and following up with those audiences. 6. Rising Merger and Acquisition activities for MSPs  A recent IT Glue survey report shows that 69% of MSPs are considering being acquired, and 19% are considering being purchased by a peer. Some of the key reasons behind this trend include: IT services providers wish to be one-stop shopping options for their clients, from delivering essential IT maintenance support and cloud solutions to cybersecurity and application integration.Many managed services business owners are approaching their late 50s or 60s and considering retirement.Some leaders of managed services companies simply want to augment their organic growth and increase their business value by acquiring other MSPs.MSPs are trying to gain valued technical professionals and skilled sales teams through acquisition of other companies.MSP owners are shifting their customer targets to a specific domain and wish to excel in it by mergers and acquisitions.The uncertain business environment in 2021 will certainly affect many of these trends and create new scopes and challenges for MSPs.In this ever-evolving technology scene, organizations that prepare for all the potential challenges that could be thrown their way will advance. MSP support is a must for every fast-scaling business. Even with all the uncertainty about when the pandemic will come to an end and if things will return to normal, service providers have a lot of reasons for being optimistic.

Starting Off In 2021: 6 Eye-Popping Industry Predictions For The MSP Community

MSP Trends

Starting Off In 2021: 6 Eye-Popping Industry Predictions For The MSP Community2020 was overwhelming for the world as businesses struggled to stay ...

Pulse of the MSP 2021: Survey reveals trends in... Pulse of the MSP 2021: Survey reveals trends in...

February 12, 2021 by Ritika Bramhe

Pulse of the MSP 2021: Survey reveals trends in the IT ChannelA key to providing our managed service provider (MSP) partners the support ...

MSP Trends
45 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505069 505069

Pulse of the MSP 2021: Survey reveals trends in the IT Channel

MSP Trends

Pulse of the MSP 2021: Survey reveals trends in the IT ChannelA key to providing our managed service provider (MSP) partners the support and ...

Top MSP Trends to Look out For in 2021 Top MSP Trends to Look out For in 2021

February 12, 2021 by Ritika Bramhe

Top MSP Trends to Look out For in 2021Unlike the previous year, more managed service providers (MSPs) are embracing digitalization in 2021. ...

MSP Trends
46 MSP-Trends-MSP-Trends jplist-topic-msp jplist-topic-telecom jplist-topic-channel 0 505068 505068 Top MSP Trends to Look out For in 2021Unlike the previous year, more managed service providers (MSPs) are embracing digitalization in 2021. Many organizations have adopted a remote-first mentality and are investing in technologies that are strategically aligned with this new way of life.  Despite the 3.2 percent decline in IT spending in 2020, Gartner projects that spending will surge and reach $3.9 trillion worldwide in 2021. More IT organizations are investing in enterprise software as remote work becomes essential. Remote-work system investments will grow by 8.8 percent this year. A surge of investment indicates that IT organizations are willing to invest in technology that creates more business opportunities. MSPs must stay informed on the latest tech trends to support this new wave of digitalization and opportunity. This post will present five industry trends that MSPs should know in 2021.  Managing Cloud Cloud technology has revolutionized the world of digital transformation and is here to stay. Organizations are moving their data to the cloud to leverage modern applications and analytics.  Moving to the cloud means moving critical services from on-premises to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud or other cloud service providers. Organizations can remotely manage IT infrastructures without enduring inconvenience and high maintenance costs.  Cloud migration is beneficial from a scalability perspective. Moving to the cloud provides flexibility and allows organizations to scale up or down based on their requirements.Pushing Cybersecurity to the Forefront The U.S. experienced an unprecedented number of cyberattacks in 2020. The rise of attacks and the concurrent expansion of cloud services has forced organizations to reconsider their cybersecurity strategy.  As organizational assets move outside of traditional security boundaries, Gartner outlines a new security approach called the "cybersecurity mesh." A cybersecurity mesh is defined as, "[An] architectural approach to scalable, flexible and reliable security control." Per Gartner, "[The mesh] enables a more modular, responsive security approach by centralizing policy orchestration and distributing policy enforcement." The cybersecurity mesh is expected to enhance cybersecurity processes and measures. Immersive Technologies (AR/VR) Social distancing is the new norm, and purveyors of physical experiences are increasingly adopting augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) systems to enable sales. Once defined as good-to-have systems, AR/VR technologies are now prevalent during the current health crisis. We're seeing more retailers uploading 3D models to their product landing pages, and they are leveraging AR technology to allow consumers to visualize furniture at home. AR/VR technologies provide a new, safe experience for buyers and sellers. MSPs must be familiar with AR/VR technology to provide exceptional customer support for large and small retailers.  Use of Artificial Intelligence MSPs are deploying technologies that use big data and machine learning algorithms to accelerate the identification and remediation of issues. Through artificial intelligence (AI), MSPs can resolve incidents fast before they impact clients' critical business functionalities. AI helps technicians detect anomalies in systems and suggests remedies to bring them back to normal. By leveraging AI solutions this year, MSPs can maximize client satisfaction and improve customer retention without spreading themselves too thin on resources. Introducing Automation to IT Service Alerting Automation replaces repetitive, mundane tasks with scripts that trigger IT alerts when pre-configured conditions are met. MSPs can leverage automated IT service alerting (ITSA) solutions, such as OnPage, to orchestrate notifications across on-call teams. On-call technicians are immediately notified of client issues, enabling them to provide instant resolution to critical incidents.  ITSA solutions can be integrated with IT service management (ITSM), remote monitoring and cybersecurity tools. These powerful integrations help MSPs to accelerate incident response. Automation is also used to optimize live call routing workflows. Clients dial one dedicated phone number to reach on-call technicians in real time. If the first technician doesn't respond, automation escalates the call to the next on-call engineer. MSPs can perfect their after-hour operations using these automated, real-time systems. Conclusion As the COVID pandemic pushes employers to reimagine and redefine their workplace flexibility, MSPs will see a rise in the adoption of new technologies to support this endeavor. The five tech trends, as discussed in this post, will enable organizations to survive and thrive for years to come.

Top MSP Trends to Look out For in 2021

MSP Trends

Top MSP Trends to Look out For in 2021Unlike the previous year, more managed service providers (MSPs) are embracing digitalization in 2021. Many ...

Innovating Channels Through Venture Investments Innovating Channels Through Venture Investments

Larry Walsh - 02 Mar 2021

Innovating Channels Through Venture Investments

Channel Trends
47 Channel-Trends-Channel-Trends jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-telecom 0 504788 504788 Innovating Channels Through Venture Investments

Innovating Channels Through Venture Investments

Channel Trends

Innovating Channels Through Venture Investments

Synnex-Tech Data Merger Reflects Distribution's... Synnex-Tech Data Merger Reflects Distribution's...

Larry Walsh - 22 Mar 2021

Synnex-Tech Data Merger Reflects Distribution's EvolutionThe real story isn't distribution consolidation; it's evolving capabilities and ...

Channel Trends
48 Channel-Trends-Channel-Trends jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-telecom 0 504787 504787

Synnex-Tech Data Merger Reflects Distribution's Evolution

Channel Trends

Synnex-Tech Data Merger Reflects Distribution's EvolutionThe real story isn't distribution consolidation; it's evolving capabilities and value ...

What's in store for the channel in 2021? What's in store for the channel in 2021?

Chris Kelly - 12 Jan 2021

What's in store for the channel in 2021?The global pandemic has undoubtedly caused organisations to revisit their well-planned strategies ...

Channel Trends
49 Channel-Trends-Channel-Trends jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-telecom 0 504786 504786 What's in store for the channel in 2021?The global pandemic has undoubtedly caused organisations to revisit their well-planned strategies for the year and it will continue to dictate the direction the industry goes in during the next 12 months. At Riverbed, we have focused on helping our customers quickly scale work-from-home models with application acceleration and network performance management solutions that keep remote workers productive and networks running and secure. Enterprises have had to accelerate digital initiatives in a matter of weeks rather than years as a top priority to overhaul their business processes and transform services in order to deliver value to their customers and employees. As organisations increase their remote workforces and shift toward work-from-anywhere models and hybrid work environments, technology will play a critical role. More than ever before businesses need visibility over their networks to ensure that they can quickly troubleshoot problems and employees remain productive, regardless of location. It is here that the role of the channel becomes vital, creating both significant market opportunities as well as challenges to solve. With this in mind, here are Riverbed's six channel predictions for 2021.Customer and employee experience become paramount to sales Covid-19 triggered a significant uptake in software as a service (SaaS) applications, as businesses turned to cloud-based collaboration tools - such as Office 365 - to facilitate remote working. These applications require partners to implement a customer success motion as they often work on an outcomes-based model that factors in adoption and uptake. Therefore, as we move into 2021, channel partners will need to adapt to this technology trend, building on their customer experience methodologies to not just land, but adopt, expand, and renew subscriptions and services. Customer experience goes hand-in-hand with employee experience and similarly requires partners to provide new services that will optimise performance and create that seamless technology environment. This change in approach takes years rather than months to build and is compounded by the restrictions of Covid-19. Moving quickly will therefore be crucial for businesses and partners. Prior to 2020, face-to-face interaction was seen as critical to maintaining and growing sales. However, for the majority of this year, partners have been unable to physically go in and see customers and understand how services are being used by employees. To prevent buyers from making decisions without first reaching out to a partner, partners must re-establish their status as trusted advisors by developing digital customer and employee intimacy. Regular video conferencing will be key to this and driving sales within the channel. It will mean that they can continue to gather information about what is going on within the clients' business and identify new opportunities that will streamline their experience. Digital transformation continues to dominate channel growth The global pandemic will continue to accelerate digital transformation initiatives creating new opportunities for the channel. With companies forced to modernise their IT infrastructure overnight and support a predominantly remote workforce across Europe, partners are ideally placed to deliver the scale, visibility, optimisation and technology education that will drive business success in 2021. Underpinned by a fundamental reliance on cloud, companies will be looking to the channel to automate processes, maintain performance, provide visibility across the IT estate, and secure their networks. All whilst employees and customers demand the same experience as an office environment. With no time to compromise and Covid-19 not going away, partners will work with businesses to structure and prioritise their digital initiatives in a world now driven by hybrid networks and a 'work from anywhere' culture. Investing in new solutions that will drive productivity, deliver ROI and realise the innovation will set them apart. Vendor selection will narrow in response to meeting customer's immediate needs Vendor models have become more focused on responding to customers' immediate needs as a result of the disruptions of 2020. For example, in Q2, many partners' entire focus was on procuring laptops and loading them with Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to enable businesses to shift employees out of the office. This is resulting in the narrowing of solution and vendor selection; a trend that will continue into 2021. In this climate, partners will focus on vendors that provide infrastructure that will make remote working technology more efficient, productive, and secure. As well as vendors who deliver managed services in these areas - such as Application Acceleration - as their services can be expanded or sustained on behalf of the customer so the business can focus on other areas. Changing partner models will catalyse a rise in M&As Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) slowed down due to Covid-19 but will begin to ramp up in the close to 2020 and as we enter the new year. The change in partner models - to narrow initiatives and vendors - will be a key contributor to this. Combined with a second lockdown, we will see certain businesses experience a cash flow crunch which will prevent them from being viable and will therefore accelerate consolidation. Partners move to support new buying models  The demands of both customers and employees will force companies to readdress their business models. This is because customers are recognising the importance of technological investments, but expressing an inability to pay for them, and putting the impetus on partners to find a solution. This will present a large-scale challenge to the value chain or IT, and specifically the channel partners in the middle of next year.  It is a huge opportunity for partners to adapt their focus and find a means for offering pay-as-you-go, or subscription-based financing plans, even for non-subscription based projects. Partners who can make this shift and adapt to this trend will see great success, but they will not be able to do it alone. Drawing on distributors, who have extremely strong financing arms, will empower partners to offer these models. Partners focus on upskilling and training to drive new opportunity The rise in home working, dictated by the pandemic, has provided channel partners with time to learn, uplevel their skills and build their technical expertise. This trend will continue into 2021 with partners opting into training to better understand products, even when it is not required by the vendor in its programme. Those partners who continue to take advantage of these opportunities will accelerate out of the challenging business climate created by Covid-19 in 2021. A year of change 2021 will be a year of change for the channel industry. However, partners who are willing to flex to changing customer needs, deliver strong experiences, champion visibility and performance, and further educate themselves on vendor products will thrive.

What's in store for the channel in 2021?

Channel Trends

What's in store for the channel in 2021?The global pandemic has undoubtedly caused organisations to revisit their well-planned strategies for the ...

2021 Predictions for Building the Best Channel... 2021 Predictions for Building the Best Channel...

Ellen Linkenhoker

2021 Predictions for Building the Best Channel Partner Programs If there's one thing I have to keep from 2020 it's our newfound ...

Channel Trends
50 Channel-Trends-Channel-Trends jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-telecom 0 504785 504785

2021 Predictions for Building the Best Channel Partner Programs

Channel Trends

2021 Predictions for Building the Best Channel Partner Programs If there's one thing I have to keep from 2020 it's our newfound appreciation for the ...

What Channel Marketing Leaders Must Prepare For... What Channel Marketing Leaders Must Prepare For...

Nov 30, 2020,11:36am EST

What Channel Marketing Leaders Must Prepare For In 2021 A critical priority for B2B channel marketing organizations is establishing annual ...

Channel Trends
51 Channel-Trends-Channel-Trends jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-telecom 0 504783 504783 What Channel Marketing Leaders Must Prepare For In 2021 A critical priority for B2B channel marketing organizations is establishing annual plans that drive the desired level of engagement, performance and ROI across the channel partner ecosystem in alignment with future buyer needs and considering current market conditions. This year has been unlike any other. Although we hope a return to normal is near, from a business perspective, we expect the effects of this year's events to have an impact on our plans for the upcoming year.  Understanding partner and buyer needs is paramount during 2021 planning. The current market disruption will have an ongoing impact on the channel, and channel marketers must cultivate acceptance and empathy toward partners and their buyers during these challenging times. To help channel marketing leaders prepare, Forrester recently published our Channel Marketing Planning Assumptions research brief, which describes five key trends that will affect channel marketing in 2021:  Respect buyers by developing a true solution approach. B2B suppliers must develop an understanding of what buyers buy from their channel partners, as this may extend beyond what the supplier sells. When organizations are creating a buyer-aligned strategy, understanding buyer needs is the most critical area of knowledge because it drives true solution mapping. Indirect buyers often prefer to work with channel partners to purchase complete solutions to their business needs. This situation may result in complex solutions that include the definition, implementation, management, and support of multiple supplier offerings as well as multiple partner offerings (i.e., supplier 1 + supplier 2 + partner 1 + partner 2 ++). Understand that leads are not the goal. Historically, many suppliers have focused on campaigns and demand programs for partners that abruptly stop when a lead is generated. The goal of channel demand programs should not be leads, but rather closed/won opportunities and revenue. Channel marketing must design demand programs that support the complete buyer's journey and extend beyond lead generation to revenue achievement. Accept revenue responsibility by enabling partners. As buyer expectations evolve, so should a supplier's revenue enablement mindset and approach. Revenue enablement assists all individuals who interact directly or indirectly with the buyer and customer - not just the partner sales rep. Invest in partner experience. Many organizations have undertaken efforts to understand the impact of the recent market disruption on buyers and customers - and channel marketing must also undertake efforts to understand the impact on their partners. Reinforcing channel marketing's commitment to partner experience is required to keep current on partners' needs as well as their level of satisfaction. Be proactive and adaptive in the planning process. The lack of market stability and evolving circumstances increase the complexity of the annual planning process for 2021. For this reason, channel marketing leaders must be proactive and allow for adaptability and agility in their annual planning as conditions will change throughout the year.  In times of disruption, channel marketing leaders must align closely with their internal colleagues and while listening attentively to their partners. The current market instability and predicted changes in buyer expectations have an impact not only on direct business, but also indirect business. These five trends should all be top of mind for channel marketing leaders finalizing their plans for 2021.  To find out more about Forrester's 2021 Predictions get the complimentary guide for business leaders here. This post was written by VP and Principal Analyst Kathy Contreras, and it originally appeared here.

What Channel Marketing Leaders Must Prepare For In 2021

Channel Trends

What Channel Marketing Leaders Must Prepare For In 2021 A critical priority for B2B channel marketing organizations is establishing annual plans that ...

What I See Coming For The Channel: 2021 What I See Coming For The Channel: 2021

Jay McBain, Principal Analyst, Channel Partnerships & Alliances JAN 21 2021

What I See Coming For The Channel: 2021Last year ended up being a tale of two cities for the channel. On one hand, customers and ...

Channel Trends
52 Channel-Trends-Channel-Trends jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-telecom 0 504781 504781 What I See Coming For The Channel: 2021Last year ended up being a tale of two cities for the channel. On one hand, customers and governments recognized partners as an essential service and central to their ability to rapidly respond to a worsening pandemic early in the year. With catlike reflexes, the IT channel emptied the laptop supply chain and became unified-communications-as-a-service experts to deploy a new remote topology around the world. Check out how I did on last year's predictions here. The remote topology also required a new defense against rapidly changing security threat vectors, new levels of risk mitigation and compliance, rethinking of business continuity, and support for a "residential network" of consumer-grade equipment and networks getting access to enterprise-class data and systems. On the other hand, customer demand (especially medium, midmarket, public sector, and enterprise) later in the year shifted to automation, cloud acceleration, customer/employee experience, and e-commerce/marketplaces, where many parts of the technology channel were left in the cold. This led the industry into a "K-shaped" recovery where partners who had skills, resources, and prebuilt practices around the business needs of their customers excelled with double- (and sometime triple-) digit growth while many VARs and MSPs were down by double digits and relying on government, vendor, and distributor funding to survive. This will persist through 2021. COVID-19 drove traditional computer and telco infrastructure, technology consulting, and system integration down by double digits. On the other side of the ledger, the infrastructure-as-a-service market was up considerably, with Microsoft Azure reporting 48% and 47% growth for the two quarters inside of the pandemic. Google Cloud reported 45% growth, and many of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies such as Marketo, NetSuite, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Workday were showing solid 30%-plus gains. In the end, managed services was about flat, and the broader channel only resold between 20-30% of the fast-growing categories, compared to 70-80% of the declining categories. This will continue into 2021 and beyond. Let's take a closer look at my 2021 calls: 1.  The Channel Benefits From The Changing Future Of Work The COVID-19 pandemic was an acute symptom as well as an accelerant of a larger set of factors that were already altering the workforce. The levels of systemic risk and global exposure that organizations face are rising, robots and automation are reshaping the workforce, and the balance of power is tilting toward employees. Companies are now looking at a permanent shift in how they work - reassessing workflows, processes, business logic, and even real estate investments. The output of this will be a remote (or residential) topology that will require new levels of service, support, infrastructure, security, compliance, and continuity. I expect the percentage of firms that outsource some or all of their IT will start to increase again by double digits - for the first time in five years. Beyond the basic remote infrastructure delivered in response to the pandemic, the channel will capture the opportunity in edge computing. Next-generation communications, cloud-native technologies, and edge computing architectures have come together to create breakthroughs in cloud-to-edge integration delivered by partners. Beyond the basic menu of managed services, in 2021, the channel will start to implement edge intelligence, edge management, and edge networking technologies. The channel must broaden the scope of cloud strategies beyond public and hybrid clouds to include content delivery networks (CDNs), telecommunications, colocation data center edge fabrics, and domain-specific converged edge infrastructure. The security threat vectors are also intensifying due to the changing future of work. Changing business models, regulatory oversight, litigation, and pressure from third parties are forcing partners to secure the products and services they sell at a new level. This next-level security protection is no longer "included" in the monthly fee like antivirus and firewalls are but is an opportunity to expand the conversation into advanced edge, network, application, data, web, and even physical security in a residential-scale network. The channel also has to consider its own future of work. Delivering a new level of customer, employee, and partner experience will determine the winners and losers in 2021. The roles of channel account managers, sales, and marketing professionals are radically shifting to serve the increasing digital and digital-only customer journeys. Reimagined events, social selling, digital attribution, and rapidly changing programs will accelerate in 2021. 2.  Subscription/Consumption Models Become Mainstream - But The Channel Isn't Ready Three years of consumer behavior change was squeezed into one year in 2020. Consumers are now demanding online experiences; happily virtual; wanting seamless digital procurement and provisioning; and wanting everything at the click of a button. The delta between B2C buyers and B2B buyers has collapsed during the pandemic. It's all about speed, convenience, and remote, whether the buyer is acquiring a Peloton or a software product. Responding to the changing buyer, as well as pressure from their stakeholders, several large vendors announced significant changes to the way they go to market. In the late summer of 2020, Chuck Robbins announced that Cisco would pursue a 100% subscription/consumption business - accelerated due to COVID-19. A few weeks later, Michael Dell announced the same thing for Dell Technologies - and all seven companies within its family of businesses - pushing $92 billion into a recurring business. Later in the year, IBM jettisoned its storied services business to focus on multicloud, hybrid cloud, AI, and, yes, becoming 100% subscription/consumption. HPE, which has been on the journey for three years with GreenLake, announced that it will be fully there by 2022 - next year! This is just the tip of the iceberg. In 2021, we expect dozens of announcements from large and midsized vendors. The resulting "build, sell, and service" programs spread dollars around like peanut butter, and traditional partner relationships are being disrupted almost overnight. This recurring business model may align well with MSPs and telco agents, but the majority of the VAR channel will experience material disruption. In previous years, I have emphasized the importance of a "trifurcated" channel model - moving program investments before the transaction (influence) and after the transaction (retention) to support adoption, integrations, stickiness, and upsell/cross-sell. Vendors are busy building ecosystems of transacting AND nontransacting partners as well as traditional AND nontraditional. They are not increasing channel investments (gross to nets) to do this but rather are moving the money around to where they can earn more customers with higher lifetime value.3.  The Embedded/White-Labeled Future Replaces The SKU - Distribution Struggles To Adapt If you look at the future trends in technology such as AI, automation, internet of things, and blockchain, you will quickly surmise that these are not "products" as we have known them over the past four decades. The SKU- or product-based economy that we have been in for 39 years is quickly giving way to an embedded, white-labeled future of solution "building blocks." These building blocks will be designed and integrated inside ecosystems that are measured around value creation, network effects, and co-innovation. This is a set of alliances at an infinite scale. At Forrester, we are closely watching the 800,000 emerging technology companies in addition to the rapidly growing SaaS and software startup scene. Mapping the different buyer types (12-plus), subindustries (297-plus), geographies (197-plus), sector/size/segments (14-plus), and product categories (26-plus) into a massive heat map shows 35 million market opportunities for companies to innovate in. In an embedded future, customers will become partners and partners will become customers - the delineation of partner types will continue to be difficult. This is not a traditional product market based on SKUs, 3PL logistics, and credit facilities. To be relevant in the new world of bits vs. atoms, bought via subscription and consumption models through marketplaces, distributors with deep industry expertise must reorganize themselves to aggregate, facilitate, and orchestrate ecosystems of value creation. This is a new celestial approach where millions of partners, products, and customers are moving through the universe, and smart distributors must be able to predict (and monetize) when the stars and moon are going to align. 4.  Marketplaces, Product-Led Growth (PLG), And Direct-To-Customer (DTC) Further Challenges Resell E-commerce grew more in the first three months of COVID-19 than the last 10 years combined. Almost one-third of the US economy was flowing via e-commerce by the third quarter, and marketplaces were responsible for the majority of the growth. With 60% of customers appreciating the convenience of marketplaces, we were predicting that 17% of the $13 trillion in B2B spend would flow to marketplaces by 2023 and are now thinking that we will hit that much sooner - perhaps this year. Marketplaces represent the continual digitization of traditional channels. Marketplaces sit at the intersection of traditional resell-based partners (some of which are launching their own marketplace offerings) and the world of ecosystem partners, such as alliances, affiliates, advocates, ambassadors, and affinity. The role of these non-reselling partners is amplified in marketplaces. Customers use this channel early in the buyer's journey to explore and compare different offerings, reducing cost and complexity of working with traditional channel sales. Product-led growth (PLG) is an end-user-focused growth model that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion, looking to avoid channels. Companies with successful PLG strategies (think Zoom, Slack, Expensify, Calendly, Dropbox) are able to grow faster and more efficiently by leveraging their products to create a pipeline of active users who are then converted into paying customers. Software-as-a-service firms traditionally grow direct until their sales and marketing become repeatable and ripe for franchising. A large number of these companies are looking to break from the linear channel model and avoid being constrained by labor- and financial-intensive lead generation, sales, and customer success processes. The intent is to get to hypergrowth mode at scale. The median enterprise value (EV) of PLG companies is 2x higher than the public SaaS index as a whole and has created more than $208 billion of market value, providing a risk for channel partners looking to get a piece of the action. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing is a strategy in which a company promotes and sells a product or service directly to consumers, cutting out the need for any intermediaries. The number of businesses that independently manufacture, promote, sell, and ship their own products is rising, and growing popularity of this strategy is rapidly changing the business landscape. In subscription and consumption models, it makes even more sense to streamline the customer relationship and "set it and forget it." As technology buyers start to behave more like consumers, DTC companies (think Dollar Shave Club, Casper, Warby Parker, Blue Apron) are inspiring companies to relook at their customer experience and build closer and more intimate relationships directly with their buyers. At a time when Millennials are at the forefront of driving change in the economy, customer expectations are shifting, with preferences for more streamlined and digital purchase experiences, maximum convenience, and an authentic brand experience. A perfect storm of better technology and full-service buyer tools, shifts in buyer psychology and behaviors, savvier sellers, and growth of PLG, DTC, and marketplaces across more product categories will complicate channel partners' ability to get in front of the buyer early and lock in their value for the long term. 5.  Multiplier Becomes Main Differentiation; Marketplaces Start Taxing Services The economics of the channel is changing rapidly, given the shift to marketplaces, subscription/consumption models, and the trifurcation of channel program dollars toward customer influence and long-term retention. Several large vendors such as Microsoft, Google Cloud, and Salesforce spent more time in 2020 talking about their ecosystem (or economic) value created for every dollar of their sales versus the front- and back-end margin opportunities for resell. Ranging between $4.65 and $9.00 for every dollar sold, the opportunities to wrap additional hardware, software, and services around cloud projects are where partners can grow revenue and profit most effectively. Professional services such as installation, implementation, integration, security, compliance, continuity, data, managed services, and automation make up almost two-thirds of this multiplier. Smart partners are building/acquiring the skills and scalable practices to capture this revenue and profit-rich opportunity. We are expecting dozens of major vendors to publish multipliers in 2021 and partners to start asking for the sales, marketing, and technical enablement to capture the up- and downstream opportunity. There is a financial trend behind this, as well. We know that both public and private platform companies carry higher valuations than their peers. We are starting to see an even higher valuation for companies that own taxation rights across the ecosystem through a marketplace. For example: Today, the leading marketplaces tax software vendors an average of 15% of sales. This represents only about 20-25% of the total multiplier opportunity. If vendors could tax the total 5x-9x multiplier at that same 15%, their revenues would double overnight. It is no secret why Salesforce is valued higher than Oracle (at half the revenue) and why it replaced Exxon on the Dow Jones Industrial Average late in 2020 - investors are obviously expecting big things. Expect several marketplace vendors to contemplate taxing services by the end of 2021. 6.  Channel Process Automation (CPA) Becomes A Reality As A Majority Of Channel Programs Rebrand As Ecosystems The largest opportunity for the channel coming out of 2020 was automation. The pandemic forced companies to think about human-led and human-reliant processes, business logic, and workflows. There was a huge uptick in opportunities around robotic process automation (RPA) and no-code/low-code SaaS environments heading into the pandemic, and these were accelerated significantly in the latter half of 2020. In fact, RPA vendors are now valued at $17 billion, and 45% of global data and analytics decision-makers have implemented or are implementing RPA in a project, according to our research. Combining this trend with the movement into ecosystems has led channel and alliances leaders to look at new levels of automation within their programs, processes, people, and technology. Ecosystems have, on average, 10 times more partners than transactional channel programs and require the core elements, such as recruitment, onboarding, incentives, enablement, co-selling, co-marketing, and management, to scale comparatively. Ecosystem leaders are not given 10 times the resources, so channel process automation (CPA) has percolated to the top of the list. This new division of labor between humans and machines will have a material effect on how channel leaders run programs and the channel technology stack that supports it. In CPA workflows, bots will take on the most predictable, mechanical, and repetitive activities, while channel professionals can specialize in using judgment, creativity, and language. Bots have the potential to take on unattended tasks equivalent to 2.0 to 3.5 channel account managers, allowing ecosystems to scale effectively.7.  Ecosystem Recruitment And P2P Collaboration Rely On Community Approach For those vendors amplifying their partner channel into an ecosystem, 2020 was the realization that old-school methods of recruitment don't work. The proverbial "fishbowl" for collecting business cards at an event was thrown a curveball when all events became digital because of COVID-19. In addition, the measured ROI from digital events was proving to be orders of magnitude lower than physical events for vendors. For ecosystems that cover multiple new partner types, buyers, subindustries, geographies, segments, and product areas, there is no linear method to recruitment and collaboration anymore. Leveraging customer and partner communities - basically, what they read, where they go, and who they follow - is the most effective way to find, recruit, nurture, and activate partners. Influencers and superconnectors are the (digital) gateway to earning trust and endorsements in front of new types of partners, and the process of finding and leveraging them has come into more focus since last year. We are witnessing a democratization of development addressing the chronic scarcity of classically trained developers. Urgent needs around automation, easier-to-use tools, and more technology-savvy line-of-business employees are creating an army of citizen developers driving last-mile innovation. This is a key part of the multiplier discussed above and will become critical connective tissue inside the ecosystem. 8.  Compliance, Consolidation, And Price Compression Accelerate In MSP Market In 2016, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) changed how marketers do their jobs. In 2021, MSPs will see the first of many government legislatures enact regulation, governance, and compliance mandates on the industry. Louisiana Act 117/Senate Bill 273 goes into effect February 1, 2021 and requires MSPs that manage infrastructure or end user systems for "public bodies" to register with the state. Among other things, the law requires MSPs to notify the state in the event of a cyberincident, including any ransomware payments. All 50 states currently have data breach notification laws on the books - this law extends disclosure rules. Much like GDPR has had a ripple effect around the world (including PIPEDA in Canada and CCPA in California), this Louisiana law will likely have fast followers in the US as well as around the world. These registration laws have denial and revoking privileges, which could mean a future of government regulation/cancellation with far-reaching impacts - and could extend into other industries such as banking, healthcare, and education. There is a slippery slope here from a risk mitigation and legal liability standpoint. We are entering the third decade of managed services as essential services, with greater ethics oversight, regulation, compliance, and governance. In 2021, vendors will deliberately choose to do business with partners that commit to data ethics and adopt data handling practices that reflect their own values and their customers' values. The economics of managed services will continue to be challenged as price per device or user continues to fall, larger private equity firms gobble up local players with lower pandemic-driven valuations, the battle for local talent intensifies, and the cost to deliver in a remote topology accelerates. 9.  The Channel Revenue Management Technology Category Grows Up The second-largest trend in channel software behind the triple-digit growth in ecosystem management companies is the maturation and expansion of the revenue management category. Salesforce made a huge splash later in the year when it announced its latest cloud vertical, Revenue Cloud. The new addition is aimed at businesses that want to create a single point of reference for customers' transactions - from renewal to revenue recognition. Revenue Cloud is a combination of several products, including CPQ, billing (including new multicloud), B2B Commerce, and channel software (PRM). This reinforces industry trends such as subscription/consumption models, marketplace growth, and pan-route strategies that vendors are considering. Other companies such as E2open, Model N, Oracle, and Vistex are also adding gravitas to this growing category. As marketplaces become the connective tissue of ecosystems, revenue management technology that automates and streamlines multiple routes and go-to-market strategies will provide a critical toolkit for buyers, sellers, partners, and distributors. 10.  With The Rise Of The Ecosystem Orchestrator, Enablement Takes Center Stage So many of these trends focus on the process, programmatic, and technology elements of ecosystems. One of the most fascinating topics is the people. Who is going to lead ecosystems? What skills and personality types will flourish in this large and complex universe of moving parts? Managing a large ecosystem of transacting, nontransacting, traditional, and nontraditional partners requires a blend of general management skills along with alliance management expertise. The ecosystem mindset will involve finding the right partners, providing them with the tools and motivation to grow their businesses, and orchestrating a trusting environment that encourages value creation, co-innovation, and taking advantage of network effects. Balancing investments in customer experience, employee experience, and partner experience will be the winning calculus for these leaders starting in 2021. Ecosystem orchestrators will not deploy a linear approach to partner recruitment and management. Orchestrators will team with a broad network of partners that create value for customers through all stages of their journey - a journey that now never ends. They will be measured on how they tailor their partner experiences to ensure the ecosystem has enough capacity, coverage, alignment, and is appropriately supported. The 2021 channel software tech stack has 36 ecosystem-focused companies that are building automated technology for these orchestrators, including key categories such as recruitment (at nonlinear scale), attribution (moving from consumer marketing attribution into B2B influencer), account mapping (innovative data escrow-type services), enablement/collaboration, tech/API integrations, and ecosystem management.

What I See Coming For The Channel: 2021

Channel Trends

What I See Coming For The Channel: 2021Last year ended up being a tale of two cities for the channel. On one hand, customers and governments ...

Increasing Diversity, Adapting to 'No Normal'... Increasing Diversity, Adapting to 'No Normal'...

Edward Gately November 16, 2020

Increasing Diversity, Adapting to 'No Normal' Among 2021 Channel TrendsHere's what you need to be ready to face in the new year. Adapting ...

Channel Trends
53 Channel-Trends-Channel-Trends jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-telecom 0 504768 504768 Increasing Diversity, Adapting to 'No Normal' Among 2021 Channel TrendsHere's what you need to be ready to face in the new year. Adapting to no normal, embracing zero trust and increasing diversity are among 10 trends to watch in the IT industry in 2021.That's according to CompTIA's IT Industry Outlook 2021. The industry will morph in 2021 in response to the "chaos" of 2020, it said.Just over 60% of firms said the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on business.Carolyn April is CompTIA's senior director of industry analysis. She said COVID-19 is the "elephant in the room" that can't be ignored."Business decisions in terms of new investments, hiring, entering new markets, etc., are certainly going to be done through the lens of the pandemic," she said. "That's smart caution. But as many companies play it safe right now, not all are. There are some avenues of opportunity, including support for remote-work environments and a continued exploration of emerging tech." Top Trends The 10 trends to watch are: There is no normal. The concept of an established pattern will be more elusive for businesses. That will force them to juggle a multitude of options, from employee locations to supply chain components, to customer demands.Organizations will adopt a cloud-first mentality when it comes to building or upgrading IT infrastructure.The need for flexibility by channel firms has never been greater as customers work their way through uncertain times.Vendor/partner relationships will become a marriage of equals, with cloud computing as the primary matchmaker.Emerging technologies find their place inside business solutions. Organizations will build solutions on top of the platforms they've built on cloud and mobile options.Zero trust shapes cybersecurity initiatives. Verify everything will guide cybersecurity practices.More MSPs will redefine their businesses almost exclusively around security, adding advanced services.The tech industry will prepare for regulation. Regulation will affect all firms.No longer relegated to the help desk, IT pros' need for professional skills is accentuated and often required.Increasing diversity will be a higher priority. It's time for companies to move beyond awareness of increasing diversity to accountability with deliverables that are public and certifiable. Increasing diversity is a long-overdue mandate for not only the channel, but the industry at large, April said. "The best way to look at expanding the fabric of your workforce is to think not about quotas, but about innovation and new types of ideas, which diversity brings," she said. "That's a business benefit. The other mantra we preach at CompTIA is the diversity of not just humans, but of skills, which in 2021 is going to be essential to any successful business." SMBs' Health Crucial to Channel Next year won't necessarily be a year of recovery for the channel, April said. "This comes under the chapter of the great unknown," she said. "We hesitate to say that the channel needs a recovery. Many firms have weathered the nightmare of 2020 fairly well to this point. But the impact on small business customers, on whom most channel firms rely, is undeniable. Their viability in 2021 will mean much to the health of the channel overall." The keys to success are innovation, flexibility and smart cash management. Companies expect to alter their business models next year, CompTIA said. They'll do so by offering more services, getting more involved with emerging technologies, exploring vertical market opportunities and stressing their cybersecurity expertise. Each of these steps is part of their plans to bounce back from 2020's challenging environment. When asked about 2021 prospects, 37% of firms expect to grow revenue in excess of both their 2020 and 2019 results. Another 25% expect revenue to remain stable with 2020 levels. But for some firms that might be less than 2019 because of the effects of the pandemic. Four in 10 companies anticipate keeping their budgets at 2020 levels, with a quarter predicting somewhat higher spending and 13% somewhat lower. Existing Customers Key to Growth Seth Robinson is CompTIA's senior director for technology analysis. "One of the more surprising findings is that channel firms largely expect their 2021 growth to come from their existing customers," he said. "It makes sense that there are untapped opportunities within an existing customer base, but companies everywhere are accelerating their digital transformation. Diving deeper with existing customers may require new technical skills, whereas expanding to new clients would demand more sales/marketing efforts. The sales/marketing activities may be new for many partners, but there are best practices to follow and the skills may be easier to find." Nearly 80% of firms feel good about their role as a technologist. The majority see a bright outlook thanks to the high demand for skills. However, there's also uncertainty over technology spending. Forty-four percent feel budgets are too small. And they expect to be asked to do more with less. Three in 10 companies are retraining existing staff to fill open positions or address new areas of focus.

Increasing Diversity, Adapting to 'No Normal' Among 2021 Channel Trends

Channel Trends

Increasing Diversity, Adapting to 'No Normal' Among 2021 Channel TrendsHere's what you need to be ready to face in the new year. Adapting to no ...

What's coming for the channel in 2021 What's coming for the channel in 2021

Forrester Research for Forrester | January 22, 2021 -- 18:46 GMT

What's coming for the channel in 2021For the channel, 2020 was a tale of two cities. On one hand, customers and governments recognized ...

Channel Trends
54 Channel-Trends-Channel-Trends jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-telecom 0 504766 504766 What's coming for the channel in 2021For the channel, 2020 was a tale of two cities. On one hand, customers and governments recognized partners as an essential service and central to their ability to rapidly respond to a worsening pandemic. On the other, customer demand shifted to automation, cloud acceleration, customer/employee experience, and e-commerce/marketplaces, where many technology channel parts were left in the cold. The industry experienced a "K-shaped" recovery where partners who had skills, resources, and prebuilt practices around the business needs of their customers excelled with double- (and sometime triple-) digit growth. Yet many smaller VARs and MSPs were down by double digits, relying on government, vendor, and distributor funding to survive. This will persist through 2021. The following are a few examples of further channel trends we can expect to see this year: THE CHANGING FUTURE OF WORK BENEFITS THE CHANNEL The pandemic was an acute symptom and accelerant of larger factors already altering the workforce. The levels of systemic risk and global exposure organizations face are rising, robots and automation are reshaping the workforce, and the balance of power is tilting toward employees. The output of this will be a remote topology requiring new levels of service, support, infrastructure, security, compliance, and continuity. The percentage of firms that outsource some or all of their IT will likely start to increase again by double digits -- for the first time in five years. As a result, the channel will begin implementing edge intelligence, edge management, and edge networking technologies. The channel must broaden the scope of cloud strategies beyond public and hybrid to include content delivery networks (CDNs), telecommunications, colocation data center edge fabrics, and domain-specific converged edge infrastructure. Security threat vectors are also intensifying due to the changing future of work. Changing business models, regulatory oversight, litigation, and third-party pressure are forcing partners to secure products and services they sell at a new level. This next-level security protection is an opportunity to expand the conversation into advanced edge, network, application, data, web, and even physical security in a residential-scale network. The channel must also consider its own future of work. Delivering a new level of customer, employee, and partner experience will determine winners and losers in 2021. The roles of channel account managers, sales, and marketing professionals are radically shifting to serve increasing digital-only customer journeys. This year, reimagined events, social selling, digital attribution, and rapidly changing programs will accelerate. SUBSCRIPTION/CONSUMPTION MODELS BECOME MAINSTREAM - BUT THE CHANNEL ISN'T READY Three years of consumer behavior change was squeezed into one year in 2020. Consumers now demand online experiences and want everything at the click of a button. Responding to the changing buyer, as well as pressure from stakeholders, several large vendors announced significant changes to the way they go to market. Additionally, traditional partner relationships are being disrupted almost overnight. This recurring business model may align well with MSPs and telco agents, but most of the VAR channel will experience material disruption. Vendors are busy building ecosystems of transacting and nontransacting partners as well as traditional and nontraditional. They are not increasing channel investments (gross to nets) to do this but instead moving money around to where they can earn more customers with higher lifetime value. MARKETPLACES, PRODUCT-LED GROWTH, AND DIRECT-TO-CUSTOMER WILL FURTHER CHALLENGE RESELL E-commerce grew more in the first three months of COVID-19 than the last 10 years combined. With 60% of customers appreciating the convenience of marketplaces, Forrester predicted 17% of the $13 trillion in B2B spend would flow to marketplaces by 2023. We will likely hit that much sooner. Marketplaces represent the continual digitization of traditional channels, and sit at the intersection of traditional resell-based partners and the world of ecosystem partners. Customers use this channel early in the buyer's journey to explore and compare different offerings, reducing cost and complexity of working with traditional channel sales. Product-led growth (PLG) is an end-user-focused growth model that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion, looking to avoid channels. Companies with successful PLG strategies can grow faster and more efficiently by leveraging their products to create a pipeline of active users who are then converted into paying customers. Software-as-a-service firms traditionally grow direct until their sales and marketing become repeatable and ripe for franchising. A large number of these companies are looking to break from the linear channel model and avoid being constrained by labor and financial-intensive lead generation, sales, and customer success processes. The intent is to get to hypergrowth mode at scale. As technology buyers start to behave more like consumers, direct to consumer (DTC) companies are inspiring companies to relook at their customer experience and build more intimate relationships directly with buyers. As Millennials are at the forefront of driving change in the economy, customer expectations are shifting, with preferences for more streamlined and digital purchase experiences, maximum convenience, and an authentic brand experience. A perfect storm of better technology and full-service buyer tools will complicate channel partners' ability to get in front of the buyer early and lock in their value for the long term. CHANNEL PROCESS AUTOMATION BECOMES REALITY The largest opportunity for the channel coming out of 2020 was automation. Robotic process automation (RPA) vendors are now valued at $17 billion, and 45% of global data and analytics decision-makers have implemented or are implementing RPA in a project, per Forrester. Combining this trend with the movement into ecosystems has led channel and alliances leaders to look at new levels of automation within their programs, processes, people, and technology. Ecosystems have, on average, 10 times more partners than transactional channel programs and require the core elements, such as recruitment, onboarding, and management, to scale comparatively. Ecosystem leaders are not given 10 times the resources, so channel process automation (CPA) has percolated to the top of the list. In CPA workflows, bots will take on the most predictable, mechanical, and repetitive activities, while channel professionals can specialize in using judgment, creativity, and language. THE CHANNEL REVENUE MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY CATEGORY GROWS UP The second-largest trend in channel software is the maturation and expansion of the revenue management category. Salesforce made a huge splash in 2021 when it announced Revenue Cloud, a combination of several products, including CPQ, billing (including new multicloud), B2B Commerce, and channel software (PRM). This reinforces industry trends such as subscription/consumption models, marketplace growth, and pan-route strategies vendors are considering. As marketplaces become the connective tissue of ecosystems, revenue management technology that automates and streamlines multiple routes and go-to-market strategies will provide a critical toolkit for buyers, sellers, partners, and distributors. To understand the business and technology trends critical to 2021, download Forrester's complimentary 2021 Predictions Guide here. This post was written by Principal Analyst Jay McBain, and it originally appeared here.

What's coming for the channel in 2021

Channel Trends

What's coming for the channel in 2021For the channel, 2020 was a tale of two cities. On one hand, customers and governments recognized partners as an ...

8 Trends Channel Partners Should Look Out For In... 8 Trends Channel Partners Should Look Out For In...

Wayne Monk, ASG, January 28, 2021

8 Trends Channel Partners Should Look Out For In 2021We made it through 2020! Now what? While 2021 has already been painted as a year of ...

Channel Trends
55 Channel-Trends-Channel-Trends jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-telecom 0 504767 504767 8 Trends Channel Partners Should Look Out For In 2021We made it through 2020! Now what? While 2021 has already been painted as a year of recovery - and in many cases, playing digital catchup - there are, in fact, new and exciting things ahead. Yes, many trends will arise in direct response to the pandemic. However, others will surface as companies embark on their steep and accelerated trajectories toward modernization. The pandemic struggle is not over, but there is now potential for business progress. As organizations and their channel partners look to push ahead in 2021, there are eight trends they should pay attention to.Committing To A Digital-First, Virtual-First World While the shift to a digital-first, virtual-first world started in 2020, it will be coming to fruition in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic made companies aware that their businesses were not ready to be fully digital. Despite claiming to operate in the digital economy, many were not prepared to support a virtual workforce in addition to a virtual business. Moving to a digital-first, virtual-first world will become even more important to end customers in 2021 as they define their sets of business requirements, as well as their expectations for customer service. Any companies and partners that were hoping the "new normal" would eventually resemble the old normal, must commit to a more permanent change to their business. Channel Partners Are Moving To Hyper-Automation To service these new demands from end customers, many channel partners are transitioning to hyper-automation, which is imperative to delivering a digital service because it builds resilience and improves the experience. Automation is top of mind because people aren't in offices or data centers anymore. They're confronted with manual tasks and human dependencies and need to stitch them together in an automated way. The use of hyper-automation is converging with robotic process automation (RPA), business process automation (BPM), decision support, and presentation layer - all through a single design studio. It enables services to be available faster digitally. In the race to a digital-first, virtual-first world, partners that can keep pace will pull ahead. Digital Dust Will Be An Even Bigger Deal Every person leaves a trail of digital dust - also known as a digital footprint - showing how we view the web, the forms we filled out, etc. Following the dust, companies are harvesting the data and using it in both good and bad ways, from commercializing to hacking it. In 2021, focusing on privacy will be critical. As more regulations come out to protect digital dust, companies must know what data they have, where it is, and how to ensure compliance and privacy-aware governance. There will be no sweeping the digital dust under the rug. Content Management Will Be The Key To Privacy As these data privacy regulations increase, more and more consumers will have the right to understand what data companies are harvesting, how they are using it, and be forgotten. When companies receive these requests, they not only have to acquiesce, but they must also show their work. Content services will be a critical tool to accomplish both. Organizations can establish privacy-aware governance to ensure they can locate all consumer data if and when there are deletion requests. Based on the industry policy, companies can delete, redact, or hold/archive the data as needed. Policy-based redaction also can be federated across multiple data sources, so companies can be thorough in their compliance efforts. Self-Evaluation Is Evolving Into Self-Purchase While the pandemic outmoded many predictions for 2020, one trend did get realized: customers' preference for self-discovery evolved to an expectation for self-evaluation. Now, in 2021, self-evaluation is shifting to self-purchase. COVID-19 put even more pressure on customers' autonomy. So now, they can self-discover, play with, and evaluate a tool, go to an online marketplace, and get the product delivered physically to their desk or via the cloud. Ecommerce already transformed experiences for consumers, and now it's changing the way businesses operate, too. Channel partners must think about how they can play in this world and where they can make their money. The Salesperson Is Now A Customer Care Pro The role of the traditional salesperson is diminishing due to the shift toward self-discovery, self-evaluation, and self-purchase. Simultaneously, business priorities are changing. While customer adoption always has been important, customer retention is even bigger. With an increase in consumption-based and subscription licensing models, there is pressure to retain and earn customers' business every day - or in some cases, every year. So, salespeople are no longer just selling, they are retaining. Customer adoption is just the first part of a long game of customer support and care. Channel Partners Are The New Influencers The traditional partner model of reselling is under pressure. Profit models are changing. How do partners make money around influence, one might ask? Some partners are shifting their business to provide more advisory and architecture-oriented services, while others are electing to innovate and sell their solutions. Vendors are now challenged to evolve their partner programs benefits to reward partners that can influence customer decisions to incorporate their technology into the customers' requirements and help users realize the value to ultimately make a purchase. If channel partners can influence the influencers at end-customer companies, they can shift their model from sales and acquisition to influence and retention. Partners Are Teaming Up There always has been ample teaming in the federal government, where it takes a lot of skills to architect and deliver large-scale programs. Now there is more partner-to-partner teaming in the commercial market segments. The commercial markets are demanding solutions that scale across many silos. Often one partner can't do it all. Digital transformation appeals to that trend, in fact - touching on multiple parts of the business, infrastructure, and breaking down siloes. To deliver the outcomes customers are looking for, it will take collaboration. 2021 is demanding a level of change that many companies and partners - even the channel at large - have not undertaken in recent years, at least not in such a short time frame. From adopting new technologies, to rebuilding sales strategies and roles, to contending with a newly structured business world, there is no shortage of room for growth. Partners that embrace these changes will maintain and improve their businesses and relationships. Those that ignore the trends may be ignored by the market soon enough. About The Author Wayne Monk is SVP, Global Alliances and Channel Sales at ASG.

8 Trends Channel Partners Should Look Out For In 2021

Channel Trends

8 Trends Channel Partners Should Look Out For In 2021We made it through 2020! Now what? While 2021 has already been painted as a year of recovery - ...

Five mobility trends to watch out for in 2021 Five mobility trends to watch out for in 2021

Published on Intelligenttransport.com

From the article:Five Mobility Trends to Watch out for in 2021 Five mobility trends to watch out for in 2021 Carol Schweiger lays out her ...

Mobility Trends
56 Mobility-Trends--Mobility-Trends- jplist-topic-Mobility 0 503975 503975 From the article:Five Mobility Trends to Watch out for in 2021 Five mobility trends to watch out for in 2021 Carol Schweiger lays out her vision for the transport industry in 2021, while reflecting on last year's predictions and assessing how many of them came to fruition. There seems to be a plethora of articles that cover mobility trends and predictions for 2021, and I imagine that you have already read several of those. So here are my predictions for 2021 as I consider innovations that are here for the longer term, beyond the pandemic, and the issues associated with those innovations, such as how equity can be achieved with technology-enabled mobility. Let's do a quick re-cap of my 2020 predictions ( as well as the revisions made as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic) see and see whether or not they were realised. "> "> "> "> "> "> "> "> "> "> "); font-family: muli, Arial; font-weight: 300; background-position: left 9px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">More travel time goals in major urban areas as a result of transportation planning efforts. While Singapore defined their travel time goals in 2019 as part of their Land Transport Master Plan 2040.1 in 2020, the 15-minute city was touted by several cities as a way in "which daily urban necessities are within a 15-minute reach on foot or by bike."2Mobility as a Service (MaaS) deployments incorporating traffic data. In 2020, Ghent, Belgium, realised Traffic Management as a Service (TMaaS), which was developed as part of the Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) Initiative of the European Union. Ghent's TMaaS is shown below. 3Automated vehicles (AVs) will actually be put into public transport service. In 2020, the Future Automated Bus Urban Level Operation System (FABULOS) project demonstrated actual public transport operations using AVs in regular traffic in a variety of locations in Europe. Furthermore, in the US, AVs are an integral part of Jacksonville Transportation Authority's (JTA's) Ultimate Urban Circulator Program (U2C) to greatly improve mobility in and around Jacksonville. 4More use of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning in public transport. While a Union Internationale des Transports Publics (UITP) Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Mass Public Transport study identified existing and promising applications of AI in 2018, in 2020, new applications of AI have been used to provide flexibility in critical public transport activities that typically take a long time to perform, such as fixed-route scheduling, while considering COVID-19 implications such as social distancing and vehicle cleanliness. I address this more in my 2021 predictions later in the article.Focus on the "Complete Trip." The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) "awarded over $38 million to five awardees through its Complete Trip - ITS4US Deployment Program. The projects will enable communities to showcase innovative business partnerships, technologies, and practices that promote independent mobility for all. The three-phased effort will create large-scale, replicable deployments that generate increased mobility options across multiple modes of transportation to address the challenges of planning and executing complete trips." 5More pilot programs that not only digitise the curb, but also institute a reservation system or regulate the curb. Numerous curb management efforts have been conducted in 2020 throughout the world. Notable projects in the US include those in Aspen, Colorado; Bellevue, Washington (part of the 2020 Transportation for America Smart Cities Collaborative); and Omaha, Nebraska. 6Continue to move toward open platforms and data to drive technology-enabled mobility services. In 2020, this move continued and was perhaps best exemplified by the "Openness in MaaS" defined by Boyd Cohen, PhD, IoMob CEO. He "presented the following graphic to guide a discussion on the relative amount of openness we are witnessing and envision for the future." 7 "Openness in MaaS" Adding to this is the work of the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF), which "is an open-source software foundation that creates a governance structure around open-source mobility tools, beginning with a focus on the Mobility Data Specification (MDS)". 8 TMaaS in Ghent, Belgium9                                                                                                                 Credit: Wim Vandersleyen 1.     MaaS or MOD? The lines between MaaS and Mobility on Demand (MOD) will continue to blur. While there are and have been many efforts to define both of these terms (eg SAE J3163: Taxonomy of On-Demand and Shared Mobility), the industry continues to discuss critical characteristics of on-demand mobility services. In summary, many of these discussions result in the realisation that MaaS is a tool that provides access to MOD. However, discussions regarding the relevant business models, the impacts of MaaS and MOD on travel behavior, the sustainability of MaaS/MOD platforms given their current reliance on venture capital, the development and use of proper evaluation frameworks, and determining "readiness" for MaaS will continue in 2021.  10 11 12 13 14 15 16 2.     Developing standards within technology The second prediction is that much more work will be done in harmonising standards upon which various types of technology-enabled mobility are based. A project conducted by the USDOT, the Multimodal and Accessible Travel Standards Assessment, developed among other reports, a standards roadmap to address gaps and trends that will be inclusive, address inequities, and meet needs of vulnerable transportation users. One overarching activity that will be necessary is the co-ordination of standards that have been developed independently through different organisations. This has resulted in "inconsistencies, ambiguities and incomplete requirements [which] prevent interoperability." Furthermore, this necessitates collaboration and the harmonisation of the technical standards among the varied organisations developing standards for the various communities and domains." 17 For example, in the curb access and management area, there are multiple gaps and overlaps in the current standards that will benefit from harmonisation. Currently, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is developing ISO 4448 - a global standard for the future sidewalk and curb. Another example of mobility standards harmonisation is the "Transport Operator to MaaS Provider [TOMP]- Application Programming Interface [API], which is a standardised and technical interface between MaaS providers and transport operators. This standard-based API from Transport Operators (TO) to or from MaaS Providers (MP) allows all participating companies to communicate about planning, booking, execution, support, general information and payments of multimodal, end-user specific trips. Using the TOMP-API enhances the interoperability between parties in the MaaS ecosystem." 18The TOMP standard-based API was developed by the MaaS program of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. Standards will need to be harmonised to ensure our mobility technology runs smoothly 3.     Levelling the playing field The third prediction is the recognition of, and effort to, incorporate equity into technology-enabled mobility services. While equity discussions erupted throughout the world in 2020 as a result of the death of George Floyd, this event elevated the equity of mobility services well beyond where it was in the past. Key discussions in the past included the following: In 2016, the equity of technology-enabled mobility services was covered in US Transportation Research Board (TRB) Special Report 319 19In 2017, "STEPS to Transportation Equity" including key equity dimensions were developed in a USDOT project and described in my 2019 predictions article for Intelligent Transport 20In 2018, a mobility equity framework was described in The Greenlining Institute's "Mobility Equity Framework: How to Make Transportation Work for People" 21In 2019, the "Equity and Smart Mobility" study was commissioned by the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) and conducted by the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) 22 In 2021, I expect that equity will be directly addressed, in part, through technology firms and public sector agencies identifying and using equity metrics in the development and deployment of technology-enabled mobility services. This approach could be facilitated by an equity assessment tool, such as that being developed in TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Project (TCRP) B-47: Impact of Transformational Technologies on Underserved Populations. This project will "develop an assessment tool that can be used as a checklist for reviewing the inclusiveness of transformational technologies for transportation services. Develop mobility inclusion guidelines for developing and implementing emerging mobility services. The guidelines will aid practitioners in efforts to include underserved users in the transportation technology revolution." 23 4.     Speeding up processes The fourth prediction is that activities related to public transport operations that typically take a long time, such as scheduling and restructuring transport services, will be able to be conducted quickly. This flexibility and agility will be required in order to adjust services or provide new information to the public on an as-need basis according to pandemic factors that impact the use of public transport. Download our NEW 2021 Media plannerTo assist in putting together your marketing strategy for 2021, please download our NEW 2021 Media planner which is packed with various opportunities for you to engage with Intelligent Transport's ever-growing audience.We are continuing our work with leading transport operators, authorities and associations alike on a range of multimedia content that pushes the messages that matter to our audience.Intelligent Transport has been recognised by the TABBIE awards, winning GOLD for digital imagery on a front cover. Partnering with us gives you the opportunity to work with an award-winning team to help you reach the right people at the right level and at the right time. Make sure you are a 2021 Intelligent Transport collaborator.DOWNLOAD HERE These factors, which are expected to exist beyond the pandemic, include physical distancing, vehicle, station or stop crowdedness and cleanliness, modifying services to ensure minimum service levels for critical workers (who often cannot work from home and have no other way to access their jobs), and optimising the transport workforce. Public transport has not been agile traditionally, particularly in adjusting service levels and providing new real-time information. With the advent of new tools, including the use of AI and machine learning, the analyses that drive these innovations can be done very quickly and operational modifications put into place virtually overnight. For example, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) in Boston deployed new and critical real-time crowding information to passengers in three months. The effort that was required to bring this information to the public would have normally taken much longer. The idea to provide this information was conceived on 9 April, 2020 and deployed in the field on 19 June, 2020. 24 The MBTA managed to launch a significant project in just three months 5.     Improving technology The fifth prediction, which is directly related to the fourth, is making significant improvements in transport technology, such as real-time transport information and contactless payment methods. One example of improving the accuracy of real-time information is the improved NexTrip system used by Metro Transit in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. In the autumn of 2020, Metro Transit deployed their improved NexTrip system which incorporates a "customised real-time prediction algorithm that combines historical and real-time information with Metro Transit-specific operating rules and practices to produce the most accurate results. "This prediction method uses an adaptive algorithm, so the predictions will improve over time and react to unexpected events. The prediction algorithm employs a Kalman Filter that draws on data from the past weeks, days and hours to handle travel time and dwell time (when the bus is stopped). "The Kalman Filter is an adaptive algorithm, capable of recognizing unusual conditions (such as traffic congestion, weather events, etc.). When these events occur, the algorithm incorporates the travel times of downstream vehicles to create predictions that are more accurate than traditional methods." 25 The other innovation associated with real-time information comes from a TCRP Transit Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) project in which "Interline Technologies and the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) at the University of South Florida (USF) have created a prototype platform that makes GTFS Realtime validation tools readily available to, potentially, all transit agencies in North America. The project included testing the prototype platform with staff at a representative sample of transit agencies and proposed next steps for expanding the platform into a 'self-serve' process for more agencies." 26 At Intelligent Transport's Transport Innovation Summit 2020 in a panel session entitled 'Assessing What Comes Next For Payments In Urban Transport', Jeremy Acklam, the Integrated and Smart Travel Director with Transport for the North (TfN), mentioned that identity is what drives the future of payments in transport, so the use of a contactless bankcard is likely to be a more short-term payment solution. The side effect of using a bankcard is what happens to your identity - it is passed around to multimodal services, so it is questionable whether your identity is secure. This session included a discussion of moving toward a pseudonymous payment method and away from bankcards in transport. Put simply, "anonymous data is any information from which the person to whom the data relates cannot be identified, whether by the company processing the data or by any other person. Pseudonymous data still allows for some form of re-identification (even indirect and remote), while anonymous data cannot be re-identified." 27 In 2021, it is likely that we will begin to see this payment innovation in addition to other innovations such as biometric identification solutions. While technology-enabled mobility advances continue to be identified, it often takes a culture of innovation within public transport agencies to facilitate the application of these advances. In the US, we are seeing more and more agencies embrace innovation by creating positions or departments that focus on innovation. For example, innovation directors can be found in not only major urban transport agencies (e.g., Dr. Joshua Schank, Chief Innovation Officer, Office of Extraordinary Innovation, Los Angeles Metro), but also in smaller agencies (e.g., Sophia Mohr, Chief Innovation Officer at Central Ohio Transit Authority [COTA]). In 2021, I expect to see these leaders drive the deployment of new technology innovations. References https://www.lta.gov.sg/content/dam/ltagov/who_we_are/our_work/land_transport_master_plan_2040/pdf/LTA%20LTMP%202040%20eReport.pdfNatalie Whittle, "Welcome to the 15-minute city," Financial Times, July 17, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/c1a53744-90d5-4560-9e3f-17ce06aba69ahttps://www.uia-initiative.eu/en/uia-cities/ghentCarol Schweiger, "Automated Vehicles - Planning for the Future," prepared for the National Center for Applied Transit Technology, October 23, 2020, https://n-catt.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/AVs_Final_WhitePaper.pdf"U.S. Department of Transportation Announces Over $41 Million in Awards for Innovative Technologies to Improve Transportation Mobility and Access for Persons with Disabilities," January 6, 2021, https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-transportation-announces-over-41-million-awards-innovative-technologiesSkip Descant, "Curb-Management Pilots Smooth the Flow of Traffic, Deliveries," Government Technology, January 13, 2021, https://www.govtech.com/fs/Curb-Management-Pilots-Smooth-the-Flow-of-Traffic-Deliveries.htmlIomob Team, "The Many Shades of Openness in MaaS/MOD," 23 October 2020, https://www.iomob.net/the-many-shades-of-openness-in-maas-mod/"About the Open Mobility Foundation," https://www.openmobilityfoundation.org/about/ Stephanie Leonard, "Connecting Traffic Management & MaaS," Presentation in 2020 ITS World Congress All-Access, Session 4018: The Role of Transportation Systems Management and Operations in Mobility as a Service, October 8, 2020, https://www.itsamericaevents.com/its-all-access/en-us/education-sessions/session-details.1846.45434.the-role-of-transportation-systems-management-and-operations-in-mobility-as-a-service.htmlSkedGo, "MaaS use cases #5: changing business models and innovative use of transport assets," Medium, September 14, 2020, https://medium.com/@skedgo/maas-use-cases-5-changing-business-models-and-innovative-use-of-transport-assets-dc71b03ddf3cBoyd Cohen, Ph.D., "The MaaS Monetization Matrix," Medium, May 11, 2020, https://medium.com/@boyd_19249/the-maas-monetization-matrix-by-iomob-a8cc17be5aaJana Sochor, Ph.D., "Piecing together the puzzle of Mobility as a Service: Insights from the user and service design perspectives," presentation in International Transport Forum (ITF) Roundtable on Integrating Public Transport into MaaS, October 12, 2020, https://www.itf-oecd.org/integrating-public-transport-mobility-service-maas-roundtableMulley, C. and J. Nelson (2020), "How Mobility as a Service Impacts Public Transport Business Models", International Transport Forum Discussion Papers, No. 2020/17, OECD Publishing, Paris, , https://www.itf-oecd.org/integrating-public-transport-mobility-service-maas-roundtableSusan Shaheen and Adam Cohen, "Chapter 3 - Mobility on Demand (MOD) and Mobility as a Service (MaaS): Early Understanding of Shared Mobility Impacts and Public Transit Partnerships," In Demand for Emerging Transportation Systems: Modeling Adoption, Satisfaction, and Mobility Patterns, 2020, Pages 37-59, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-815018-4.00003-6, December 2019, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5030f0cdJana Sochor, Ph.D., "Evaluation of Mobility as a Service," Presentation in 2020 ITS World Congress All-Access, Session 4673: Does MaaS Contribute to Sustainable Transportation?, September 23, 2020, https://www.itsamericaevents.com/its-all-access/en-us/education-sessions/session-details.1846.45413.does-maas-contribute-to-sustainable-transportation.htmlThe Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR), in collaboration with Mott MacDonald and a team of international specialists, has developed a MaaS and Mobility Assessment Framework. These framework will be the subject of a webinar in March 2021 sponsored by the Transportation Research Board's Committee on Innovative Public Transportation Services and Technologies (AP020)Paula Okunieff, Deepak Gopalakrishna, Les Brown, Carol Schweiger, Annie Chang, Katy O'Reilly and Adrian Guan, Roadmap for Multimodal and Accessible Traveler (MAT) Standardization Work, prepared for USDOT, Draft Report, to be published on https://www.its.dot.gov/research_archives/mod/mod_resources.htmBlueprint for an API for TOs and MPs (the TOMP-API), https://github.com/TOMP-WG/TOMP-API/wiki/IntroductionNational Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2016. Between Public and Private Mobility: Examining the Rise of Technology-Enabled Transportation Services. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/21875. http://nap.edu/21875Carol Schweiger, "Top Five technology trends to transform mobility in 2019, Intelligent Transport, 18 January 2019, https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-articles/75123/top-five-technology-trends-to-transform-mobility-in-2019/Hana Creger, Joel Espino and Alvaro S. Sanchez, "Mobility Equity Framework: How to Make Transportation Work for People," The Greenlining Institute, http://greenlining.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Mobility-Equity-Framework-Final.pdfLinda Young, Elizabeth Irvin and Preeti Shankar, Equity and Smart Mobility, prepared for the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) by the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), September 2019, https://www.cnt.org/sites/default/files/publications/Equity-and-Smart-Mobility-Report.pdfTCRP B-47 - Impact of Transformational Technologies on Underserved Populations, https://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=4686Ashli Molina, "Communicating Crowding Information to Riders: During COVID and Beyond," presentation at Autonomy Digital 2020, 4 November 2020, https://autonomy.app.swapcard.com/event/autonomy-digital-2020/planning/UGxhbm5pbmdfMjIyNzYxSarah Anderson, "A pilot to enhance real-time bus predictions for Metro Transit," Cambridge Systematics Insights, September 09, 2019, https://www.camsys.com/insights/pilot-enhance-real-time-bus-predictions-metro-transitDrew Dara-Abrams, Ph.D., An Open Platform for Transit Agencies to Improve the Quality of Their Real-Time Data, TCRP Transit IDEA Project 93, October 2020, http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/IDEA/FinalReports/Transit/Transit93.pdfCédric Burton and Sára Hoffman, "Personal Data, Anonymization, and Pseudonymization in the EU," The WSGR Data Advisor, September 15, 2015, https://www.wsgrdataadvisor.com/2015/09/personal-data-anonymization-and-pseudonymization-in-the-eu/ BiographyCarol Schweiger is the President of Schweiger Consulting and Chairperson of the New England Intelligent Transportation Society. She is internationally recognised in transportation technology consulting, providing over 55 transportation agencies with technology technical assistance. She has authored numerous Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis reports and full TCRP reports.Currently, she serves as co-Chair of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies, a Charter Member of the Public Transportation Systems and Services (PTSS) Committee of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America and member of the International Program Committee of the ITS World Congress and TRB ITS Committee.

Five mobility trends to watch out for in 2021

Mobility Trends

From the article:Five Mobility Trends to Watch out for in 2021 Five mobility trends to watch out for in 2021 Carol Schweiger lays out her vision for ...

5 Standout Talent Mobility Trends for 2021 5 Standout Talent Mobility Trends for 2021

Published on Crownworldmobility.com

From the article: 5 Standout Talent Mobility Trends for 2021

Mobility Trends
57 Mobility-Trends--Mobility-Trends- jplist-topic-Mobility 0 503974 503974 From the article: 5 Standout Talent Mobility Trends for 2021

5 Standout Talent Mobility Trends for 2021

Mobility Trends

From the article: 5 Standout Talent Mobility Trends for 2021

Top 8 Enterprise Mobility Trends to Adopt in 2021 Top 8 Enterprise Mobility Trends to Adopt in 2021

Published on Gurutechnolabs.com

From the article: Top 8 Enterprise Mobility Trends to Adopt in 2021With the usage of various smart devices at the workplace, organizations ...

Mobility Trends
58 Mobility-Trends--Mobility-Trends- jplist-topic-Mobility 0 503972 503972

Top 8 Enterprise Mobility Trends to Adopt in 2021

Mobility Trends

From the article: Top 8 Enterprise Mobility Trends to Adopt in 2021With the usage of various smart devices at the workplace, organizations have now ...

NEC and Cisco expand strategic partnership to... NEC and Cisco expand strategic partnership to...

Published on Telecomreseller.com

From the article: NEC and Cisco expand strategic partnership to help advance global deployments of 5G IP transport networksTOKYO - Apr 8, ...

Mobility Trends
59 Mobility-Trends--Mobility-Trends- jplist-topic-Mobility 0 503935 503935 From the article: NEC and Cisco expand strategic partnership to help advance global deployments of 5G IP transport networksTOKYO - Apr 8, 2021 - NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701), a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced they have entered a Global System Integrator Agreement (GSIA) to expand their partnership for accelerating the deployment of innovative 5G IP transport network solutions worldwide. The new agreement underlines NEC's successful track record as a Cisco Gold Partner over two decades, and its proven engineering capabilities to provide Cisco products to its global customer base across multiple regions. Under the agreement, the companies will jointly drive new business opportunities for 5G. NEC group companies will work closely with Cisco to complement NEC's ecosystem with optimized IP metro/access transport and edge cloud computing solutions. Cisco will support NEC's customer engagements by offering best-in-class products, proposals and execution support. NEC's comprehensive expertise as a network integrator in both the IT and network domains, coupled with Cisco's innovative 5G solutions portfolio, promise to provide tremendous added value to the 5G ecosystem. NEC and Cisco will make collaborative efforts to further enhance their joint solution portfolio and to optimize regional activities for advancing the digital transformation of customers across the globe. "We believe 5G is fueling the internet for the future, and accelerating our customers' digital transformations," said Jonathan Davidson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mass-Scale Infrastructure Group, Cisco. "Together with NEC, we are creating a powerful force to drive the critical changes needed in networking infrastructure to carry the internet into the next decade." "Collaboration across the network solution ecosystem is essential for continued success in meeting diversified customer requirements and establishing a win-win relationship," said Mayuko Tatewaki, General Manager, Service Provider Solutions Division, NEC Corporation. "This powerful partnership strengthens our global competitiveness as a network integrator that drives the customer journey with innovative solutions." About Cisco Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in technology that powers the Internet. Cisco inspires new possibilities by reimagining your applications, securing your data, transforming your infrastructure, and empowering your teams for a global and inclusive future. More at https://www.cisco.com/. About NEC Corporation NEC Corporation has established itself as a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies while promoting the brand statement of "Orchestrating a brighter world." NEC enables businesses and communities to adapt to rapid changes taking place in both society and the market as it provides for the social values of safety, security, fairness and efficiency to promote a more sustainable world where everyone has the chance to reach their full potential. For more information, visit NEC at https://www.nec.com.

NEC and Cisco expand strategic partnership to help advance global deployments of 5G IP transport networks

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From the article: NEC and Cisco expand strategic partnership to help advance global deployments of 5G IP transport networksTOKYO - Apr 8, 2021 - NEC ...

6G Communication Myths, Explored by IDTechEx 6G Communication Myths, Explored by IDTechEx

Published on Telecomreseller.com

From the article: 6G Communication Myths, Explored by IDTechEx Cambridge, UK - March 18, 2021 - 6G Communications will become one of the ...

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60 Mobility-Trends--Mobility-Trends- jplist-topic-Mobility 0 503929 503929 From the article: 6G Communication Myths, Explored by IDTechEx Cambridge, UK - March 18, 2021 - 6G Communications will become one of the largest technology investments. It is currently in the healthy first stage of promising everything to widely deploy some in 2030. Meanwhile, 5G to "Beyond 5G" awaits. We upgrade telephony to be more useful every ten years. The new IDTechEx report, "6G Communications Market, Devices, Materials 2021-2041", predicts 6G communications may be more thing-to-thing than human communication. Once again, frequency increases a magnitude. We may mimic 5G in starting at the easy bottom, then go up another magnitude to grab extra benefits. 5G went from GHz level to tens of GHz. 6G may start at a few hundred GHz, then employ 1THz. Only 6G can widely serve the exponential growth beyond 500 billion connected machines in 2030, real-time holographic communication, the future of virtual reality and empowerment of the poor in realistic timeframes. Expect cell-less communications and Wireless Information and Energy Transfer. WIET is 26 billion passive-RFID tags yearly (IDTechEx analysis). Some sense at the instant of being interrogated. 6G WIET promises that on steroids, even charging your smartphone. 6G will serve airliners at 10 km using Free Space Optical FSO links and deep underwater with fiber-optic links. Internet of Things nodes real-time monitoring billions of trees and ocean oil spills in 3D, billions in concrete structures? Hold on. This sits awkwardly with the consensus that local 6G has to be at terahertz frequencies to get magnitude-or-more improvements in data-rate, capacity, and latency. Terahertz is the Wild West of physics and electronics: little understood, even less demonstrated. They call it the Terahertz Gap. However, this we know. Beam spreading and attenuation, combined with feeble transmission technologies, currently limits these sad pencil beams to a few meters on earth. They are stopped dead by almost anything. We may need electronic wallpaper to get them round the house and many electronic billboards boosting and redirecting them outside. Caption: Aerospace candidates for widest area 6G coverage. Craft usually multipurpose with 6G as one option. Green good, yellow medium, dark grey bad. Source IDTechEx report, "6G Communications Market, Devices, Materials 2021-2041". Raghu Das, CEO of analysts IDTechEx, advises, "Massively-deployed Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces RIS are known by six other names just to confuse you. They will be essential for 6G to boost, redirect, collimate, polarise and otherwise manipulate those feeble THz beams using metamaterials embedding new active devices." Even at this early stage, some myths are emerging. They are: 6G will be everywhere. No. It flies in the face of the megatrend of eliminating infrastructure. THz local investment will never be justified to put 6G local infrastructure "everywhere."Widest-area 6G backhaul/ fronthaul is a done deal with thousands of Low Earth Orbit satellites recently flung up there and maybe 60,000 in prospect due to competition? No. They have a growing number of legal, safety, light-pollution, repair, latency and other issues. Solar fixed-wing and airship drones intended to be aloft at only 20km for a similar time of 5-7 years have huge advantages of holding position, far-lower latency and cost, easy repair and heavier payloads. Add them. Smaller numbers suffice.6G should benefit IoT in locations with long-distance optical links. Serving unpowered devices such as 30-year, multi-sensor IoT nodes with fit-and-forget supercapacitors will be excellent. For more, existing energy harvesting is too weak and intermittent to power 99% of envisioned IoT nodes but add 6G WIET. Nonetheless, affordable 6G IoT everywhere in tens of billions yearly? Unlikely.6G is essential for autonomous vehicles. No, not even desirable. The Tesla approach is to make a car you can put anywhere and it will navigate safely without being connected to any wireless system. Even the interim stage of LIDAR using ongoing mapping does not need connectivity. Relying on a new form of connectivity that requires exceptionally complex hardware everywhere would be downright dangerous. That is why the telecom operators went quiet about the 6G robot vehicle idea. Vehicles need connectivity and 6G may provide a better form but that is another matter.License 6G bands near 10THz for even greater 6G performance? Sadly, in air, there is a nasty jump in attenuation beyond 1THz and active components get really challenging. This is not desirable or achievable.Nevertheless, those arguing B5G means no need for 6G are wrong. Basic physics. IDTechEx report, "5G Technology, Market and Forecasts 2020-2030" explains and the IDTechEx 6G report tracks even more-demanding requirements arriving, making this more of a myth. We need 6G. For more information on this report, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/6GComms, or for the full portfolio of 5G and 6G related research available from IDTechEx please visit www.IDTechEx.com/Research/5G. About IDTechEx IDTechEx guides your strategic business decisions through its Research, Subscription and Consultancy products, helping you profit from emerging technologies. For more information, contact research@IDTechEx.com or visit www.IDTechEx.com.

6G Communication Myths, Explored by IDTechEx

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From the article: 6G Communication Myths, Explored by IDTechEx Cambridge, UK - March 18, 2021 - 6G Communications will become one of the largest ...

Top 10 Mobility Industry Trends & Innovations in... Top 10 Mobility Industry Trends & Innovations in...

Published on Startus-insights.com

From the article: Top 10 Mobility Industry Trends & Innovations in 2021 Top 10 Mobility Industry Trends & Innovations in 2021Are ...

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Top 10 Mobility Industry Trends & Innovations in 2021

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From the article: Top 10 Mobility Industry Trends & Innovations in 2021 Top 10 Mobility Industry Trends & Innovations in 2021Are you curious ...

Mobility investments in the next normal Mobility investments in the next normal

Published on Mckinsey.com

From the article:Mobility investments in the next normalA new survey looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer sentiment, ...

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Mobility investments in the next normal

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From the article:Mobility investments in the next normalA new survey looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer sentiment, which could ...

Defining and seizing the mobility ecosystem... Defining and seizing the mobility ecosystem...

Published on Mckinsey.com

From the article: Defining and seizing the mobility ecosystem opportunityWhat mobility ecosystems will help OEMs and other industry ...

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