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
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, ...
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05/13/2021
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You've been getting commission checks for years and focusing your time on creating and building relationships with your customers. However, although you own the relationship, the provider that delivers their service owns the customer. If you've been considering the move from receiving a commission check to being paid directly by the customer this session will help you sort through what it takes to truly own the customer. Join Matt LaHood, Managing Principal of the Telecommunications Industry at CliftonLarsonAllen and Rickie Richie and Forrest Derr of Altaworx as they walk through what it takes to truly own the customer not just the relationship.
Interested in learning more about Cloud Conventions Virtual Events?
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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 ...
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jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-channel jplist-topic-VAR jplist-topic-msp
05/13/2021
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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 ...
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05/13/2021
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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 ...
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jplist-topic-2021 jplist-topic-sales jplist-topic-ITExchangeNet
05/12/2021
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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 ...
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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 » ...
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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 ...
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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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Click here to request a meeting
David Danto
David Danto
Director of UC Strategy and Research Poly Director of Emerging Technology ...
Click here to request a meeting
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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jplist-topic-Forrest-Derr jplist-topic-Altaworx jplist-topic-UCaaS
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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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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 ...
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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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jplist-topic-Rob-Molinaro jplist-topic-Telarus
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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 ...
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jplist-topic-Rickey-Richey jplist-topic-Altaworx jplist-topic-UCaaS
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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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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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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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jplist-topic-bill-patchett jplist-topic-p2-broadband jplist-topic-p2-business-solutions jplist-topic-p2
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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 ...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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jplist-topic-compute jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-transformations
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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 ...
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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 ...
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jplist-topic-blog jplist-topic-cloud jplist-topic-solutions jplist-topic-trends jplist-topic-transformation jplist-topic-digital jplist-topic-compute
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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
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10 Future Cloud Computing Trends To Watch In 2021
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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 ...
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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
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2021 Managed IT Services Trends
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2021 Managed IT Services TrendsIT has been an integral part of business operations for decades now, but 2020 increased the demand.Before ...
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Business Trends Every MSP, And MSSP Must Look Out...
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Business Trends Every MSP, And MSSP Must Look Out For In 2021 & Ahead
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5 BUSINESS TRENDS SHAKING UP THE MANAGED SERVICES...
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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 ...
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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
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6 Big Trends Shaping the Managed Services Market
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Pulse of the MSP 2021: Survey reveals trends in the IT ChannelA key to providing our managed service provider (MSP) partners the support and solutions they need to build profitable businesses is to listen to them. Without a dialogue, we're talking at them, not with them.
So Acronis recently conducted a survey with MSPs as a follow-up to our in-depth research project led by Omdia (formerly Ovum) in 2020 to take the pulse of the industry nearly a year later. Unsurprisingly, the results of that survey reveal that the MSP market is undergoing a significant transformation - particularly as the trends that were already in play were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Let's take a quick look at the top findings from this Pulse of the MSP 2021 report.
Demographics of the MSP Pulse report
At the end of 2020, Acronis conducted an online survey and received 244 responses from MSP managers and business leaders. Among those that responded, 79% came from MSPs in North America while the remaining 21% were spread across the rest of the world.
Of the MSPs we surveyed, 71% had been in business more than 10 years, 61% reported less than $2 million in annual revenue, and 73% had less than 100 customers. The basic demographic information collected from respondents included the age of the business, annual revenue, client segmentation, and verticals served.
How demand changed in 2020
Based on the data, it is fair to say that the traditional MSP is not only an endangered species, it may soon be extinct. When we asked MSPs how they would characterize client demand for services since the start of 2020, not surprisingly, remote work support and cybersecurity were significantly increasing. Meanwhile, many other services that were historically the "bread and butter" of MSPs (e.g., system integration projects and help desk) were flat to down.Even more telling, when MSPs were asked how things will change over the next two years - specifically, how will their top revenue-generating services change - their response was clear: growth will come from managed security and managed cloud services, whereas all previous core revenue streams will be on the decline.
It's clear from those projections that the days of MSPs reselling hardware and software, as well as offering traditional support services, are numbered.Offering security services and working with security vendors
Given the growing importance of managed security services, the second half of the report dives deeper into this topic. Reinforcing the broader changes to the market noted above, when asked how the top five revenue-generating security services would change over the next two years, we see that cloud/software as a service (SaaS) security and backup shoots straight to the top of the list. That's surprising since that does not even register as a top-five service today.Other questions the report addresses include:
What are the biggest challenges selling managed services?How many security vendors do you work with?What's important when selecting a security vendor?What services would you prefer to be integrated into a single platform?What is the average number of agents running on a managed endpoint?
Final thought
One of the greatest challenges facing the IT channel is the speed of change - both in the technologies used, services required by clients, and IT demands of today's businesses. Gauging how the MSP channel has changed - particularly in the wake of a global pandemic that saw the majority of employees working from home - can provide a good roadmap to what lies ahead.
As valuable as those insights are, today's MSPs also need to understand how they can prepare and respond to those challenges. Thankfully, the Pulse of the Managed Service Provider 2021 report, which is now available for free, also highlights how Acronis Cyber Cloud can help MSPs survive and thrive in this changing landscape.
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. ...
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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
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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 ...
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Synnex-Tech Data Merger Reflects Distribution's EvolutionThe real story isn't distribution consolidation; it's evolving capabilities and value propositions
By Larry Walsh
The merger of Synnex and Tech Data is about more than the distribution consolidation trend that people around the channel like to chat about. It's a reflection of two forces in the tech market: the need to drive short-term value and long-term go-to-market evolution.
While the announcement says "merger," Synnex is essentially buying Tech Data for $7.2 billion. Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm that bought Tech Data in June 2020, will receive $2.7 billion in cash and stock in Synnex, and will retain 45% ownership of the combined company. Tech Data CEO Rich Hume will lead the company; Synnex CEO Dennis Polk will become the executive chairman of the board of directors.
The justification for the deal is a consolidation of synergistic resources and capabilities. Synnex has a stronger presence in the Asia-Pacific region, whereas Tech Data has strong capabilities in Europe and Latin America. The two companies believe that together they can focus on faster and better development of next-generation services, technologies, and platforms - including cloud computing, Internet of Things, and intelligent edge devices. And they believe their cultures are complementary, making the combined entity the company of choice for vendors, partners, and talent.
Synnex doesn't expect the deal, which requires regulatory review and approval, to close until the second half of 2021.
The deal is part of an ongoing trend in which distributors are merging or being acquired - particularly at the highest levels. As noted, Tech Data was taken private by Apollo last year. In 2017, Tech Data acquired the commercial distribution segment of Avnet, and Synnex acquired Westcon to expand its presence in overseas markets. And last year, Ingram Micro - currently the world's largest distributor - was acquired by Platinum Equity Partners after four years under the ownership of China-based HNA Group.
The bigger story is how the distributors are snapping up technology and service companies to fuel their own transformation. Ingram's acquisition of Odin provided the technology to give its cloud computing unit a platform on which partners can manage user accounts. Synnex bought Concentrix to expand its global service integration capabilities delivered to end users. Arrow bought eInfochips, a semiconductor design service firm, to complement and expand its component business. ScanSource bought Intelisys, a telecommunications master agent, to expand its customer base and capitalize on the growing synergies of IT and carrier services.
Distributors are doing more than just consolidating; they're evolving. As the market continues to shift more products to service-based sales and delivery models, vendors and partners are wondering why they need two-tier channels. If there's no product to warehouse and ship, does distribution become an unnecessary step and added expense in the go-to-market equation?
The answer is no.
Distributors are adding more service, design, sales, and support resources to increase their sell-through and sell-out capabilities and value propositions. They're adding more resources such as marketing and partner management. And they're evolving their credit and financing initiatives to minimize vendors' risk and give them immediate revenue recognition.
From a partner perspective, distribution is a necessity. In our 2021 Channel Forecast report, 88% of channel partners say distribution is important to their viability and go-to-market operations. Despite market's shift to services, partners still lean on distributors for access to credit and financing, technical resources, product identification and selection, and marketing support.
These new capabilities, though, are bringing distributors closer to conflict with their current customers: reseller partners. To their credit, distributors almost universally say they have no designs on competing with the existing channel by selling direct. They continue to focus their sales models and motions on selling with and through resellers, integrators, and service providers. Yet they have the capacity now to act like large account resellers (LARs) and systems integrators.
While mergers and acquisitions will continue to consolidate the distribution landscape, causing disruptions to vendors' channels along the way, the real trend to watch is how distributors are evolving their value propositions and profit models. The point of view that vendors are just "pick, pack, and ship" is antiquated. Distributors are far more than their warehouse legacy, and they'll continue to evolve - perhaps into a next-generation partner.
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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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.
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"); 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.
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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.
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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 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.
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From the article: Telecom Industry Trends 2021 on dev.toTop Five Telco Industry Trends for 2021 and Beyond
The telecom sector continues to be at the epicenter of growth, innovation, and disruption due to new technologies that continue to filter into the market. Yes, this vibrant industry is gearing up for some technological advancements on a massive scale. So, what is the telecommunication industry's current revenue growth statistics?
As per a recent global telecom industry report, in 2020 there are around 7.7 billion active mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide, an enormous rise from 3.3 billion just 5 years ago. Moreover, with the rapid increase in online video consumption, global IP traffic is forecast to grow to nearly 400 exabytes per month by 2022.
What are the recent changes in the telecom industry?
Gone are the days when telecom companies used to depend solely on manual operations for various functionalities such as customer engagement, sales, marketing, etc. As disruptive digital trends continue to impose transformational changes in the global telecom market scenario, it is imperative for market participants to be equipped with new-age technologies and innovative strategies.
Recently, there are many changes in the telecommunication industry which can be easily attributed to the new technologies in telecom industry. In 2021, the adoption of the latest industry trends such as 5G, AI/ML, and IoT will increase and will shape the future of the telecom industry. A systematic blend of operational and technological changes will help drive superior customer engagement in the telecommunications industry.
So, what are the major trends that will transform telecommunications in 2021? Read on to explore the opportunities of some of the top-notch technologies and other latest trends in the telecom sector that could have a big impact in the year ahead.
Emerging technologies that will transform telecommunications in 2021
Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)
AI/ML is one of the most significant telecom tech trends for 2021. According to Forbes, "telecommunications is one of the fastest-growing industries that uses AI/ML in many aspects of their business from enhancing the customer experience to predictive maintenance to improving network reliability." Just as the case of any other industry, the telecom industry too generates vast amounts of data every day. Statistical data is critical for the growth of any business and therefore with the usage of the right tools can generate valuable information on customer behavior and other meaningful insights. Artificial Intelligence is one such tool that holds the potential to boost the digital customer experience.
AI-driven tools such as chatbots and virtual assistants can be used to ensure that the customer support services run seamlessly. These tools aid in providing personalized customer engagement services based on customer history. In addition to customer service, AI/ML also enables to optimize the network quality by predictive maintenance and smart impact analysis. AI-based analytics enables DSPs/telcos to predict future industry trends and continuously assess their services for bugs or pitfalls.
5G
The ever-growing demand for high-speed connectivity has accelerated the need for the next generation of networks. Being the most recent iteration of broadband connection, 5G is the latest telecom industry trend, which has a lower connectivity cost, greater speed to move more data, and low latency with enhanced user experience than the 4G network. 5G which stands for 5th generation has finally moved from its hype to reality as some of the leading telcos released their commercial 5G capabilities.
With the telecom industry advancing towards virtualization, Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) allows service providers to speed up 5G deployment through its open architecture and promises greater interoperability. Currently, the telecom companies across the world are in the development phase for 5G networks with the expectation of increased implementation of 5G in 2021. 5G will accelerate innovation and transform multiple sectors across the globe. However, it will also bring new security challenges for the telecom ecosystem, which needs to be handled in a new way.
DevOps
DevOps is not a new term in the telecom ecosystem. However, it's becoming an important model as the telecom space is rapidly shifting towards virtualization platforms. By implementing virtual network functions (VNF), telecom operators are continually delivering new services and functionality. Now, the stability of the network should be preserved while accommodating these changes. Here is where DevOps comes into the picture and helps these disparate groups to operate efficiently in a synchronized way.
Being one of the top telecom trends, the efficient DevOps implementation can have benefits such as efficient control over the network, reduced CAPEX, elimination of manual configuration, network scalability and resilience, real-time orchestration of network resources, and reduced time to market for new apps, solutions, etc.
Intelligent Automation
The cut-throat competition and ever-increasing demand for seamless connectivity are the biggest challenges that burden the telecom players. But with this smart telecommunication technology, telecom companies can simplify the handling of operational tasks. Intelligent Automation is the technology that allows us to automate the business process by configuring software robots or bots. They not only slash the waiting period that is typical to traditional means of customer services but also ensures a dramatic cost cut and uncompromised customer experience.
Nowadays, Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are leveraging Intelligent Automation capabilities for significant cost reduction, unmatched data quality, improved customer service, and superior operational efficiency. A report by Forrester suggests that Intelligent Automation will be worth a $2.9 billion industry by 2021 making it the perfect fit for the telecommunications industry as it continues to grow and develop on the global front.
Network Virtualization
Just like any other telco tech trends mentioned earlier, there is tremendous economic potential for network virtualization. The introduction to network virtualization has transformed the telecommunication landscape by building software-centric network services. In this software-oriented approach, purpose-built hardware elements are replaced with software, which runs as a virtual machine.
As per a recent report, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) market is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 30% through 2021. By choosing new technologies such as cloud and virtualization, communication service providers have been able to dramatically cut costs and increase business agility. Even though many telecom operators are reaping the benefits of deploying NFV, it's high time for other players to capitalize on this clear market opportunity.
Closing Thoughts
These are the recent trends in the telecom industry that could create a massive wave of transformation. Telcos need to leverage more of these emerging trends in the telecom industry that hold the potential to revolutionize the digital customer experience. They truly are game-changers that are worth investment for each IT service providers for telecom. It is highly recommended to partner with experienced consulting, technology, and network services providers that are singularly focused on the DSP ecosystem.
Telecom Industry Trends 2021
Telecommunications Trends
From the article: Telecom Industry Trends 2021 on dev.toTop Five Telco Industry Trends for 2021 and Beyond The telecom sector continues to be at the ...
Top 10 Trends That Will Dominate the Telecom...
Top 10 Trends That Will Dominate the Telecom...
Published on ringover.com on January 5, 2021
From the article: Top 10 Trends That Will Dominate the Telecom Industry in 2021 on ringover.comThe advent of COVID-19 has changed a lot of ...
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Top 10 Trends That Will Dominate the Telecom Industry in 2021
Telecommunications Trends
From the article: Top 10 Trends That Will Dominate the Telecom Industry in 2021 on ringover.comThe advent of COVID-19 has changed a lot of things, ...
Emerging Telecom Trends To Watch In 2021
Emerging Telecom Trends To Watch In 2021
Published on crn.com on November 10, 2020
From the article: Emerging Telecom Trends To Watch In 2021 on crn.comAll Eyes On The Network The telco industry, like many industries, ...
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From the article: Emerging Telecom Trends To Watch In 2021 on crn.comAll Eyes On The Network
The telco industry, like many industries, was shaken up in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses and consumers relied on connectivity this year more than ever before as employees moved off the campus and into their homes, students began learning from home or even in school parking lots, and many businesses had to find new ways to keep their doors open - often using technology to facilitate touchless or curbside services that were all enabled by the network.
Once seen as "emerging" technologies and telecom trends, like IoT and SD-WAN, are evolving and maturing. And promising technology, such as 5G and edge computing, are about to have their moments as new networking requirements demand faster connectivity and local computing power heading into next year.
From SD-WAN-becoming SASE, to networking footprint buildouts and brand-new use cases, here are five of the biggest telecom trends to be on the lookout for in 2021.5G
It goes without saying that one of the most prominent telecom trends in recent years will be even bigger in 2021 as carriers race to fill out their 5G networks and manufacturers introduce more 5G-capable devices to the market.U.S. wireless giant T-Mobile, now combined with Sprint, said it will be offering nationwide 5G coverage by the end of next year, putting the pressure on its rivals -- the two biggest carriers in the country -- AT&T and Verizon, to keep pace. Dallas-based AT&T, for its part, in September said it's in the process of testing and developing its standalone 5G core. Basking Ridge, N.J.-based Verizon in October said it expects to see 5G mobility service revenues in 2021.Edge Computing
Alongside 5G, edge computing is about to hit an inflection point. The promising networking movement has only picked up steam in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive shift in networking requirements as companies needed to do business in new ways. These new use cases prompted a need for a new approach to IT.
In 2021, these new business models will facilitate the deployment of edge in production, according to research firm Forrester. AI won't just be in the data center -- it will be needed at the edge, and the rise of private 5G networks to empower use cases, such as remote inspection, monitoring, and employee safety will push along the edge computing trend next year. Forrester also predicts that public cloud spending will slow in 2021 in favor of edge computing spending, as businesses require their data stored more locally.IOTThe Internet of Things (IoT), which has been touted as one of the most significant trends to impact the telecom industry, took off in ways no one expected in 2020.
IoT is the connection of devices, endpoints, and assets that have never before been able to communicate with a network. The COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses around the globe to get creative. From pop-up healthcare clinics in parking lots, to curbside ordering and touchless delivery at retail stores and restaurants, connectivity in new places and devices were required to keep certain industries up and running.
In 2021, demand for new IoT applications and solutions will continue to soar, largely being driven by healthcare, smart offices, remote asset monitoring, and location-based services, especially as some employees work to safely return to the office.Expanding Network Footprints
As IoT explodes and employees and students continue to work and learn from home, so will the need for more widespread network connectivity. Many service providers have been steady adding to their already-established infrastructure by expanding their fiber-based networks to reach more businesses and residential customers, such as AT&T and Comcast.
It goes without saying that the biggest carriers around the globe will also be continuing their work aggressively building out their 5G network footprints in an effort to be more competitive.SD-WAN Turned SASE
Now more than ever, service providers are focused on their core telecom and networking services and are relying on SD-WAN more and more for intelligent path control and traffic-steering based on the application. But the SD-WAN market is maturing, and security has to be part of the conversation heading into next year.
The shift from standalone SD-WAN to Secure access service edge (SASE) is already underway. SASE, which refers to the combination of SD-WAN and security, will be an all-important enterprise networking technology in 2021, especially as businesses operate in a distributed, or hybrid manner, with employees working from a variety of locations. The SASE Market is expected to grow at a 116 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years, according to research firm Dell'Oro Group.
Emerging Telecom Trends To Watch In 2021
Telecommunications Trends
From the article: Emerging Telecom Trends To Watch In 2021 on crn.comAll Eyes On The Network The telco industry, like many industries, was shaken ...
2021 Telecommunications industry outlook
2021 Telecommunications industry outlook
Published by Deloitte
From the article: 2021 Telecommunications industry outlook by DeloitteKey strategies for a bold recovery Heading into 2021, ...
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From the article: 2021 Telecommunications industry outlook by DeloitteKey strategies for a bold recovery
Heading into 2021, telecommunications, media, and entertainment industry leaders should consider three key strategic opportunities both to recover from the COVID-19 crisis and to boldly position themselves to thrive in the future:
Renewing the focus on customers' needs by taking a more nuanced approach to customer engagementConverging and remixing entertainment experiences through new service offerings and entertainment bundles-and by adopting new strategies that can enable business agilityRepositioning to monetize advanced wireless networks through new products, services, and business models
Download a PDF of the full report to learn more about the impacts of telecommunication industry trends, key actions to take, and critical questions to ask.
2021 Telecommunications industry outlook
Telecommunications Trends
From the article: 2021 Telecommunications industry outlook by DeloitteKey strategies for a bold recovery Heading into 2021, telecommunications, ...
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