In the face of economic turbulence, Gartner is calling on organizations to look beyond simple cost savings efforts and continue down their digital transformation journey to help the company become more efficient.

The trends are also impacted by environmental, social and governance expectations and regulations,  which translate into the shared responsibility to apply sustainable technologies, says David Groombridge, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.

“Every technology investment will need to be set off against its impact on the environment, keeping future generations in mind. ‘Sustainable by default’ as an objective requires sustainable technology,” Groombridge says.

To that end, Gartner identified sustainability as a trend that traverses all three key themes. Citing a recent survey, the firm says executives reported that environmental and social changes are now a top-three priority for investors, forcing organizations to invest more in solutions designed to address those shifts and meet sustainability goals.

That requires a new sustainable technology framework to increase the efficiency of IT services, enable enterprise sustainability through technologies like traceability, analytics, renewable energy and AI. In addition, sustainable technology should be deployed to help customers achieve their own sustainability goals, Gartner says.

Under the “pioneer” theme, Gartner lists the metaverse, superapps and adaptive AI as key trends for 2023.

According to Gartner, a complete metaverse will be device-independent and won’t be owned by a single vendor. It will have a virtual economy of itself, enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). By 2027, Gartner predicts that over 40% of large organizations worldwide will use a combination of Web3, AR cloud and digital twins in metaverse-based projects aimed at increasing revenue.

The firm says superapps — a combination of an app, platform and ecosystem in one application—will be used by more than 50% of the global population by 2027.

Also under the pioneer theme is adaptive AI, which Gartner says will continuously retrain models and learn within runtime and development environments based on new data to adapt quickly to real-world changes in organizations that need to be able to pivot quickly.

Under the “optimize” theme, Gartner lists digital immune system, applied observability and AI trust, risk and security management.

According to Gartner, a digital immune system can provide a roadmap to help CIOs and their teams deliver high business value, mitigate risk and increase customer satisfaction. These systems combine data-drive insights, automated and extreme testing, automated incident resolution, software engineering within IT operations and security in the application supply chain. By 2025, organizations that invest in this will reduce system downtime by up to 80%, Gartner predicts.

Applied observability, which feeds digitized artifacts such as logs, traces, API calls, dwell time, downloads and file transfers in a highly orchestrated and integrated approach, will help accelerate organizational decision-making, the analyst firm says.

“Applied observability enables organizations to exploit their data artifacts for competitive advantage,” said Karamouzis “It is powerful because it elevates the strategic importance of the right data at the right time for rapid action based on confirmed stakeholder actions, rather than intentions. When planned strategically and executed successfully, applied observability is the most powerful source of data-driven decision-making.”

With more than 40% of organizations reporting an AI privacy breach or security incident, Gartner says trust, risk and security management in AI will be key to improving their AI project results. Organizations should implement new capabilities to ensure model reliability, trustworthiness, security and data protection.

Under the “scale” theme, Gartner lists industry cloud platforms, platform engineering and wireless value realization.

Industry specific clouds can be leveraged to create unique and differentiating digital business initiatives, provide agility and innovation and lead to a reduced time to market while avoiding lock-in, the firm says. By 2027, 50% of enterprises will us industry cloud platforms, Gartner predicts.

Another trend cited by Gartner is platform engineering, which it defines as is the discipline of building and operating self-service internal developer platforms for software delivery and life cycle management with the goal of optimizing the developer experience and accelerating delivery of customer value. By 2026, Gartner predicts that 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams by and that 75% of those will include developer self-service portals.

With several wireless technologies available, Gartner says enterprises will use a spectrum of wireless solutions to cater for all environments, including Wi-Fi, mobile, low-power services and radio connectivity. By 2025, 60% of enterprises will be using at least five wireless technologies simultaneously. These networks will provide insight using built-in analysis and low-power systems will harvest energy directly from the network, turning the network into a source of direct business value.

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SolarWinds recently revealed findings of its SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2021: Building a Secure Future, which took a deep dive into the degree to which organizations are prepared to manage, mitigate and prevent risk in the future.  

The report details how organizations experienced medium exposure to enterprise IT risk over the past year. Although the survey respondents felt their existing risk mitigation and management policies/procedures were sufficient, it’s critical for organizations and tech pros to adopt a mentality where “medium” risk exposure is unacceptable.  

The survey found 46% of tech pro respondents admitted to having medium exposure to enterprise IT risk over the past 12 months. Given the scale of sophisticated cyberattacks the industry has seen over the past year, it’s concerning so many admit to having a “medium” exposure to risk.  

Interestingly, the level of perceived risk differs by size of the organization. Enterprise organizations were more likely to perceive a sense of high or extremely high-risk exposure (19%) compared to their small business (11%) and mid-size (7%) counterparts. However, the reality is whether you’re part of a larger enterprise or small start-up you’re just as likely to be breached. No one is safe.   

The New Era of Risk Post Pandemic  

COVID-19 has had a critical impact on organizations’ risk exposure. Risk was a concern before but now it has grown. In the IT Trends Report, tech pros flagged remote work policies, exponential growth of data as a result of new WFH needs, and distributed workforce and employee relocation as the top associated risk-inducing factors.  

Combining these risks which aren’t going away with the “medium” exposure organizations are facing is putting organizations on a concerning trajectory, making it even more likely, regardless of size, that they may fall victim to a breach.  

To overcome this, tech pros need to do a better job of collaborating with senior leaders and talking transparently about the state of risk in their organization.  

Only when these frank conversations take place can they start to work together on crafting a policy that is designed to better manage and mitigate against risk in the future.   

Securing the Enterprise in 2022  

We expect to see two trends emerge next year in response to the evolving threat landscape. As the rate of attacks continues to accelerate in lockstep with hackers’ attack methodologies and schemes developing at scale, more tech professionals and organizations will look to cloud service providers, managed service providers (MSPs) and managed security service providers (MSSPs), and other third-party security tools (like those offered by Microsoft 365® subscriptions) to supplement their own IT policies and keep pace with the new, more effective security measures. 

Second, tech pros and the IT community at large will better secure the enterprise by normalizing a sense of risk aversion—that is, moving from simply accepting the current exposure to a mindset where any level of risk exposure is unacceptable.  

This means beginning to evaluate and implement the principles of a secure enterprise, starting with understanding security compromises will happen as cyber hackers deploy more sophisticated attacks. Tech pros should also implement detection, monitoring, alerts and response along the kill chain and engage in red team/tabletop exercises to measure effectiveness. 

Creating a Culture of Risk Aversion 

As a tech pro, it’s easy to think of security as an afterthought or to expect ownership to fall solely on the shoulders of a dedicated security team. But in today’s climate, this isn’t sustainable.  

Instead, it’s about creating the right environment to manage risk. One of the best ways to do this is to create an environment of shared responsibility and assume compromise across all teams. This helps avoid a “blame” culture.  

Once this becomes the norm, it becomes easier for IT teams to collaborate with others and ensure policies and risk procedures are continually updated or enhanced in lockstep with the evolving threat landscape.  

To ensure policy effectiveness and be confident all bases are covered, IT teams must examine current processes from the outside in and apply rigor when evaluating solutions.  

IT teams should start by listing out a defined set of requirements and factor in various tech costs and development time. This should include sufficient evaluation frameworks that will help separate fact from fiction when it comes to a solution’s ability to deliver on the capabilities as promised. 

With the rise of cyberattacks and ransomware, organizations must maintain resilience in prevention and protection practices. A huge part of this is to change your perspective and have everyone, not just the IT team, think about security first.  

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