Credit: Dimension Data
Digital transformation will hit its stride in 2019, causing industry-wide disruption at an unprecedented scale as long-term projects begin to bear fruit.
"Until now, our industry has spoken about innovative technologies somewhat theoretically, without providing a clear picture of how these powerful new innovations will be used,” said Ettienne Reinecke, group CTO of Dimension Data.
"Think analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and containers, just to name a few. That’s starting to change.
"The application of disruptive technologies is becoming more pervasive and their adoption is growing steadily."
Dimension Data’s newly published tech trends 2019 report predicts that because of the growing maturity of game-changing technologies like AI, machine learning and robotic process automation, 2019 is set to be a year marked by significant distribution with industry trailblazers pulling away from the pack marked by significant power shifts across the industry.
“We will see the most innovative companies showing off truly impactful examples of digital transformation in action in 2019 with many more coming to the market over the next three years,” said Reinecke.
“They will then become so firmly embedded in the core processes and technologies we use that we will consider them commonplace.
"2019 is the year that trailblazers will pull-away from fast-followers and we start to see significant power shifts across industries."
Furthermore, the report highlighted five further trends that the technology integrator believes will come to define the business technology landscape in 2019.
Specifically, robotic process automation will reshape customer experience; organisations will focus on cloud-based cyber security platforms; infrastructure will become programmable from end-to-end; applications will become more intelligent and customised; and the value of data will become the centre of the value universe.
“In the coming period, the focus will increasingly shift to the true value of data, driving a renewed quest to embed telemetry, collect and enrich data,” said Reinecke.
“It is data that will form the core of true digital transformation and become the source of new revenue streams that will surpass traditional revenue streams.
“This will lead to a change in information architectures, with the need to establish rich data starting to drive IT investments."
