Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
User privacy, data analytics, and conversational AI to remain top of mind
By Rajesh Ganesan, vice president at ManageEngine
Many of us are ready to put 2020 in our rear-view windows and turn our attention to the year ahead. One thing, however, is evident: even after a vaccine for COVID-19 becomes available, many employees will continue to spend a great deal of time working from home. The pandemic has doubtlessly changed the landscape for technology and work, making a few core trends stand out from the rest.
More data privacy laws are on the horizon
Although there were more consumer data privacy bills written in 2020 than in 2019, very few of these bills were enacted as COVID interrupted legislative proceedings. That said, California recently passed the Consumer Privacy Rights Act (Proposition 24), legislation that will beef up the CCPA and make it more difficult for tech giants to track users via third parties.
In all likelihood, we’ll see more data privacy bills like Prop 24 taken off the back burner. Some are related to companies’ privacy practices, and others tackle biometrics, facial recognition, and data broker regulation. This is all to say that user data privacy will remain an important issue over the next year, and rightfully so. It has been a long time coming.
Data analytics will be increasingly integrated into IT security
Analytics will undoubtedly play a large part in maintaining effective IT security over the next year as more and more employees work remotely. With such tools, IT personnel can track employees’ activity; establish a baseline for normal activity; and set up automated alerts to flag any unusual behavior. By periodically analyzing and auditing how often employees access servers and files, IT teams can ensure that corporate data remains secure.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture will continue to thrive
According to Gartner, SASE has reached the “peak of inflated expectations” in their 2020 hype cycle. Nevertheless, as remote work becomes the norm, this policy-based, secure access service edge framework will continue to flourish in 2021. As opposed to utilizing a physical perimeter, corporations increasingly rely on the SASE principle, which is essentially the convergence of an organization’s network and security services into a cloud-based platform; whereby the focus is placed on the identity of users and applications, rather than any individual’s physical location.
SASE architecture is versatile, as it allows users to access applications within a private cloud, public cloud, corporate data center, or via a SaaS provider; with SASE, a physical perimeter is no longer relevant. This role-based framework makes it easy for users to access applications from anywhere in the world-all without sacrificing on security.
We believe the SASE principle will remain popular, and cloud-based identity access management solutions will remain as vital as ever in the following year.
Conversational AI technologies will flourish
As we documented in our recent ManageEngine remote work behavior report, the majority (76%) of our respondents described AI-based chat support to be “excellent” or “satisfactory.” Conversational AI is becoming quite popular within the realm of consumer software, and we are likely to see it become a mainstay in IT software as well. After all, we’re seeing a “consumerization of IT” across the board. From a user experience perspective, people expect the same type of experience from their IT infrastructure software as they do from their personal software. To be sure, part of this phenomenon involves conversational AI technologies, which are becoming increasingly popular, especially among younger workers.
The IT industry has been particularly resilient over the past year, and we expect that to continue throughout 2021. As more users, companies, and regulators become concerned with user data privacy practices, we will see increased regulation on that front. Due to COVID and the rise in remote work, endpoint protection and security tools with data analytics will remain especially important. The new year will serve as a look at what “the new normal” truly holds.
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About the Author
Rajesh Ganesan is the Vice President of Product at ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corporation. He has over 20 years’ experience in building enterprise IT products around security, access management, and service management.
He spends as much time as possible interacting with thousands of customers around the world and is passionate about solving IT problems with a simple, yet effective, approach. He has built many successful products at ManageEngine, focusing on delivering enterprise IT management solutions as SaaS.
