By Yaakov Shapiro, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Tangoe

Enterprise Technology Trends and Predictions Revealed

As enterprises become increasingly connected, keeping tabs on changing technologies is key to staying at the forefront of innovation. Tangoe®, the leading Enterprise Technology Management company helping customers centralize, comprehend and control their technology environments, today reveals its predictions for the trends that will influence the enterprise in 2020, including more businesses capitalizing on IoT, automation and the next wave of digital transformation - thanks to support from 5G and the cloud.

Tangoe cites these five trends that will transform the enterprise over the next 12 months - and beyond:

1. IoT leads to an explosion of endpoints and the urgency for centralized management. The total installed base of Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices is projected to amount to 75.44 billion worldwide by 2025 - a fivefold increase in 10 years. Many of these will be in the enterprise, with more types of devices entering the mobile conversation - moving beyond current standards of tablets, smartphones and laptops to tech like wearables, connected machines and VR devices.

Both the quantity and the types of devices will add complexity to how an organization manages all the endpoints on its network, leading to the potential for security, spending and inventory gaps. Any "thing" with connectivity is, by definition, a mobile device and needs to be managed and treated as an endpoint, which will change the principles of IT management.

Companies will need to implement more robust cybersecurity policies and mobility management strategies to ensure the safety of business-critical processes and data. Centralized endpoint management will be a critical part of connected enterprises as they strive to be more efficient, connected and personalized.

2. Companies realize the need to control cloud spending. Gartner estimates by 2020, organizations that lack cost-optimization processes will average 40% overspend in public cloud - a significant amount of money for any enterprise. Overspending on cloud happens when there isn't sufficient visibility into capacity, services, applications, assets and usage, and/or when there are too many separate systems to manage IT expenses, contracts, licenses and usage effectively.

To control spending, enterprises will reevaluate what they really need for cloud capacity and assets and will look to tools that create a consolidated view of their organization's infrastructure. This information will be used to identify which applications or platforms are being used, and - more importantly - which are being under-used, to eliminate unnecessary services.

As understanding of cloud usage becomes less siloed, companies will have the opportunity to centralize and control their cloud spend.

3. The role of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in enterprise solutions will expand. As more consumer-facing companies employ chatbots to solve customer issues, people are becoming more comfortable with automated experiences.

As people increasingly trust automation and AI, their uses will expand to other areas of business operations. In the area of enterprise technology management solutions, bots will be further integrated, allowing AI to perform tasks like negotiating contracts or restructuring bill payments to save organizations time and money - all without humans needing to get involved.

4. 5G is finally here. The long-awaited fifth generation of mobile internet connectivity has promised more reliable connections and faster download and upload speeds. With some of the biggest names in telecom (AT&T, Qualcomm, Verizon, Nokia and others) keeping global deployments on pace, 2020 will be the year 5G proliferates.

Its value won't be limited to mobile devices; it also is poised to accelerate advancements in industrial IoT (IIoT) - autonomous driving, smart cities, Industry 4.0 and other bandwidth-hungry applications. 5G will be available over a wired connection as well, leading to the convergence of fixed and mobile technologies.

As 5G comes online, this more complex digital ecosystem will require enterprises to maintain control and visibility over their inventory. Additionally, enterprises will need to track down and terminate unnecessary/redundant 4G devices and circuits to find cost savings across their organizations.

5. Companies approach the next wave of digital transformation. While the first phase of digital transformation focused on big data, mobility, new applications and ubiquitous connectivity, the second wave - digital transformation 2.0 - will incorporate even more cutting-edge technologies like machine learning, AI, advanced robotics, wearables, autonomous devices and automation into enterprise and consumer ecosystems.

While 1.0 was based on legacy infrastructure and architectures, the on-demand, bandwidth-heavy 2.0 will be supported by cloud computing and 5G mobile connectivity. Digital transformation 2.0 will revamp the enterprise ecosystem by empowering employees and further digitizing the workspace.

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About the Author

When Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Yaakov Shapiro joined Tangoe in May 2018, he brought with him a unique set of skills and experience. With more than 30 years of software engineering and management experience in both large corporate and small business environments, Yaakov is an innovative leader with proven experience in building motivated results-oriented teams across multiple locations and geographies. Yaakov gained a valuable perspective through the years: He was fortunate to have experienced software development before the World Wide Web revolutionized the internet in the 1990s, and smart phones made information portable in the new millennium.

Yaakov champions new ways of thinking and is a role model for continuous improvement. He encourages and rewards smart risk taking. His technical expertise includes areas such as mobile development, cloud computing, data analytics and desktop applications as well as other evolving technologies. Yaakov possesses exceptional interpersonal and communication skills and a style that is both open and respectful; effective with executives, customers, direct line employees and cross-organization teams.

At Tangoe, Yaakov helps executives solve their biggest IT challenges for fixed, mobile and cloud. He and his global technology team help customers increase productivity, reduce costs, and drive predictable results. His belief; people work smarter when technology works for them.

Before joining Tangoe, Yaakov was the Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Pitney Bowes. As the domain leader of the PB Software Solutions Innovation team, Yaakov was responsible for the entire Pitney Bowes Software product portfolio, which included the Location Intelligence, Customer Information Management, Customer Engagement Solutions and Data teams. The team was composed of over 600 technical resources spanning the globe with teams in India, UK, Poland and the US. Yaakov also lead the Mobile Center of Excellence.

Prior to Pitney Bowes, Yaakov spent 18 years at CA Technologies where he held a series of progressively strategic positions culminating as leader of a global software engineering organization of 500+ charged with delivering innovative products for the CA Intellicenter portfolio-a strategic engine for businesses in the application economy that enable CIOs and IT leaders to provide value to their organizations.

In a prior role at CA Technologies as Chief Architect and Distinguished Engineer, Yaakov led a team of six senior architects driving technical architecture for the Business Service Optimization business unit comprised of dozens of products and over 1,500 Software Developers and Product Managers. His team designed a common architecture and tech stacks across products that involved multi-tenancy, database schema, common object definitions and reporting tools.

Yaakov holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Computer Science from Touro College in NYC where he graduated summa cumlaude.

Yaakov currently resides in Spring Valley, NY with his wife of 35 years, but without their six children who have all married and started families of their own. In his spare time, Yaakov studies Bible, Jewish Law & Philosophy and is a locally noted lecturer.