By Rajesh Ganesan, VP at ManageEngine

Balancing Security and Spending in a World of AI and Hyper Automation

In the year ahead, businesses are expected to continue to spend heavily on automated processes driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning among other technologies. According to IDC, worldwide spending on artificial intelligence systems is expected to reach nearly $98 billion by 2023. As CIOs continue to focus on AI and automation, considerations around cybersecurity and scalable cloud spending will be top priorities for managing the rapid influx of data.

Process automation will give way to hyper automation
In 2020, the enterprise landscape will see the rise of hyper automation, which is the confluence of intelligence driven by AI and ML with autonomy powered by robotic and cognitive process automation. Hyper automation will help support dynamic and complex business processes including loan processing, insurance claims, warehouse dispatch, and others. This will provide the unique advantage of mimicking user actions on terminals like carrying out transactions and generating dynamic content contextually to deliver on speed, accuracy, reliability and reduced costs.

AI security will be an important investment
As AI adoption across the enterprise continues to grow, so does the need for organizations to secure these AI systems. To do this, businesses must pay particular attention to at least three aspects. The first is to ensure attackers do not manipulate the AI system to make it perform improperly - for example,introducing bias. In 2020, enterprises will see value in investing in explainable AI technologies, which require the AI system explain its actions and decisions thus making it possible to review and correct the AI in real time. The second priority is to protect the AI training data and the ML models by investing in technologies like homomorphic encryption. Lastly, enterprises must ensure they are guarding against the dangers of 'concept drift,' which is when the AI models built using the training data becomes irrelevant and the system behaves erratically.

Businesses must prioritize controlling cloud costs

The cloud, particularly SaaS, has democratized the use of technology across all business functions. However, it has also resulted in spiraling costs and significant waste due to the decentralized model of consumption. Surveys indicate that businesses could be wasting up to 35% of their cloud costs because of duplicate spending and lack of usage. Fortunately, solutions are emerging to help CFOs and CIOs take control of the situation. For example, a SaaS management platform (SMP) can bring central visibility, control, and manageability for all of the SaaS applications used within the business, including cost management. Different services could have different pricing, cost and billing models; SMPs can help provide cost and efficiency insights at the level of user, department, and organization. In addition, cloud cost management solutions can provide unified cost management for organizations that use multiple IaaS providers.

As businesses continue to prioritize innovation and adopt new technologies such as AI and machine learning, it will be important to prioritize both secure and scalable technologies to prevent future risks and sustain profitable growth. While automation holds significant promise for streamlining business efficiencies, in 2020 technology leaders will need to consider the challenges of managing heightened security risks and the ever-increasing cloud spend, both of which are associated with the data workloads that come with these new technologies.

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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.