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Boomi 2021 Predictions: Ethical AI, Hyperautomation and a Whole New Cloud Strategy

vmblog 2021 prediction series 

Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021.  Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Ethical AI, Hyperautomation and a Whole New Cloud Strategy

By Ed Macosky, Head of Product at Boomi, a Dell Technologies business

If 2020's accelerated digital transformation wasn't fast enough, Boomi's Head of Product, Ed Macosky, predicts 2021 will be a year of even more change and growth with renewed approaches to ethical AI, business strategy, and cloud journeys.

2021 is going to be a big year that will see even more changes in the way enterprises operate, and how workforces within these enterprises interact. In particular, we'll see advances as it relates to AI and shifts when it comes to companies' journeys to the cloud. Here are my predictions for what 2021 has in store:

Leaders will take a critical look at AI with a new legal, moral and ethical lens. The last few months have put a critical eye on AI and the unknown biases they could have, especially in social media - and the warnings have come through to tech leaders loud and clear. Next year, we'll see business looking through a new lens when implementing AI, especially for tasks like hiring. That perspective will extend when it comes to deepening automation strategies, and leaders will act with more cautionary forethought to ensure customers trust in AI-driven processes and the insights they provide.

In 2021, hyperautomation is going to reshape how we understand and use data. The vast cloud migration over the past several months has led to an abundance of big data - big unstructured data, for the most part. Driven by artificial intelligence, hyperautomation will help businesses categorize the data and draw new, actionable insights. The industry has said before how data can help with business decisions and the importance of IT's role in the bottom line. What AI and hyperautomation will do for data in the next year exemplifies that merging of IT and business.

Time to value is the biggest trend I'm seeing around business and IT leaders. With AI, that likely means looking externally and partnering with a third-party, as AI talent is expensive and scarce. I recommend focusing first on hyperautomation that helps organize and categorize your data. This makes it easier to layer other AI on top of it and give you, if not instantaneous insights, then a way to quickly derive some.

2021 is the year companies restart and update their cloud journeys. Ready or not, businesses have been jolted by the need to transform and must spend the next year figuring out how to be strategic about their cloud game plan.  Next year, businesses will take a breath to figure out how to be strategic about their cloud strategies and make the necessary adjustments. Truly understanding the digital mandate will be the difference between survival and making the cloud transition happen - or getting weighed down in the past. That's why we'll see cloud restarts and updates as businesses figure out how to implement cloud - including hybrid and multi-cloud - effectively.

IT departments will completely shift to multi-cloud practices in 2021. Prior to the pandemic, I predicted a bigger shift from public to hybrid cloud environments from the enterprise. But with much of the workforce now moved to a remote model, many organizations have shifted full priority to the public cloud due to limited resources for managing private clouds. Hedging bets with just one cloud provider is too risky today, and we'll see IT leverage more multi-cloud practices in the year ahead to take full advantage of its cost savings and efficiency.

I'm excited to see how enterprises will embrace these coming changes and continue to transform their operational strategies, and Boomi will be ready as ever to help facilitate organizational shifts by uniting everything and everyone in our digital ecosystem across channels, devices and platforms.

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About the Author

Ed Macosky 

Ed Macosky is the Head of Product at Boomi, a Dell Technologies business. He has more than 15 years of experience building high performing agile teams, designing and launching new software and service products, solution delivery and customer retention. Macosky works to establish and execute Boomi's product vision and roadmap - delivering an intelligent, flexible and scalable integration platform that accelerates business outcomes by making information, interactions and innovations flow faster.

Published Tuesday, January 05, 2021 7:35 AM by David Marshall
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