Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Virtual and Cloud Environments to Fuel Digital Transformation in 2021
By Richard Smith, Director, Data
Theorem
Digital transformation tops most organizations' to-do
lists in 2021. To fuel this initiative, organizations need to fast-track their
move to virtual environments and public clouds. New security and data privacy
concerns have resulted, creating a number of opportunities and challenges
organizations must face in the coming year. Some of these include:
Enterprises' virtual environment and cloud adoption will accelerate beyond
current aggressive goals. By moving
critical IT infrastructure and business applications to virtual environments
and the public cloud, at the same time retiring traditional on-premises data
centers, some businesses are estimating they can save more than $100 million
dollars annually. Reduced license costs of software and hardware running in
traditional data centers is a key contributor to these cost savings.
Managing applications will be more commonly done by
security automation in DevSecOps. Non-technical
organizations will start to embrace security automation within their DevOps
practices in the New Year. Some of this trend is driven by advantages in
efficiency and cost. Also, with the increase in cloud adoption (see above)
security automation is the norm. In short, in 2021 non-tech organizations will
move closer to their technical brethren and companies born in the cloud in
their usage of security automation.
Business behaviors will slowly change due to new
privacy requirements and resulting lawsuits. When California voters passed Proposition 24, they tightened the
screws on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) already in effect. Soon
thereafter, Apple began requiring all application publishers to provide a
privacy disclosure highlighting all user tracking, data collection and data
sharing - including what's being shared with third-party partners. This in
essence creates new privacy "nutrition labels" on all applications listed in
the Apple App and Mac Stores. For some companies, those whose business models
are to give away free services to harvest users' behaviors to sell, they will
be called into question if they fail to disclose this type of data collection
and activity. With new privacy requirements emerging, many companies will have
to alter their approach to harvesting personal data and some smaller apps may
not survive due to these new measures.
End user license agreements (that no one reads) will
be overshadowed by personal data ownership rights. It is common to require new software users to agree
to and accept lengthy license agreements which often release a person from privacy
rights of their own data. Who reads these multi-page agreements? Now in the New
Year and moving forward, these end user license agreements may have language
and conditions that will not stand in the emerging new landscape of data
privacy laws. We expect increased challenges to these license agreements in
favor of data rights, with 2021 being just the start of this swell.
U.S political polarization will widen with
personalized news apps. Voters turned
out in record numbers for the recent U.S. presidential election. Viewership of
media outlets mirrored these results, and questions grew about trust of the
media outlets. Fact checking on fake news can take as much time as gathering
and reporting the news itself. Information used to be an opportunity for rational
agreement on facts, especially from trusted sources, but these days even known
facts are misconstrued. Mounting frustration from both sides of the aisle has
been caused by misinformation from data-driven and false reporting,
editorialized commentary, and opinions consumed and blasted over social media.
A viral social media post, whether true or not, will often be promoted by news
outlets to drive viewership, especially if it is popular among viewers. We will
likely see continued expansion of the political divide fueled by a growing
number of social media apps and alternative news outlets.
Looking into 2021, although
full of unique challenges, we have a strong sense of anticipation and
excitement to see new ways of doing business take hold in the era of digital
transformation. We can expect to see companies more quickly embrace virtual and
cloud computing as the primary way of doing business, while maintaining
compliance to stricter data privacy standards.
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About the Author
Richard is a Director at Data Theorem. He works with
security professionals and developers across different size organizations to
better understand market trends and needs around mobile app security, mobile
app fraud and API security. Before joining Data Theorem, Richard worked for
Cisco Systems helping different organizations develop security solutions across
many different areas of technology including network security, cloud security,
data center security and identity management. Prior to Cisco Systems, Richard
worked as an entrepreneur and technology influencer at collaboration leader
TANDEBRG and virtualization startup RingCube Technologies. Richard earned a
B.S. in Management Information Systems from San Jose State University.