Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Data-Driven IT Decision-Making Will Power Digital Work Experience
By Jody Shapiro, CEO and Co-Founder of
Productiv
In 2021, new
vaccines for COVID-19 were introduced, and hope grew that life might return to
normal. But as new, more infectious variants cropped up, companies delayed
their return-to-office plans. As a result, remote and hybrid work arrangements
remain common, and employers have to work hard to make sure their employees
have the right tools to do their jobs, no matter where they are sitting. As we
look towards 2022, we think remote and hybrid work will continue at a high
level, but new trends will appear as well.
In working with customers, and from our own
experiences, we've developed a unique point of view as to how companies use
SaaS and other technologies in today's fast-changing work environment. We've
used these insights to offer some predictions for 2022.
- SaaS Sprawl is Spiraling Out of Control
in 2022
- The pandemic jumped the use of SaaS forward by perhaps
a decade, and no company is saying they intend to have less SaaS in the future.
Many employees are now using dozens of applications like Zoom, Slack and Miro
to better collaborate and communicate. But when hundreds of SaaS apps are being
used by thousands of employees, IT must manage millions (!) of per-user
licenses in real time to keep pace with the needs of the business. Tech
executives will need to better measure and track SaaS use to ensure compliance
and security, and to drive adoption, all while also ensuring employees are
using the right sets of tools.
- Permission Management Will Become
a Primary Concern
- As employees change jobs, departments or companies,
permission management, throughout the employee lifecycle, will become as
important as license management for security, compliance and data governance.
CIOs will need to shift from role-based permissions management to
employee-based permissions management; authorization and access based on the
individuals and the job functions they need to perform.
- Sustainability Will Increasingly
Drive IT Decision-Making
- Sustainability, or Green IT, is now on most board
agendas and will become an increasingly important component of IT decision
criteria. We see this trend accelerating
the move to cloud-hosted and usage-based subscription models. I predict that
organizations will move to reduce their direct impacts, using smarter
provisioning and supply chain insights, and will encourage their suppliers,
such as cloud providers, to more rapidly reduce their own impacts as well.
- IT: From ‘No' to ‘Yes', and Not
Just the Traffic Cop Anymore
- In 2022, companies will realize that IT should be a
critical component of business strategy, not just an internal organization that
implements software and polices the use of technology. An IT department with an
empowerment mindset that carefully tracks the way tech is used and provides
insights and recommendations to improve productivity, security, compliance --
and ultimately support rapid growth -- is an essential partner to the executive
suite.
As the business world continues to
grapple with an unpredictable virus, and a fast-changing world of work, IT will
need flexibility, creativity - and accurate data. Employees increasingly are
asking for a choice about where they work, so CIOs need to be able to provide
the best digital work experience to meet that demand. At the same time, while
SaaS remains a valuable tool, it's important that companies remember that SaaS
apps are a better servant than master. Enterprises that can accurately see what
SaaS they are using can better manage costs and compliance.
##
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jody Shapiro is CEO and
co-founder of Productiv, the data-driven SaaS intelligence platform. Productiv
enables CIOs and IT teams to understand exactly how employees are using SaaS, allowing
IT organizations to drive better employee experience and productivity while
freeing up their own team's time with automated workflows and deep analytics.
Previously Jody was at Google, where he led the Google Analytics team, as
Google Analytics grew to become the de facto measurement tool for most websites
around the world.