Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022.  Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Agile business: Five tech predictions for 2022

By Russ Kennedy, Chief Product Officer, Nasuni

Perhaps the biggest current challenge for enterprises is maintaining, protecting and providing access to their data; a volume that continues to increase dramatically since the remote work migration. More than ever, companies must now nail down their operations - ensuring data accessibility, scalability and security - all while delivering consistent experiences to employees, customers and other stakeholders, no matter where they're located

That said, it's no wonder we've seen a chaotic search for solutions aimed at mitigating the impact of the pandemic on business strategy and workforces. Many enterprises have found answers in increased cloud adoption, which in turn has sped digital transformation. This has led to newfound agility, which will be the overriding theme of 2022 as companies try to create and leverage resources that will enable them to respond to needs as they occur.

This scenario leads to a number of other predictions related to the agile company in 2022.

Getting an edge

The explosion of sensor-created data will necessitate further development and increased use of edge computing. Foremost, this is where data gathering and analysis will take place, providing greater speed and reliability for things like autonomous vehicles. As a result, we'll see more products and vendor innovation focused on the edge. Not that the cloud is going to be replaced: The two will be used in tandem as there's need for both centralized analysis and edge computing.

The return of storage

Expect the storage industry to return to pre-pandemic growth, including a double-digit jump in cloud storage. After all, with data volume continuing to climb, enterprises need the resources and infrastructure to take it all in, manipulate and use it. On premise it'll be a slightly different story. While we will still see an increase in investments like storage hardware and traditional backup, it will be considerably less as the move to the cloud continues to be the business imperative. 

Working in the cloud

This is a prediction I felt was going to really take form in 2021. With the massive remote work migration, many anticipated that companies would start moving their workloads to the cloud en masse. The anticipated flood, however, turned out to be more of a trickle. Yet, cloud storage providers did have success changing some long-held beliefs on data management. The result is a hybrid approach in which key assets remain on-prem while other workloads are moved to the cloud - and we'll see a lot more of this. What's more, disruptions to supply chains are giving both cloud and managed service providers a boost as on-prem storage orders go unfulfilled. 

Evolution of IT

Let's face it, the pandemic changed the game, for good, and most companies will now always have virtual employees and teams to some degree. For IT heads, this means acquiring personnel versed in the latest cloud and service delivery techniques, and we know how in-demand these people are. That means IT will need to cultivate tech talent, particularly among the large body of young people entering the workforce, and educate them on the new skills, tools and personal practices needed today. This will reshape traditional IT role structure. Also, a particularly fast-developing need - no matter the industry - is for people with data engineering chops. This is critical for ensuring data can be harnessed for such things as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Data tackles and introduces change

In the year ahead, we'll see technology increasingly applied to challenges we all (as a global society) face, whether its climate change or supporting research to cure diseases. Key to this is finding more effective ways for data generation, capture and real-time analysis that allows for automated decision making and processes. Look for this to lead to further business apps and innovation, specifically around areas like blockchain, cryptocurrency, AI and ML initiatives.

All of these predictions, in some way or another, can support and heighten a company's agility. With digital transformation accelerated, change may be coming earlier than expected. Watch these areas in the year ahead so you'll be up to speed, prepared to adapt and ready to compete.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Russ Kennedy is chief product officer at Nasuni, which provides a file services platform built for the cloud. Before Nasuni, Kennedy directed product strategy at Cleversafe through its $1.3 billion acquisition by IBM. Earlier in his career, Russ served in a variety of product management and development roles, most notably at StorageTek (acquired by Sun Microsystems), where he brought several industry-leading products to market. An avid cyclist and hiker, Kennedy resides in Boulder, Colorado with his family. He has a BS degree in Computer Science from Colorado State University and an MBA degree from the University of Colorado.