2021 Predictions - The Roaring 2020s will Continue Roaring!

Last year, we took a play on the 1920s “Roaring 20s” and called this decade the “Roaring 2020s”. We were on target in ways we did not understand at the time! While we did touch on biotech relief for aging in the works for later this decade, we completely missed the impacts from the pandemic and all the issues that would surface. We focused on technology and were directionally accurate as far as that goes with hybrid (or multi) cloud, cloud native application development stacks, data, and security advances. The world accelerated its advance on this front as the pandemic accelerated the digital world’s presence in society.

We leave it to the many to talk about AI/ML, IoT, multi or hybrid cloud, cloud native enablement, etc. We touched on that last year and those trends continue at an accelerated pace. This time, we look at other larger issues that will continue to affect society, technology companies and the customers of said technology companies (most of whom are technology companies themselves now) in 2021 and beyond.

More inclusive technical education rises

If one goes back far enough in time, perhaps to the 1950s-60s, many programmers were not degreed individuals but were self-taught and/or apprentices. Degrees became “mandatory” perhaps in the 1980s and computer science professionals began to join the ranks of engineering. However, the cost of technical degrees have skyrocketed making it a more exclusive option over time. This yields a shortage of skilled software engineers with degrees even as there are many who are or could become qualified for many of the latest jobs in a fraction of the time and cost it takes to get a degree.

But this need not be… for some time now, there have been numerous online educational platforms along with leading vendor programs such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and VMWare that can provide the foundation necessary to be successful in these new technical jobs developing, integrating, running, and optimizing in the cloud.  Amazon recently announced training 29 million people for better jobs including cloud, AI/ML, data, healthcare and more! We also see high schoolers contributing to open source projects and have the foundational skills for tech jobs.

These more affordable, focused, and faster options need to be prefaced with onboarding to bridge from a public educational system that does not always deliver what is needed in today’s technology enabled world and these roles. High speed internet needs to be universal. Along with getting more people into these programs, cloud vendors, partners, application developers, etc.… should really consider hiring without the degree requirement. Companies that focus on the person’s ability, desire, and drive will expand talent options and improve competitive advantage.

Diversity gets attention – calling all tech hubs

I recall a focus on diversity at IBM in the 1980s into the early 1990s that we, as a technology industry, lost until recently. The 1991-94 IBM AIX *engineering* team had significant representation of minorities and women.  The team was led by Donna VanFleet, VP of AIX Development, with about 40% of her senior leadership team consisting of women and minorities. I had the honor of serving on that senior leadership team and this was one of the great organizations of our industry! I have never seen another engineering team like it since (though we do see marketing and sales teams like this in some companies these days).

By leaving so many people out of high technology (or biotech, medicine, etc.…) one must wonder what inventions, cures, and new ideas were lost! Also, how many products and services performed less well and failed customers due to lack of holistic testing?

There are some interesting innovative programs being launched such as OneTen . High tech and other enterprises are focused on this as well – e.g., Amazon and Rackspace.  

What more do we need to do as an industry and working with government to build on recent progress? Here are some ideas to consider:

1.      Actively recruit and sponsor people into the educational programs described above. Work with government on high-speed internet access anywhere by anyone and computers capable of delivering these courses to those who need them. This includes people of all ages, not just high school, and traditional college age people.

2.      Hire from these programs and not just people with degrees. Focus on inner cities and rural areas where many disadvantage people live. Perhaps open offices in some of these of places – Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, San Antonio, Phoenix, Roanoke, Knoxville – where training and collaboration can be encouraged even as people more often work from home.

3.      While working remote and online is now in vogue, in person networking and collaborating still is valuable. Working with government, encourage affordable housing options within 15-30 minutes of work in the expensive high-tech hubs. President-elect Biden offers this as a template for high tech hubs such as San Francisco-Silicon Valley, Boston-Cambridge, Seattle-Redmond-Kirkland, and Austin-Round Rock. The cities mentioned above in #2 already have large swaths of affordable housing and minority populations – expand that further in these high-tech hubs.

These are some of the things we will see in the 2021 discourse and further progress.

Hyper automation – What is your career plan?

2020 saw a lot of attention put on automation – the pandemic accelerated that trend even more. Tolga Tarhan and team opine on this in depth. This statement jumped out at me – “Automation technology is set to transform the place of humans in entry-level tech roles. The result is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reskill personnel and reinvest this human capital, while enhancing their working experience and career prospects.” But not just technology roles. This will affect many entry level positions from restaurants to retail into office operations and on and on.

One of the policies on the table that will open even more doors to automation is increasing the minimum wage to $15 / hour in the US and other efforts around the world. Having been a minimum wage employee myself once, I can certainly appreciate reasonable pay. But it will not be without other changes. Higher labor costs will enable more automation projects to clear financial hurdles. Expect to see an acceleration of automation for lower skilled and semi-skilled work using RPA, online experiences, and, eventually, physical robots. This is hyper automation.

What will become of entry level and lesser skilled roles? The automation will enable greater productivity and enable people to focus on higher value and creative activities. Many of the entry level / $15 hour jobs will not look like most of today’s $8 or $10 / hour jobs. More productivity will be expected of people using or augmenting these automation tools. Businesses will look for people with creativity in terms of personal service, quality, etc.… People will need to think of their careers in terms of working alongside of and adding value to the automation. And they will get paid more and have a more rewarding job experience.

Green business rising – remember all those plane rides and those 2-hour commutes?

Green energy increasingly becomes an important consideration as the issues surrounding that heat up (pun intended!). This really is twofold:

1.      Making data centers use less energy and use renewable energy. This gets into hardware design down to the silicon and using the hardware more efficiently which cloud, containers, etc.… all are driving mor efficiency. It is also about powering data centers with renewable energy and having the battery backup and perhaps natural gas generation backup to meet availability service level agreements. People do not want California rolling blackouts as a regular course of business!

2.      Commuting to conferences, customers, events and to the office will come back - somewhat. We did a lot of this collectively pre-pandemic and have done far less of this since March 2020. We will continue to do far less of this for the first half of 2021 until much of the population gets vaccinated probably by June or July. What happens next is a bit of a question – both in terms of productivity and energy use. We certainly will engage more face to face in all these venues. But we have seen greater productivity in terms of engaging with customers, partners, and our teams via online tools. We have seen event attendance rise dramatically. We are using less energy and it is not clear what the airline industry prices and options will be longer term. So, while we certainly will meet more than we have in 2020, it will be less than in 2019 and more events will be hybrid.

In 2020 (and even before), these two topics were important discussions in high tech vendors and IT organizations around the world. 2020 accelerated these trends and the hybrid approach in 2021 is the most likely scenario for most.

Zero trust – security and data

Trust is a big thing in the cyberworld. We give precious data about ourselves and our businesses over to useful online applications and entities. Our business’ life blood flows through a wide range of systems in the cloud and the internet. This really amounts to a world where our personal online presence and enterprise presence knows no boundary and the old “castle” firewall-based security models are woefully insufficient.

AI is already infused into security solutions, but there are dozens of point security solutions deployed in the typical enterprise to take a holistic view of security. But how are these tied together? How can humans understand what is going on? Another layer of security? Stay tuned and watch this space as there will be a lot of focus on holistic security solutions that marry AI and the intelligence of experts for a new level of security to ward off innovative threats.

But what about the data itself? We have a wide range of data management and storage technologies for just about every type of data and use case. One of the most recent data technologies to make its appearance is blockchain. Its main feature? It is an immutable data management system, meaning once data is recorded it is a permanent record. Blockchain represents an ideal platform for zero trust data, that is data one might not trust unless immutable. Blockchain is best known for being the underlying data technology for crypto currency. But it is expanding into other use cases. These include financial transactions, health care, supply chain and perhaps even voting! According to Gartner, Blockchain is in the trough of disillusionment, but will be emerging in 2021. The features and supporting ecosystem around blockchain based technologies is still immature and more learning is to be had in 2021. But watch this space as blockchain begins to move out of the trough of disillusionment in 2021.

Business benefit marketing makes a comeback

Marketing focus follows its own trends as well. The high-tech industry is a fashion industry with people of all levels and roles flocking to the hottest, shiniest object. One cycle is the bouncing back between technology or product led marketing and business or solution led marketing. With the cloud computing trade shows online, I was able to “attend” more of them than usual. I was impressed, they were very well done, and I got something out of each of them.

But one thing that struck me was how virtually all the conferences led with technology and product announcements vs leading with stories about change. For sure, all these conferences featured customer testimonials, and many went further with stories as a major support. But, with few exceptions, almost all the top line marketing messages trumpeted hybrid or multi cloud, AI/ML, IoT, and cloud native application development. These are important topics and certainly of primary interest to key IT buyers, but – many of the lead presentations sounded uncannily similar!

2021 will see the pendulum swing back a bit towards majoring on value delivered. Key value points that span both IT and business buyers include:

·        Deliver superior customer experiences,

·        Drive new revenue streams,

·        Invent new business models,

·        Make my business resilient,

·        Increase business agility,

·        Fortify security and compliance, and

·        Optimize economics.

These are the end games for most new IT investments and enhancements to existing IT. The technologies that IT is adopting, needing help with, and wanting deeper understanding of such as AI/ML, data, IoT, and cloud-native are the major enablers to achieve those end games.  But they are not the end game themselves. Cloud providers and services offerings that tie the technology offerings, as well as advisory, implementation, and managed / optimization services together in high value configurations and delivery models will win in 2021 and beyond.