Looking back and looking ahead

Heading into the holidays, as we look back, 2021 was mostly a year of collectively navigating to a new normal from pandemic.?We expected the world to be back to the pre-pandemic days but it's no longer the same. The global crisis has changed customer needs and daily lifestyles. ?Digital transformation has accelerated across every organization. There was an increased recognition that growth must be both sustainable and inclusive to meet tomorrow's challenges. As we look into 2022 and beyond, a few areas outlined below will likely expand and have a meaningful impact for organizations and businesses

Data sharing ?

We saw some success stories in 2021 as an example one of the key enablers for COVID vaccines to be developed at rapid pace was?the?ability to share clinical data across different entities (public/private). ??With millions of lives at stake, the pandemic prompted different entities to share, mine existing clinical data and combine them with their own resources to derive meaningful insights. ?In 2021, we saw companies like Snowflake offering data sharing platforms gain momentum. ?Snowflake is enabling the monetization of sharing further with their Marketplace which allows companies to offer up unique, proprietary data to Snowflake customers to utilize along with their own data.?As we step into 2022, we should expect organizations to increasingly take steps to make data more easily available via the cloud to connect to applications, monetize and?utilize it as well.

Digital transformation ??

?Many companies underwent digital transformation in 2020 continued in 2021 at a rapid pace as the pandemic continued to impact the world.?The most important driver for digital leaders is to make fast decisions, while the ability to move from test to scale also was seen fast catching up. ?This reinforces the fact that IT is no longer an operational bottleneck and is now becoming more of an essential enabler for business.

The trend to keep exploring automation opportunities in the era of rapid-fire innovation is expected to continue. As organizations move data and applications to the cloud, they want to take advantage of cloud's full range of possibilities from better uptime of their applications to deploying automated monitoring tools. In summary, end to end automation to drive digital transformation will continue and grow, human resources will move away from the areas of monitoring and maintenance towards more high value activities.

Block chain technology ?

Block chain as a technology has the potential to disrupt virtually every sector. It brings a new way to record transactions that rely on peer-to-peer architecture and not any centralized authority. Organizations are increasingly looking to block chain technologies to improve efficiency, reduce costs and reduce risks.?It's been predicted that 66% of banks are expected to have block chain solutions in?production within the next three years. The future of block chain in finance brings opportunities to process transactions 24/7, without being interrupted by banking hours, the technology could enable businesses to carry out transactions anytime, anywhere. In late 2021, US Dept of Treasury?started work to streamline payment processes using block chain technology.?Every year, federal agencies send out billions of dollars in grants, US Dept of treasury is working to develop a block chain solution to simplify the process of distributing grants. In the coming years, the confidence in block chain technology is expected to grow and many enterprise use cases will emerge to streamline business processes.?