My predictions for 2022

At the beginning of a new year I always love reading people’s predictions what the next twelve months will bring. Some of them seem very far-fetched to me, almost a bit like fortune telling from coffee grounds. But, you know, I really love the idea of looking ahead. So here they are: my predictions for 2022, based on my observations of the Swiss market.

1) The cloud is becoming the standard and is used by the vast majority of organizations of all sizes and across industries. We have now definitely reached the point where there is no longer any doubt that the cloud is the transformation and innovation platform of the future. That is why demand is growing rapidly from organizations of all sizes and across all industries, especially the regulated ones. I think Remo Schmidli, Head of IT at the Zürcher Kantonalbank, put it very well in a recently published interview: “We discussed the advantages and possible disadvantages of the cloud intensively internally. In the end, the advantages clearly outweighed the disadvantages. Innovative power, scalability and time-to-market were clear arguments in favor of the move to the cloud.” And with the cloud reaching maturity, we are moving forward to deepen our focus on industry. Because we are aware that we cannot offer our customers standardized solutions when we collaborate with them on re-imagining their business. Our industry clouds give us a good foundation to build on customer specific solutions, to better turn their needs and ideas into reality. The most recent example is the Microsoft Cloud for Retail, which will become generally available in February.

2) Swiss organizations will fully embrace Hybrid Work. Organizations in Switzerland have understood that Modern Work is more than just productivity software on laptops. They have adopted to the challenging circumstances and are fully embracing Hybrid Work. They use cloud technology and AI services to drive their transformation, by inspiring employees, engaging customers, optimizing operations, and changing the very nature of the company's products, services, and business models. Talking about employees:?Our studies show that almost half of the employees are likely to consider leaving their current employer within the next year. And, as the latest data of our Work Trend Index Pulse Report from January shows here, this is not just true for office workers. Globally, 74 percent of frontline workers feel that their company puts customers before its own employees – with as many as 60 percent planning to quit in the next year. At the same time, more than half mention that leadership does not prioritize building a workplace culture. That's why we're going to see a massive push in Employee Experience to ensure employees are better informed, connected and engaged.

3) Companies will seize sustainability as a crucial business opportunity. Driving business in an ecologically sustainable manner is not only a must to protect our planet but a great lever for business performance. Companies across industries are more and more seeing the importance of this and venture into new territories – an example I always like to mention is Burckhardt Compression, that protects the environment by reducing its CO2 footprint and at the same time improves its business performance by reducing costs and increasing customer experience. This year, many more companies will move away from manually entering data into spreadsheets to a more seamless flow of data through data connectors that provide automated, accurate data in real time – and ultimately turning those data-driven insights into action.