Extra tags: data analyticsEdge
Authored by: Mark Micallef, Cloudera’s VP for Asia Pacific and Japan. The pandemic has driven an unprecedented rate of digital migration. And in an increasingly digital-first economy, APAC organisations are leading the charge with an IDC report revealing that 28% of organisations in APAC are already in the most progressive stages of digital transformation maturity. More organisations will continue to go digital or improve their digital offerings, with one in three companies expected to generate more than 30% of their revenues from digital products and services by 2023.
Certain geographies like China, Singapore and Korea are also at a more advanced stage of adoption of new technologies due to technological advancement and investments that have been made in recent years.
We see customer-facing industries making the most of the below mentioned trends that are set to dominate in 2022. Sectors like retail, consumer packaging, supply chain, telecommunications, banking, financial services and healthcare will be the first to act on trends such as cloud computing, smart edge and sustainability.
Trend 1: Enterprise-wide Cloud
Aside from looking at business continuity, organisations have taken the opportunity to re-evaluate business priorities and processes, and focus on innovation by accelerating their move to the cloud. The move should align with the organisation’s strategic goals and also be driven by the aim of deriving more insights from their data. Data is a strategic resource and therefore warrants its own strategy, specifically an enterprise data strategy that is organisation-wide, integrated, governed and secure. By adopting strategies that fulfill both business and IT needs, organisations will be able to reduce cost and overlapping efforts across the various lines of business while also preventing data silos, for improved efficiencies, scalability and agility.
While some organisations might have deployed cloud to tackle specific issues, we will likely see the focus shift towards an all-inclusive approach centred on enterprise-wide cloud migration. Our new global research report exploring the impact of an organisation’s enterprise data strategy on its business performance, “Cloudera Enterprise Data Maturity Report: Identifying the Business Impact of an Enterprise Data Strategy”, shows an anticipated shift to hybrid cloud in the next 18 months. Nearly half the respondents believe that 43.07% of their workforce will continue working remotely in the year ahead, and are investing in the right architectures to support this shift.
Today’s world is a hybrid world—there’s hybrid data, hybrid infrastructure, hybrid work. The same report found that a large majority of organisations are looking to house their data and performance analytics on hybrid and/or multi-cloud architectures. Hybrid cloud adoption will continue to pick up in the years ahead especially with the growing emphasis on leveraging data. With the hybrid data cloud, organisations can access and analyse data fast and with ease to make smarter, data-driven decisions to effectively meet the demands of today’s hyper-competitive business climate. Accessing and managing data from multiple sources and locations will give organisations the control and flexibility of utilising a hybrid workforce whilst still being able to run business as usual.
Trend 2: Smart Edge Computing
According to a recent report by Forrester, investments in ‘Smart Infrastructure’ will increase by 40% in the APAC region. The rollout of 5G provides even greater connectivity, allowing businesses to embrace new technologies as well as leverage and analyse massive amounts of data at the edge for faster speed-to-insights. We foresee businesses in the region turning to smart edge computing to help quickly analyse data, while reducing latency and costs.
For example, many industries in APAC are still working under the corrective maintenance process, where maintenance is done based on data collected, such as mean time to failure and mean time to repair. With smart edge computing, we will start seeing a shift towards preventive, and eventually predictive maintenance processes, which will allow businesses to predict issues before they run-to-failure. It is essentially taking preventive maintenance a step further to make real-time decisions.
Trend 3: Sustainability, DEI to be key in the coming years.
Sustainability and workforce diversity will continue to grow in focus for businesses. We will likely see more organisations depend on data to ensure successful and effective DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives. Organisations can utilise data and analytics to better benchmark and set metrics and practices around business objectives such as sustainability workforce diversity. Doing so can yield positive business outcomes and gain businesses a competitive advantage. With greater visibility, management can ensure that they are driving better decision-making for greater innovation at the workplace.
The Path forward for organisations in 2022 (optional)
Organisations must take the time to evaluate their business processes before embracing cloud and edge capabilities. It is crucial to determine the approach and strategies that best fit the unique needs of their business, where cloud and/ or edge capabilities are a means of benefitting the entire organisation and not just to solve specific problems.
With organisations anticipating a noticeable shift toward hybrid and multi-cloud environments, it makes sense that they would be looking toward data strategies enabled by the cloud. An enterprise data cloud approach (EDC) can help unlock the power of data to serve customers better, operate with greater efficiency and resilience, and strengthen security– critical capabilities in today’s world.
Businesses also need to ensure their cloud service delivers integrated, multi-function analytics on centrally managed and secured business data, deployed anywhere and with a consistent experience, in hybrid and multi-cloud. Regardless of where the organisation’s data resides or what data infrastructure they use, the right cloud platform provides a single point of reference. The Cloudera Data Platform (CDP), the industry’s first enterprise data cloud, helps organisations to aggregate, access, and analyse their data in a secure and governed manner at one place, offering users a comprehensive platform for cloud data management and experiences they require and want to use.
In 2022 and beyond, employers and workers will require the necessary digital and soft skills to take advantage of the new opportunities they are presented with. There is a need for organisations to encourage and motivate workers to engage in reskilling and upskilling. By providing employees with training related to digital innovation, data science, AI/ machine learning, and other emerging technologies, organisations can ensure their workforce are digitally-literate and able to drive effective transformation within the organisation.
