Year in Review: 3 Technology Trends of 2020

By Chris Hope, Senior Director of IT and Security, One Source

2020 has been a year of unprecedented disruption. Businesses have had to quickly shift their operations and focus bullishly on business continuity and finding ways to keep up with the changes. Organizations of all industries and sizes have been confronted with tough decisions, cost-cutting initiatives and budget constraints. This year, it has been critical for IT leaders to utilize digital technologies to not only enable business agility, but to accelerate digital transformation initiatives that may have been on hold or derailed completely during this trying year.

One Source examines 3 top trends to come out of 2020:

1. Demand for innovation continues. Innovation was not only expected to continue, but executives expected even more to keep up with the changing climate. IT is no longer a cost center you can allocate funds to but something that contributes to the success of the organization as a whole. In response to this demand in innovation, SD-WAN continues to dominate enterprise connectivity strategies with 44% of enterprises having already adopted SD-WAN before the start of 2020. With almost half of current enterprise companies having adopted SD-WAN, organizations who are not adopting are falling behind. SD-WAN is a technology that allows organizations to run connectivity between offices and multiple locations without having to buy MPSL (private lines). This solution sets organizations up for expansion, lower failure rates, and better Quality-of-Service for users. Adopting SD-WAN solves financial problem while at the same time solves a business problem; IT leaders don’t have to prioritize one problem over the other. The adoption rate of SD-WAN compared to other solutions is accelerating exponentially.
2. The drive to cloud adoption continues to grow and there are several cloud solutions to choose from. A private cloud consists of cloud computing resources used exclusively by one organization and can be located in a data center that’s on-site or close to your office. Public clouds are more common. In a public cloud, all hardware, software and other supporting infrastructure are owned and managed by the cloud provider. Public cloud is still the most common solution adopted, however 2020 has seen a rise in multi-cloud or hybrid cloud. 93% of companies are looking at a multi-cloud solution according to Flexera. Multi-cloud combines the on-premise infrastructure of private cloud with public cloud. The multi-cloud solution gives businesses greater flexibility to coincide with business objectives. For example, some workloads work best running on private cloud and some workloads work best running on public cloud. Most businesses have a need for both. Therefore, organizations need to mix and match to get the most efficient use out of their infrastructure. 67% of enterprises workloads are expected to transition into cloud before the end of 2020 according to
3. There has been a massive shift to Unified Communications (UCaaS) since March of this year. With many organizations having to shift to working from home, the ability to collaborate remotely became a top priority. 2020 has seen a 300% increase across the board in UCaaS platforms such as web conferencing. Additionally, while the healthcare industry is typically slow to adopt new technologies, the pandemic has forced a massive transition to telehealth. Telehealth trends are being fast-tracked in 2020, with the market now expected to grow to $100 billion by 2023 according to Mordor Intelligence. The need for remote communication is not going to go away in 2021. Remote working has become the new normal for many organizations and businesses and collaboration cannot be compromised to ensure business continuity.

With these 3 technology trends in mind from 2020, and after a year of mass disruption that has transformed the business world, organizations should enter 2021 with a focus on enabling business agility to help navigate the changing market conditions and prepare for any future disruption. To achieve agility, IT leaders should focus on understanding how to keep up with the demand for technology innovation despite flat or constrained budgets.