How is IBM keeping up with the global IT trends?

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How is IBM keeping up with the global IT trends?

In my previous article, Iceland’s favorable location, climate and overall conditions for data centers were addressed.

This article will center around the International Data Corporation’s annual FutureScape report that predicts the top 10 trends within the IT industrywide technology adaptation for the next five years. More importantly, how IBM is persevering with IDC’s estimations of where the tech world is headed for the next five years will be assessed.

Overall, IDC suggests that the exponentially growing digitization will cause a state of digital supremacy, in which companies must aspire to:

• upscale their digital resources and scope
• master digital innovation as well as AI
• pledge to cybersecurity
• expand their third-party developer ecosystem and wholesale digital revenue stream
• venture into partnerships of mashups across industries
• improve upon all IT supplier relationships

In the following sections, seven of IDC’s 10 predictions, of which IBM seems to be directly at the cutting edge of, will be highlighted.

Prediction #1,4 & 5 – IBM Garage

The Design Thinking-powered IBM Garage aligns with a combination of different predictions; #1 hasten to innovation, #4 digital innovation factories, and #5 industry apps explosion.

• Prediction #1 hasten to innovation revolves around how digital supremacy’s influence on the economic landscape will affect companies’ IT budgets. IDC predicts that by 2024, over 50% of all IT spending will derive specifically from digital innovation and digital transformation efforts – in contrast to 2018’s rate of 31%.
• Prediction #4 digital innovation factories states that by 2025, the software industry will have evolved to such an extent that almost two-thirds of all enterprises will be mastering software production, apply coding on a daily basis where 80% is sourced externally, with up to 1.6 times more software developers available and over 90% of all new apps being cloud-native.
• Prediction #5 industry apps explosion deals with the rapidly expanding market of digital apps and services, and the IDC estimates that by 2023, more than 500 million of said will be created and utilized with the application of cloud-native techniques.

Through an approach centered around driving purposeful innovation and transformational change, the IBM Garage develops new ideas that can prove to be extremely valuable to any business. Moreover, it applies the speed of a startup at the scale of an enterprise via a design thinking methodology that applies the three pillars of co-create, co-execute, and co-operate. With these resources and tools at full effect through the operations of the Garage, IBM should be more than apt to sustain the three aforementioned predictions about global IT trends.

Prediction #2 & 3 – IBM Cloud solutions

Offering valuable solutions in the hybrid and public cloud platforms, IBM seems confident to follow suit with predictions #2 connected clouds and #3 edge buildout.

• Prediction #2 concerns one of IBM’s core competencies, i.e. cloud technology, of which the IDC expects 70% of all enterprises to integrate cloud management across public and private clouds by 2022. This will be done via combined hybrid/multicloud technologies, management tools, and processes.
• Prediction #3 states that by 2023, more than half of all new IT infrastructure applied by enterprises, will be with edge computing rather than corporate data centers, which is up from less than 10% this year. Likewise, apps created at the edge will increase by 800%.

IBM’s Red Hat acquisition has sparked a groundbreaking hybrid multicloud technology that combines the capabilities of Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud technologies with the depth of IBM’s innovation and industry expertise. Because of the immense volume of data accumulating from the advancement of new IoT devices and its computing power, edge deployment will be paramount in order to sustain today’s data scales and complexity.

These two predictions will cause all cloud operations – infrastructure, data, apps, and management – to be employed at edge locations, which will also trigger an abundance of new data centers in the future.

The environmental consequences of artificial cooling and heating of data centers instigate us to always be mindful of sustainable alternatives. Therefore, I will continue to promote Iceland in selecting new data center locations, as the most favorable and sustainable climate conditions are found here (read elaboration in my previous article). Similarly, in regard to the development of supercomputers, IBM excels in being as environmentally friendly as possible, and as evident in Green500’s November list of the top 500 greenest supercomputers, IBM’s presence sits solidly in the top 10 with positions #3, #4, #5, and #7. Naturally, we will aim to be at the top of the list by next year and create the world’s greenest supercomputer.

Prediction #6 – IBM PowerAI
IDC’s prediction #6 inescapable AI deals with a topic of which I am particularly proud to be able to say that IBM industrywide certainly is at the forefront of.

• IDC has predicted AI to be implemented in enterprise’s apps to such a dominating extent that by 2025, at least 90% of new enterprise apps will embed AI. By 2024, more than half of UI interactions will employ AI-enabled computer vision, speech, natural language processing, and AR/VR.

In October, IDC ranked IBM the worldwide market share leader in AI for the third year in a row with a 9.2% market share of a $28.1 billion total worldwide AI market. The PowerAI solutions have acted as a catalyst for this achievement and we at IBM will continue to strive for maintaining this leading market position.

Prediction #7 – IBM cybersecurity services
Finally, prediction #7 trust is promoted is highlighted, given IBM’s great focus on cybersecurity.

• As cybersecurity has become a ubiquitous concern to any enterprise today, IDC predicts half of the top 2000 public companies to hire a chief trust officer by 2023, who will manage trust throughout the enterprise operations of security, finance, HR, risk, sales, production and legal.

IBM offers several cybersecurity services and among others are the X-Force Red, X-Force IRIS and Re-Trust, which all are highly intelligent and will help you sustain cybersecurity at the highest level.   

Conclusively, I believe that we are keeping fairly well up with the tech world’s future trends as seen through the lenses of the IDC, by continuously striving to innovate, develop, enhance, and adjust our products and services.

Do you want to read the full IDC report on global IT trends? You can download it through their website by clicking at the link. 

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at NIKLASP@dk.ibm.com