Technology: 5 IT Trends to Watch in 2022
The IT landscape is ever-changing. In a dynamic tech market, companies are constantly innovating to deliver new and emerging technologies in various sectors like AI, cloud, security and digital transformation. With organizations ramping up their tech in 2022, we look into our crystal ball to see what technology trends lie in store for the year ahead.
#1 Explosive growth in hybrid and multicloud adoption
Last year, global cloud spending increased by more than 22%. The Unitrends 2021 State of BCDR Survey found that nearly 60% of mid-market enterprise (MME) organizations utilize two or more cloud providers, as do 36% of small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs). More than 46% of SMB and MME organizations plan to migrate at least a portion of their applications and services to cloud-hosted platforms within 24 months.
#2 Increased cloud usage for backup and recovery
The cloud is a key aspect of organizations’ overall business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategies. More than 91% of MMEs and 89% of SMBs have already implemented cloud technologies. Current use cases include archiving, disaster recovery failover, and backup for PCs and endpoints. Respondents also cited emerging cloud use cases, such as short-term file storage, hosted Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), and cloud-based backup and recovery, for new SaaS applications.
#3 Cybersecurity will remain a priority
According to the Unitrends Survey, over 43% of organizations cited cybersecurity as the most relevant challenge to their organization. Data is everywhere — on-premises, in SaaS applications and endpoints — constantly opening up new threat vectors for prospective attackers. More than 30% of MMEs and 27% of SMBs cited ransomware as their top data protection priority. Organizations also understand the risks of a hybrid workforce with 13% of MMEs and 12% of SMBs identifying remote user protection as their top priority.
#4 Misconceptions and compliance mandates will continue to pose a risk
Being fully compliant with documented standards can lead to a false sense of security. A compliance-driven mentality encourages a homogenous approach that plays into the hands of cybercriminals. The more organizations that are alike with regards to their security controls and configurations, the better chance attackers have at understanding and overcoming the defenses they plan to thwart. To make matters worse, cybercriminals have automation and massive distribution channels in the form of as-a-service offerings on their side.
Here are some inherent risks that a compliance-driven security climate poses:
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While compliance-driven standards provide a directional foundation for implementing controls and processes, they are often just a “bare minimum” and are unable to keep up with evolving threat landscapes.
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A compliance-driven security climate is unable to provide immediate, data-informed security. It’s easy to miss warning signs of threats in action when understaffed teams are combating thousands of noisy alerts from a single firewall daily.
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Threat actors exploit vulnerabilities within days of finding them and at-risk vendors often don’t have security patches readily available.
#5 Automation, not outsourcing, will ease resource and staffing challenges
IT professionals are increasingly asked to do more with less. Organizations cite IT staff bandwidth (13%), knowledge and skills gaps (6%), and lack of quality candidates (4%) as some of the most relevant challenges to their organization. With a global shortage of talent and labor-inhibiting growth, organizations are looking to automation solutions to streamline processes, create new efficiencies and reduce costs. The adoption of automation technologies will represent a major shift in how IT infrastructure is delivered in the future.
However, implementing automation as a business initiative will be a challenging task for organizations that have not yet undertaken these endeavors. IT leaders will start small, automating fewer complex tasks or those that lie outside critical operations. For example, automated disaster recovery testing will alleviate the time and cost of conducting manual testing while simultaneously bolstering confidence in recoverability. Additionally, organizations that begin to leverage automation for an infrastructure use case will reduce low-value, time-consuming tasks like troubleshooting and systems configurations, further boosting IT productivity.
Winding up
“If you want to know the future, look at the past.”
— Albert Einstein
Last year, Unitrends delivered several enhancements across our Unified BCDR platform, from automated on-the-box recovery testing, AI-driven intelligent alerts and so much more. To learn more about how far we’ve come and what’s ahead for Unified BCDR in 2022, check out our 2021 Year End Review today.
