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Posts from the ‘CIO’ Category

Feb 26

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10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure’s Growth

  • Microsoft Azure revenue grew 50% year-over-year in fiscal Q2, 2021, contributing to a 26% increase in Server products and cloud services revenue.
  • According to the latest earnings call, more than 1,000 Microsoft customers now use Azure Arc to simplify hybrid management and run Azure services across on-premises, multi-cloud and at the edge.
  • Commercial cloud gross margins increased to 71% in the latest quarter, up from 67% a year earlier.
  • There are now over 60 Azure regions globally, strengthening Microsoft’s competitive global position versus Amazon Web Services.
  • Microsoft reported $43.08 billion in the second fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31, up from $36.91 billion a year earlier,

These and many other insights are from Microsoft’s Fiscal Year 2021 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call and related research. Microsoft’s early decision to double down on expanding their cloud platform by accelerating new product and services development and Azure region expansion is paying off. Azure’s revenue growth shows Microsoft is an innovation machine when it comes to the cloud.  

In their latest fiscal quarter, Microsoft announced hundreds of new services and updates to Microsoft Azure alone. The most noteworthy are improvements to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, Azure Defender for SQL, Password spray detection in Azure AD Identity Protection, Azure Stack HCI, Azure Stack Edge, Azure Data Factory now being available in five new regions and many more. All Azure updates are available in an online index that provides options for finding those now available, in preview, or in development.  

The following ten charts will change your perspective of Microsoft Azure’s growth:

  • Intelligent Cloud delivered the highest operating income of all segments in the 2nd quarter at $6.4 billion or 36% of total consolidated operating income. This quarter, Microsoft’s success with indirect channel sales combined with more enterprise customers accelerating their cloud-first initiatives contributed to Intelligent Cloud leading all segments in operating income. The following is from the Q2, FY21 Earnings Call.
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth
  • Synergy Research Group’s latest cloud market analysis finds that Amazon and Microsoft are over 50% of the global cloud provider market, with Microsoft reaching 20% worldwide market share for the first time. Q4, 2020 enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services was just over $37 billion, $4 billion higher than the previous quarter and up 35% from the fourth quarter of 2019. Synergy Research notes that it has taken just nine quarters for the market to double in size.
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth
  • 63% of enterprises are currently running apps on Microsoft Azure, second only to AWS.  Azure is narrowing the gap with AWS in both the percentage of enterprises using it and the number of virtual machines (VMs) enterprises are running on it. 6% of enterprises are spending at least $1.2 million annually on Microsoft Azure. Source: Statista and Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report, page 50.
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth
  • 2020 total cloud infrastructure services spending grew 33% to $142 billion from $107 billion in 2019, according to Canalys, with Microsoft’s indirect channel business fueling their 20% market share growth. Microsoft’s dominance of indirect selling channels is evident in the level of sales enablement, sales and technical support they provide resellers. Canalys’ Chief Analyst Alastair Edwards says that “organizations are turning to trusted business partners to advise, implement, support and manage their cloud journeys and articulate the real business value of cloud migration.”
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth
  • 19% of enterprises expect to invest significantly more on Microsoft Azure in 2021, leading all other cloud vendors this year. Microsoft Azure leads all vendors when compared to the percentage change in spending this year. It’s noteworthy that 61% of all enterprises interviewed expect to increase their investments in Microsoft Azure this year, second only to Microsoft SaaS software. Source: 2021 Flexera State of Tech Report, January 2021.
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth
  • Microsoft Azure Stack is the second most-used private cloud platform by enterprises, with 35% of them currently running apps today. Azure Stack also leads all others in experimentation, with one in five enterprises, or 21%, currently in that phase of deployment. 67% of all enterprises interviewed in the 2020 Flexera State of the Cloud Report are either running Azure apps or are considering it.
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth
  • Microsoft’s centerpiece for their intelligence investment is the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph, which processes over 630 billion authentications across our cloud services each month. Microsoft relies on the Security Graph to gain insights into normal behavior, including sign-ins and authentications and abnormal behavior, including attempted bypasses to two-factor authentication. Microsoft blocks more than 5 billion distinct malware threats per month, providing a great deal of useful data to analyze endpoints across customers’ networks. Source: Microsoft CISO Workshop 1 – Cybersecurity Briefing.
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth
  • 44.5% of enterprises say Microsoft Azure is their preferred provider for Cloud Business Intelligence (BI). Azure is considered 27% more critical to an enterprises’ Cloud BI requirements and preferences than Amazon Web Services. It’s noteworthy that 96.5% of all enterprises have a preference for Microsoft Azure BI versus its main competitors, including Google Cloud, IBM BlueMix, or Alibaba.   
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth
  • Microsoft Azure is the leading IoT platform worldwide by end-to-end capabilities with a total score of 276 according to Counterpoint Research. According to the methodology Counterpoint used for ranking IoT platforms, Microsoft Azure is considered a global leader in edge data processing, an increasingly important feature of IoT platforms worldwide. The ability to deliver IoT capabilities from the cloud to the edge helped Microsoft’s platform rank high in this category. Source; Statista and CounterPointResearch.com.
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth
  •  Microsoft Azure is the foundation for a Digital Supply Chain Platform that integrates supply chain partner, corporate, data & advanced analytics platforms and supply chain core transaction systems.  The ongoing pandemic is putting continued pressure on supply chains. Most manufacturing executives say that employee safety, data security, remote worker access, supply chain visibility and insights visibility are high priorities. In response to these market needs, Microsoft Supply Chain (MSC) was created on the Azure platform. The diagram below explains how Azure is integral to the Digital Supply Chain platform.
10 Charts That Will Change Your Perspective Of Microsoft Azure's Growth

Dec 15

Software Dominates Deloitte’s 2020 Tech Fast 500 With 71% Of All Companies

  • Software companies continue to deliver the highest growth rates for the 25th straight year, representing 71% of the entire list, the highest-ever percentage in the history of the rankings.
  •  353 of the 500 fastest-growing companies in North America are in the software industry according to Deloitte’s 2020 Tech Fast 500, the most ever in the history of their rankings and a 3% increase over last year.
  • Two of the ten fastest-growing companies over the last three years specialize in cybersecurity, OneTrust and Transmit Security.
  • Notable software companies ranked in Deloitte’s 2020 Tech Fast 500 include Bolt, Illumio, LogicMonitor and Seeq.
  • Biotechnology/pharmaceutical companies are the second most prevalent sector, comprising 14% of all companies, followed by digital content/media/entertainment (5%) and medical devices (4%).  

It’s fascinating to look at the emerging trends in Deloitte’s 2020 North America Technology Fast 500 Rankings as leading predictors of innovation. This year’s report is a quick read and provides a glimpse into the fastest-growing companies between 2016 and 2019. Deloitte chooses Technology Fast 500 awardees based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2016 to 2019. Overall, the 2020 Technology Fast 500 companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 175% to 106,508% over the three-year time frame, with a median growth rate of 450%.

Key insights from the rankings include the following:

  • Five of the top ten winners are software companies, including Branch Metrics, OneTrust, Transmit Security, Drift and CharterUP. It’s noteworthy that cybersecurity is well-represented in the top ten fastest-growing companies between 2016 and 2019. OneTrust and Transmit Security is in the top five fastest-growing companies between 2016 and 2019, accentuating how critical cybersecurity is becoming in all businesses. The following graphic lists the top ten Deloitte 2020 North America Technology Fast 500 winners.
Software Dominates Deloitte's 2020 Tech Fast 500 With 71% Of All Companies
Deloitte’s 2020 North America Technology Fast 500 Rankings
  •  Digital platform and enterprise infrastructure & productivity dominate software companies are dominating software sub-sectors with 56% of all companies. Deloitte’s ranking reflects the increasing urgency all organizations have to launch, scale and excel at new digital selling channels. The pandemic accelerated the urgency faster than the most compelling business case ever could. Having over 50% of all software companies in these categories quantifies the cloud as the platform of choice across enterprises.  
Software Dominates Deloitte's 2020 Tech Fast 500 With 71% Of All Companies
Deloitte’s 2020 North America Technology Fast 500 Rankings
  • Electronic devices/hardware, energy tech and software & SaaS are the three sectors generating the fastest growing businesses over the last three years. Edge computing and the quick pace of innovation in intelligent sensor development and adoption for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) use cases are catalysts driving the 683% growth rate. Sustainability’s bottom-line benefits, including its positive impact on lean manufacturing, help drive to 525% growth rate in energy tech. Software and SaaS median growth rate of 465% shows enterprise software’s evolution is nascent and just getting started.
Software Dominates Deloitte's 2020 Tech Fast 500 With 71% Of All Companies
Deloitte’s 2020 North America Technology Fast 500 Rankings
Software Dominates Deloitte's 2020 Tech Fast 500 With 71% Of All Companies
Deloitte’s 2020 North America Technology Fast 500 Rankings

Nov 1

83% Of Enterprises Transformed Their Cybersecurity In 2020

83% Of Enterprises Transformed Their Cybersecurity In 2020

  • 73% of enterprises (over 500 employees) accelerated their cloud migration plans to support the shift to remote working across their organizations due to the pandemic.
  • 81% of enterprises accelerated their IT modernization processes due to the pandemic.
  • 48% of all companies surveyed have accelerated their cloud migration plans, 49% have sped up their IT modernization plans because of Covid-19.
  • 32% of large-scale enterprises, over 500 employees, are implementing more automation using artificial intelligence-based tools this year.

These and many other insights are from a recent survey of IT leaders completed by CensusWide and sponsored by Centrify. The survey’s objectives on understanding how the dynamics of IT investments, operations and spending have shifted over the last six months. The study finds that the larger the enterprise, the more important it is to secure remote access to critical infrastructure to IT admin teams. Remote access and updating privacy policies and notices are two of the highest priorities for mid-size organizations to enterprises today. The methodology is based on interviews with 215 IT leaders located in the U.S.     

Key insights from the survey include the following:

  • The overwhelming majority of enterprises have transformed their cybersecurity approach over the last six months, with 83% of large-scale enterprises leading all organizations. It’s encouraging to see small and medium-sized businesses adjusting and improving their approach to cybersecurity. Reflecting how digitally-driven many small and medium businesses are, cybersecurity adjustments begin in organizations with 10 to 49 employees. 60% adjusted their cloud security postures as a result of distributed workforces. 

83% Of Enterprises Transformed Their Cybersecurity In 2020

  • 48% of all organizations had to accelerate cloud migration due to the pandemic, with larger enterprises leading the way. Enterprises with over 500 employees are the most likely to accelerate cloud migration plans due to the pandemic. 73.5% of enterprises with more than 500 employees accelerated cloud migration plans to support their employees’ remote working arrangements, leading all organization categories. This finding reflects how cloud-first the largest enterprises have become this year. It’s also consistent with many other surveys completed in 2020, reflecting how much the cloud has solidly won the enterprise. 
83% Of Enterprises Transformed Their Cybersecurity In 2020
  • 49% of all organizations and 81% of large-scale enterprises had to accelerate their IT modernization process due to the pandemic. For the largest enterprises, IT modernization equates to digitizing more processes using cloud-native services (59%), maintaining flexibility and security for a partially remote workforce (57%) and revisiting and adjusting their cybersecurity stacks (40%).
83% Of Enterprises Transformed Their Cybersecurity In 2020
  •  51% of enterprises with 500 employees or more are making remote, secure access their highest internal priority. In contrast, 27% of all organizations’ IT leaders say that providing secure, granular access to IT admin teams, outsourced IT and third-party vendors is a leading priority. The larger the enterprise, the more important remote access becomes. The survey also found organizations with 250 – 500 employees are most likely to purchase specific cybersecurity tools and applications to meet compliance requirements. 
83% Of Enterprises Transformed Their Cybersecurity In 2020

 

Conclusion & Wrap-Up  

IT leaders are quickly using the lessons learned from the pandemic as a crucible to strengthen cloud transformation and IT modernization strategies. One of every three IT leaders interviewed, 34%, say their budgets have increased during the pandemic. In large-scale enterprises with over 500 employees, 59% of IT leaders have seen their budgets increase.

All organizations are also keeping their IT staff in place. 63% saw little to no impact on their teams, indicating that the majority of organizations will have both the budget and resources to maintain or grow their cybersecurity programs. 25% of IT leaders indicated that their company plans to keep their entire workforce 100% remote.

It’s encouraging to see IT leaders getting the support they need to achieve their cloud transformation and IT modernization initiatives going into next year. With every size of organization spending on cybersecurity tools, protecting cloud infrastructures needs to be a priority. Controlling administrative access risk in the cloud and DevOps is an excellent place to start with a comprehensive, modern Privileged Access Management solution. Leaders in this field, including Centrify, whose cloud-native architecture and flexible deployment and management options, deliver deep expertise in securing cloud environments.

Jul 4

Why Cybersecurity Is Really A Business Problem

Why Cybersecurity Is Really A Business Problem

Bottom Line: Absolute’s 2020 Endpoint Resilience Report illustrates why the purpose of any cybersecurity program needs to be attaining a balance between protecting an organization and the need to keep the business running, starting with secured endpoints.

Enterprises who’ve taken a blank-check approach in the past to spending on cybersecurity are facing the stark reality that all that spending may have made them more vulnerable to attacks. While cybersecurity spending grew at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12% in 2018, Gartner’s latest projections are predicting a decline to only 7% CAGR through 2023. Nearly every CISO I’ve spoken with in the last three months say prioritizing cybersecurity programs by their ROI and contribution to the business is how funding gets done today.

Cybersecurity Has Always Been A Business Decision

Overcoming the paradox of keeping a business secure while fueling its growth is the essence of why cybersecurity is a business decision. Securing an entire enterprise is an unrealistic goal; balancing security and ongoing operations is. CISOs speak of this paradox often and the need to better measure the effectiveness of their decisions.

This is why the findings from Absolute’s 2020 State of Endpoint Resilience Report​  are so timely given the shift to more spending accountability on cybersecurity programs. The report’s methodology is based on anonymized data from enterprise-specific subsets of nearly 8.5 million Absolute-enabled devices active across 12,000+ customer organizations in North America and Europe. Please see the last page of the study for additional details regarding the methodology.

Key insights from the study include the following:

  • More than one of every three enterprise devices had an Endpoint Protection (EP), client management or VPN application out of compliance, further exposing entire organizations to potential threats. More than 5% of enterprise devices were missing one or more of these critical controls altogether. Endpoints, encryption, VPN and Client Management are more, not less fragile, despite millions of dollars being spent to protect them before the downturn. The following graphic illustrates how fragile endpoints are by noting average compliances rate alongside installation rates:
  • When cybersecurity spending isn’t being driven by a business case, endpoints become more complex, chaotic and nearly impossible to protect. Absolute’s survey reflects what happens when cybersecurity spending isn’t based on a solid business decision, often leading to multiple endpoint security agents. The survey found the typical organization has 10.2 endpoint agents on average, up from 9.8 last year. One of the most insightful series of findings in the study and well worth a read is the section on measuring Application Resilience. The study found that the resiliency of an application varies significantly based on what else it is paired with. It’s interesting to see that same-vendor pairings don’t necessarily do better or show higher average compliance rates than pairings from different vendors. The bottom line is that there’s no guarantee that any agent, whether sourced from a single vendor or even the most innovative vendors, will work seamlessly together and make an organization more secure. The following graphic explains this point:
  •  60% of breaches can be linked to a vulnerability where a patch was available, but not applied. When there’s a compelling business case to keep all machines current, patches get distributed and installed. When there isn’t, operating system patches are, on average, 95 days late. Counting up the total number of vulnerabilities addressed on Patch Tuesday in February through May 2020 alone, it shows that the average Windows 10 enterprise device has hundreds of potential vulnerabilities without a fix applied – including four zero-day vulnerabilities. Absolute’s data shows that Post-Covid-19, the average patch age has gone down slightly, driven by the business case of supporting an entirely remote workforce.
  • Organizations that had defined business cases for their cybersecurity programs are able to adapt better and secure vulnerable endpoint devices, along with the sensitive data piling up on those devices, being used at home by employees. Absolute’s study showed that the amount of sensitive data – like Personal Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI) and Personal Financial Information (PFI) data – identified on endpoints soared as the Covid-19 outbreak spread and devices went home to work remotely. Without autonomous endpoints that have an unbreakable digital tether to ensure the health and security of the device, the greater the chance of this kind of data being exposed, the greater the potential for damages, compliance violations and more.

Conclusion

Absolute’s latest study on the state of endpoints amplifies what many CISOs and their teams are doing today. They’re prioritizing cybersecurity endpoint projects on ROI, looking to quantify agent effectiveness and moving beyond the myth that greater compliance is going to get them better security. The bottom line is that increasing cybersecurity spending is not going to make any business more secure, knowing the effectiveness of cybersecurity spending will, however. Being able to capable of tracking how resilient and persistent every autonomous endpoint is in an organization makes defining the ROI of endpoint investments possible, which is what every CISO I’ve spoken with is focusing on this year.

Mar 25

COVID-19’s Impact On Tech Spending This Year

COVID-19's Impact On Tech Spending This Year

The human tragedy the COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted on the world is incalculable and continues to grow. Every human life is priceless and deserves the care needed to sustain it. COVID-19 is also impacting entire industries, causing them to randomly gyrate in unpredictable ways, directly impacting IT and tech spending.

COVID-19’s Impact On Industries

Computer Economics in collaboration with their parent company Avasant published their Coronavirus Impact Index by Industry that looks at how COVID-19 is affecting 11 major industry sectors in four dimensions: personnel, operations, supply chain, and revenue. Please see the Coronavirus Impact Index by Industry by Tom Dunlap, Dave Wagner, and Frank Scavo of Computer Economics for additional information and analysis.  The resulting index is an overall rating of the impact of the pandemic on each industry and is shown below:

Computer Economics and Avasant predict major disruption to High Tech & Telecommunications based on the industry’s heavy reliance on Chinese supply chains, which were severely impacted by COVID-19. Based on conversations with U.S.-based high tech manufacturers, I’ve learned that a few are struggling to make deliveries to leading department stores and discount chains due to parts shortages and allocations from their Chinese suppliers. North American electronics suppliers aren’t an option due to their prices being higher than their Chinese competitors. Leading department stores and discount chains openly encourage high tech device manufacturers to compete with each other on supplier availability and delivery date performance.

In contrast to the parts shortage and unpredictability of supply chains dragging down the industry, software is a growth catalyst. The study notes that Zoom, Slack, GoToMyPC, Zoho Remotely, Microsoft Office365, Atlassian, and others are already seeing increased demand as companies increase their remote-working capabilities.

COVID-19’s Impact On IT Spending  

Further supporting the Coronavirus Impact Index by Industry analysis, Andrew Bartels, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester, published his latest forecast of tech growth today in the post, The Odds of a Tech Market Decline In 2020 Have Just Gone Up To 50%.

Mr. Bartels is referencing the market forecasts shown in the following forecast published last month, New Forrester Forecast Shows That Global Tech Market Growth Will Slip To 3% In 2020 And 2021 and shown below:

Key insights from Forrester’s latest IT spending forecast and predictions are shown below:

  • Forrester is revising its tech forecast downward, predicting the US and global tech market growth slowing to around 2% in 2020. Mr. Bartels mentions that this assumes the US and other major economies have declined in the first half of 2020 but manage to recover in the second half.
  • If a full-fledged recession hits, there is a 50% probability that US and global tech markets will decline by 2% or more in 2020.
  • In either a second-half 2020 recovery or recession, Forrester predicts computer and communications equipment spending will be weakest, with potential declines of 5% to 10%.
  • Tech consulting and systems integration services spending will be flat in a temporary slowdown and could be down by up to 5% if firms cut back on new tech projects.
  • Software spending growth will slow to the 2% to 4% range in the best case and will post no growth in the worst case of a recession.
  • The only positive signs from the latest Forrester IT spending forecast is the continued growth in demand for cloud infrastructure services and potential increases in spending on specialized software. Forrester also predicts communications equipment, and telecom services for remote work and education as organizations encourage workers to work from home and schools move to online courses.

Conclusion

Every industry is economically hurting already from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now is the time for enterprise software providers to go the extra mile for their customers across all industries and help them recover and grow again. Strengthening customers in their time of need by freely providing remote collaboration tools, secure endpoint solutions, cloud-based storage, and CRM systems is an investment in the community that every software company needs to make it through this pandemic too.

Jul 22

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Why AI Is The Future Of Cybersecurity

These and many other insights are from Capgemini’s Reinventing Cybersecurity with Artificial Intelligence Report published this week. You can download the report here (28 pp., PDF, free, no opt-in). Capgemini Research Institute surveyed 850 senior executives from seven industries, including consumer products, retail, banking, insurance, automotive, utilities, and telecom. 20% of the executive respondents are CIOs, and 10% are CISOs. Enterprises headquartered in France, Germany, the UK, the US, Australia, the Netherlands, India, Italy, Spain, and Sweden are included in the report. Please see page 21 of the report for a description of the methodology.

Capgemini found that as digital businesses grow, their risk of cyberattacks exponentially increases. 21% said their organization experienced a cybersecurity breach leading to unauthorized access in 2018. Enterprises are paying a heavy price for cybersecurity breaches: 20% report losses of more than $50 million. Centrify’s most recent survey, Privileged Access Management in the Modern Threatscape, found that 74% of all breaches involved access to a privileged account. Privileged access credentials are hackers’ most popular technique for initiating a breach to exfiltrate valuable data from enterprise systems and sell it on the Dark Web.

Key insights include the following:

  • 69% of enterprises believe AI will be necessary to respond to cyberattacks. The majority of telecom companies (80%) say they are counting on AI to help identify threats and thwart attacks. Capgemini found the telecom industry has the highest reported incidence of losses exceeding $50M, making AI a priority for thwarting costly breaches in that industry. It’s understandable by Consumer Products (78%), and Banking (75%) are 2nd and 3rd given each of these industry’s growing reliance on digitally-based business models. U.S.-based enterprises are placing the highest priority on AI-based cybersecurity applications and platforms, 15% higher than the global average when measured on a country basis.

  • 73% of enterprises are testing use cases for AI for cybersecurity across their organizations today with network security leading all categories. Endpoint security the 3rd-highest priority for investing in AI-based cybersecurity solutions given the proliferation of endpoint devices, which are expected to increase to over 25B by 2021. Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors and systems they enable are exponentially increasing the number of endpoints and threat surfaces an enterprise needs to protect. The old “trust but verify” approach to enterprise security can’t keep up with the pace and scale of threatscape growth today. Identities are the new security perimeter, and they require a Zero Trust Security framework to be secure. Be sure to follow Chase Cunningham of Forrester, Principal Analyst, and the leading authority on Zero Trust Security to keep current on this rapidly changing area. You can find his blog here.

  • 51% of executives are making extensive AI for cyber threat detection, outpacing prediction, and response by a wide margin. Enterprise executives are concentrating their budgets and time on detecting cyber threats using AI above predicting and responding. As enterprises mature in their use and adoption of AI as part of their cybersecurity efforts, prediction and response will correspondingly increase. “AI tools are also getting better at drawing on data sets of wildly different types, allowing the “bigger picture” to be put together from, say, static configuration data, historic local logs, global threat landscapes, and contemporaneous event streams,” said Nicko van Someren, Chief Technology Officer at Absolute Software.

  • 64% say that AI lowers the cost to detect and respond to breaches and reduces the overall time taken to detect threats and breaches up to 12%. The reduction in cost for a majority of enterprises ranges from 1% – 15% (with an average of 12%). With AI, the overall time taken to detect threats and breaches is reduced by up to 12%. Dwell time – the amount of time threat actors remain undetected – drops by 11% with the use of AI. This time reduction is achieved by continuously scanning for known or unknown anomalies that show threat patterns. PetSmart, a US-based specialty retailer, was able to save up to $12M by using AI in fraud detection from Kount. By partnering with Kount, PetSmart was able to implement an AI/Machine Learning technology that aggregates millions of transactions and their outcomes. The technology determines the legitimacy of each transaction by comparing it against all other transactions received. As fraudulent orders were identified, they were canceled, saving the company money and avoiding damage to the brand. The top 9 ways Artificial Intelligence prevents fraud provides insights into how Kount’s approach to unsupervised and supervised machine learning stops fraud.

  • Fraud detection, malware detection, intrusion detection, scoring risk in a network, and user/machine behavioral analysis are the five highest AI use cases for improving cybersecurity. Capgemini analyzed 20 use cases across information technology (IT), operational technology (OT) and the Internet of Things (IoT) and ranked them according to their implementation complexity and resultant benefits (in terms of time reduction). Based on their analysis, we recommend a shortlist of five high-potential use cases that have low complexity and high benefits. 54% of enterprises have already implemented five high impact cases. The following graphic compares the recommended use cases by the level of benefit and relative complexity.

  • 56% of senior execs say their cybersecurity analysts are overwhelmed and close to a quarter (23%) are not able to successfully investigate all identified incidents. Capgemini found that hacking organizations are successfully using algorithms to send ‘spear phishing’ tweets (personalized tweets sent to targeted users to trick them into sharing sensitive information). AI can send the tweets six times faster than a human and with twice the success. “It’s no surprise that Capgemini’s data shows that security analysts are overwhelmed. The cybersecurity skills shortage has been growing for some time, and so have the number and complexity of attacks; using machine learning to augment the few available skilled people can help ease this. What’s exciting about the state of the industry right now is that recent advances in Machine Learning methods are poised to make their way into deployable products,” said Nicko van Someren, Chief Technology Officer at Absolute Software.

Conclusion

AI and machine learning are redefining every aspect of cybersecurity today. From improving organizations’ ability to anticipate and thwart breaches, protecting the proliferating number of threat surfaces with Zero Trust Security frameworks to making passwords obsolete, AI and machine learning are essential to securing the perimeters of any business.  One of the most vulnerable and fastest-growing threat surfaces are mobile phones. The two recent research reports from MobileIron, Say Goodbye to Passwords (4 pp., PDF, opt-in) in collaboration with IDG, and Passwordless Authentication: Bridging the Gap Between High-Security and Low-Friction Identity Management (34 pp., PDF, opt-in) by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) provide fascinating insights into the passwordless future. They reflect and quantify how ready enterprises are to abandon passwords for more proven authentication techniques including biometrics and mobile-centric Zero Trust Security platform.

Feb 27

10 Ways AI & Machine Learning Are Revolutionizing Omnichannel

Disney, Oasis, REI, Starbucks, Virgin Atlantic, and others excel at delivering omnichannel experiences using AI and machine learning to fine-tune their selling and service strategies. Source: iStock

Bottom Line: AI and machine learning are enabling omnichannel strategies to scale by providing insights into the changing needs and preferences of customers, creating customer journeys that scale, delivering consistent experiences.

For any omnichannel strategy to succeed, each customer touchpoint needs to be orchestrated as part of an overarching customer journey. That’s the only way to reduce and eventually eliminate customers’ perceptions of using one channel versus another. What makes omnichannel so challenging to excel at is the need to scale a variety of customer journeys in real-time as customers are also changing.

89% of customers used at least one digital channel to interact with their favorite brands and just 13% found the digital-physical experiences well aligned according to Accenture’s omnichannel study. AI and machine learning are being used to close these gaps with greater intelligence and knowledge. Omnichannel strategists are fine-tuning customer personas, measuring how customer journeys change over time, and more precisely define service strategies using AI and machine learning. Disney, Oasis, REI, Starbucks, Virgin Atlantic, and others excel at delivering omnichannel experiences using AI and machine learning for example.

Omnichannel leaders including Amazon use AI and machine learning to anticipate which customer personas prefer to speak with a live agent versus using self-service for example. McKinsey also found omnichannel customer care expectations fall into the three categories of speed and flexibility, reliability and transparency, and interaction and care. Omnichannel customer journeys designed deliver on each of these three categories excel and scale between automated systems and live agents as the following example from the McKinsey article, How to capture what the customer wants illustrate:

The foundation all great omnichannel strategies are based on precise customer personas, insight into how they are changing, and how supply chains and IT need to flex and change too. AI and machine learning are revolutionizing omnichannel on these three core dimensions with greater insight and contextual intelligence than ever before.

10 Ways AI & Machine Learning Are Revolutionizing Omnichannel

The following are 10 ways AI & machine learning are revolutionizing omnichannel strategies starting with customer personas, their expectations, and how customer care, IT infrastructure and supply chains need to stay responsive to grow.

  1. AI and machine learning are enabling brands, retailers and manufacturers to more precisely define customer personas, their buying preferences, and journeys. Leading omnichannel retailers are successfully using AI and machine learning today to personalize customer experiences to the persona level. They’re combining brand, event and product preferences, location data, content viewed, transaction histories and most of all, channel and communication preferences to create precise personas of each of their key customer segments.
  2. Achieving price optimization by persona is now possible using AI and machine learning, factoring in brand and channel preferences, previous purchase history, and price sensitivity. Brands, retailers, and manufacturers are saying that cloud-based price optimization and management apps are easier to use and more powerful based on rapid advances in AI and machine learning algorithms than ever before. The combination of easier to use, more powerful apps and the need to better manage and optimize omnichannel pricing is fueling rapid innovation in this area. The following example is from Microsoft Azure’s Interactive Pricing Analytics Pre-Configured Solution (PCS). Source: Azure Cortana Interactive Pricing Analytics Pre-Configured Solution.

  1. Capitalizing on insights gained from AI and machine learning, omnichannel leaders are redesigning IT infrastructure and integration so they can scale customer experiences. Succeeding with omnichannel takes an IT infrastructure capable of flexing quickly in response to change in customers’ preferences while providing scale to grow. Every area of a brand, retailer or manufacturer’s supply chain from their supplier onboarding, quality management and strategic sourcing to yard management, dock scheduling, manufacturing, and fulfillment need to be orchestrated around customers. Leaders include C3 Solutions who offers a web-based Yard Management System (YMS) and Dock Scheduling System that can integrate with ERP, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and many others via APIs. The following graphic illustrates how omnichannel leaders orchestrate IT infrastructure to achieve greater growth. Source: Cognizant, The 2020 Customer Experience.

  1. Omnichannel leaders are relying on AI and machine learning to digitize their supply chains, enabling on-time performance, fueling faster revenue growth. For any omnichannel strategy to succeed, supply chains need to be designed to excel at time-to-market and time-to-customer performance at scale. 54% of retailers pursuing omnichannel strategies say that their main goal in digitizing their supply chains was to deliver greater customer experiences. 45% say faster speed to market is their primary goal in digitizing their supply chain by adding in AI and machine learning-driven intelligence. Source: Digitize Today To Future-Proof Tomorrow (PDF, 16 pp., opt-in).

  1. AI and machine learning algorithms are making it possible to create propensity models by persona, and they are invaluable for predicting which customers will act on a bundling or pricing offer. By definition propensity models rely on predictive analytics including machine learning to predict the probability a given customer will act on a bundling or pricing offer, e-mail campaign or other call-to-action leading to a purchase, upsell or cross-sell. Propensity models have proven to be very effective at increasing customer retention and reducing churn. Every business excelling at omnichannel today rely on propensity models to better predict how customers’ preferences and past behavior will lead to future purchases. The following is a dashboard that shows how propensity models work. Source: customer propensities dashboard is from TIBCO.

  1. Combining machine learning-based pattern matching with a product-based recommendation engine is leading to the development of mobile-based apps where shoppers can virtually try on garments they’re interested in buying. Machine learning excels at pattern recognition, and AI is well-suited for creating recommendation engines, which are together leading to a new generation of shopping apps where customers can virtually try on any garment. The app learns what shoppers most prefer and also evaluates image quality in real-time, and then recommends either purchase online or in a store. Source: Capgemini, Building The Retail Superstar: How unleashing AI across functions offers a multi-billion dollar opportunity.

  1. 56% of brands and retailers say that order track-and-traceability strengthened with AI and machine learning is essential to delivering excellent customer experiences. Order tracking across each channel combined with predictions of allocation and out-of-stock conditions using AI and machine learning is reducing operating risks today. AI-driven track-and-trace is invaluable in finding where there are process inefficiencies that slow down time-to-market and time-to-customer. Source: Digitize Today To Future-Proof Tomorrow (PDF, 16 pp., opt-in).
  2. Gartner predicts that by 2025, customer service organizations who embed AI in their customer engagement center platforms will increase operational efficiencies by 25%, revolutionizing customer care in the process. Customer service is often where omnichannel strategies fail due to lack of real-time contextual data and insight. There’s an abundance of use cases in customer service where AI and machine learning can improve overall omnichannel performance. Amazon has taken the lead on using AI and machine learning to decide when a given customer persona needs to speak with a live agent. Comparable strategies can also be created for improving Intelligent Agents, Virtual Personal Assistants, Chatbot and Natural Language (NLP) performance.  There’s also the opportunity to improve knowledge management, content discovery and improve field service routing and support.
  3. AI and machine learning are improving marketing and selling effectiveness by being able to track purchase decisions back to campaigns by channel and understand why specific personas purchased while others didn’t. Marketing is already analytically driven, and with the rapid advances in AI and machine learning, markets will for the first time be able to isolate why and where their omnichannel strategies are succeeding or failing. By using machine learning to qualify the further customer and prospect lists using relevant data from the web, predictive models including machine learning can better predict ideal customer profiles. Each omnichannel sales lead’s predictive score becomes a better predictor of potential new sales, helping sales prioritize time, sales efforts and selling strategies.
  4. Predictive content analytics powered by AI and machine learning are improving sales close rates by predicting which content will lead a customer to buy. Analyzing previous prospect and buyer behavior by persona using machine learning provides insights into which content needs to be personalized and presented when to get a sale. Predictive content analytics is proving to be very effective in B2B selling scenarios, and are scaling into consumer products as well

Feb 18

Digital Transformation’s Missing Link Is Zero Trust

    • Enterprises will invest $2.4T by 2020 in digital transformation technologies including cloud platforms, cognitive systems, IoT, mobile, robotics, and integration services according to the World Economic Forum.
    • Digital transformation software and services revenue in the U.S. is predicted to reach $490B in 2025, soaring from $190B in 2019, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.49% according to Grand View Research published by Statista.
    • IDC predicts worldwide spending on the technologies and services that enable the digital transformation of business practices, products, and organizations will reach $1.97T in 2022.
    • Legacy approaches to Privileged Access Management (PAM) don’t protect the new threatscapes digital transformation initiatives create, making Zero Trust Privilege essential for enterprises.

B2B customers, including manufacturers looking to replace legacy production equipment with smart, connected machines, have high expectations when it comes to product quality, ease of integration, and intuitive user experiences. Replacing factories full of legacy assets with smart, connected machinery is one of the most powerful catalysts driving digital transformation today. Innovative smart, connected machinery and the performance gains they provide are the oxygen that keeps customer relationships alive. That’s why digital transformation forecasts from the World Economic Forum, Grand View Research, IDC, and many others predict perennial growth. The many forecasts reflect a fundamental truth: digital transformation done with intensity creates a customer-driven renaissance for any business.

Businesses digitally transforming themselves are succeeding because they’ve made themselves accountable and transparent to customers. Earning and protecting that trust is the heartbeat of any business’ growth. 51% of enterprises invest in digital transformation to capture growth opportunities in new markets, with 46% investing to stay in front of evolving customer behaviors and preferences. Brian Solis’ excellent report, The State of Digital Transformation, 2018 – 2019 Edition (31 pp., PDF, opt-in) shows how digitally transforming any business with the customer first leads to greater growth. The graphic from his study illustrates this point:

 

Closing The Digital Transformation Gap With Zero Trust

Gaps exist between the results digital transformation initiatives are delivering today, and the customer-driven value they’re capable of. According to Gartner, 75% of digital transformation projects are not aligned internally today, leading to delayed new product launches, mediocre experiences, and greater security risks than ever before. Interactive, IoT-enabled experiences and products are expanding the threatscape of enterprises to include Big Data, cloud, containers, DevOps, IoT systems, and more. With that comes a host of new exposure points, many of which allow access to sensitive data that must be protected with modern Privileged Access Management solutions that reduce risk in these modern enterprise use cases.

The new security perimeter is identity. Forrester estimates that 80% of data breaches are caused by privileged access abuse. Every smart, connected machine that replaces legacy production equipment is another identity that defines a manufacturer’s security perimeter.

As the use cases and adoption of smart, connected machines proliferate, so too does the urgency that manufacturers need to replace their legacy approaches to Privileged Access Management (PAM). Relying on outdated strategies for protecting administrative access to all machines needs to be replaced with a “never trust, always verify, enforce least privilege” approach.

IT needs to improve how they’re protecting the most privileged access credentials, the ‘keys to the kingdom,’ by granting just-enough, just-in-time privilege. Of the many cybersecurity approaches available today, Zero Trust Privilege (ZTP) enables IT to grant least privilege access based on verifying who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment.

The more diverse any digital transformation strategy, the greater the risk of privileged credential abuse. Thwarting privileged credential abuse needs to start with a least privilege access approach, minimizing each attack surface, improving audit and compliance visibility while reducing risk, complexity, and costs. Leaders in Zero Trust include Centrify, MobileIron, Palo Alto Networks, and others. Of these companies, Centrify’s approach to Zero Trust to prevent privileged access abuse shows the greatest potential for securing digital transformation initiatives and strategies.

How To Secure Digital Transformation Strategies

IDG Research found in their Security Priorities for 2018 study that 71% of security-focused IT decision-makers are aware of the Zero Trust model and 18% of enterprises are either running pilots or have implemented Zero Trust.

Zero Trust Privilege (ZTP) is the force multiplier digital transformation initiatives need to reach their true potential by securing administrative access to the complex mix of machinery and infrastructure – and the sensitive data they hold and use – that manufacturers rely on daily.

Starting with a strategic perspective, ZTP’s contribution to securing digital transformation deployments apply to every area of planning, pilots, platforms, product, and service data being designed to stop the leading cause of breaches, which is privileged credential abuse. The following graphic illustrates how ZTP needs to span every aspect of an enterprise’s digital transformation capabilities.

Source: World Economic Forum, Digital Transformation Initiative, May 2018

Conclusion

By 2020, 30% of Global 2000 companies will have allocated capital budget equal to at least 10% of revenue to fuel their digital transformation strategies according to IDC.  European spending on technologies and services that enable the digital transformation of business practices, products, and organizations is forecasted to reach $378.2B in 2022. The perennial growth these forecasts promise is predicated on enterprises delivering new experiences and innovative products, which create the oxygen that keeps their customer relationships alive.

Amidst all the potential for growth, enterprises need to realize every new infrastructure element, machine, or connected production asset is a new identity that collectively comprises the fabric of their security perimeter. Legacy cybersecurity approaches won’t scale to protect the proliferating number of smart machines being put into use today. Relying entirely on legacy approaches to PAM, where privileged access to systems and resources only inside the network are secure, is failing today. Smart, connected machinery and the products and experiences they deliver require an entirely new cybersecurity strategy, one based on a “never trust, always verify, enforce least privilege” approach. Centrify Zero Trust Privilege shows potential to meet this challenge by granting least privilege access based on verifying who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment.

Nov 30

86% Of Enterprises Increasing IoT Spending In 2019

  • Enterprises increased their investments in IoT by 4% in 2018 over 2017, spending an average of $4.6M this year.
  • 38% of enterprises have company-wide IoT deployments in production today.
  • 84% of enterprises expect to complete their IoT implementations within two years.
  • 82% of enterprises share information from their IoT solutions with employees more than once a day; 67% are sharing data in real-time or near real-time.

These and many other fascinating insights are from Zebra Technologies’ second annual Intelligent Enterprise Index (PDF, 25 pp., no opt-in). The index is based on the list of criteria created during the 2016 Strategic Innovation Symposium: The Intelligent Enterprise hosted by the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH) in 2016. An Intelligent Enterprise is one that leverages ties between the physical and digital worlds to enhance visibility and mobilize actionable insights that create better customer experiences, drive operational efficiencies or enable new business models, “ according to Tom Bianculli, Vice President, Technology, Zebra Technologies.

The metrics comprising the index are designed to interpret where companies are on their journeys to becoming Intelligent Enterprises. The following are the 11 metrics that are combined to create the Index: IoT Vision, Business Engagement, Technology Solution Partner, Adoption Plan, Change Management Plan, Point of use Application, Security & Standards, Lifetime Plan, Architecture/Infrastructure, Data Plan and Intelligent Analysis. An online survey of 918 IT decision makers from global enterprises competing in healthcare, manufacturing, retail and transportation and logistics industries was completed in August 2018. IT decision makers from nine countries were interviewed, including the U.S., U.K./Great Britain, France, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, China, India, and Australia/New Zealand. Please see pages 24 and 25 for additional details regarding the methodology.

Key insights gained from the Intelligent Enterprise Index include the following:

  • 86% of enterprises expect to increase their spending on IoT in 2019 and beyond. Enterprises increased their investments in IoT by 4% in 2018 over 2017, spending an average of $4.6M this year. Nearly half of enterprises globally (49%) interviewed are aggressively pursuing IoT investments with the goal of digitally transforming their business models this decade. 38% of enterprises have company-wide IoT deployments today, and 55% have an IoT vision and are currently executing their IoT plans.

  • 49% of enterprises are on the path to becoming an Intelligent Enterprise, scoring between 50 – 75 points on the index. The percent of enterprises scoring 75 or higher on the Intelligent Enterprise Index gained the greatest of all categories in the last 12 months, increasing from 5% to 11% of all respondents. The majority of enterprises are improving how well they scale the integration of their physical and digital worlds to enhance visibility and mobilize actionable insights. The more real-time the integration unifying the physical and digital worlds of their business models, the better the customer experiences and operational efficiencies attained.

  • The majority of enterprises (82%) share information from their IoT solutions with employees more than once a day, and 67% are sharing data in real-time or near real-time. 43% of enterprises say information from their IoT solutions is shared with employees in real-time, up 38% from last year’s index. 76% of survey respondents are from retailing, manufacturing, and transportation & logistics. Gaining greater accuracy of reporting across supplier networks, improving product quality visibility and more real-time data from distribution channels are the growth catalysts companies competing in retail, manufacturing, and transportation & logistics need to grow. These findings reflect how enterprises are using real-time data monitoring to drive quicker, more accurate decisions and be more discerning in which strategies they choose. Please click on the graphic to expand to view specifics.

  • Enterprises continue to place a high priority on IoT network security and standards with real-time monitoring becoming the norm. 58% of enterprises are monitoring their IoT networks constantly, up from 49%, and a record number of enterprises (69%) have a pre-emptive, proactive approach to IT security and network management. It’s time enterprises consider every identity a new security perimeter, including IoT sensors, smart, connected products, and the on-premise and cloud networks supporting them. Enterprises need to pursue a “never trust, always verify, enforce least privilege” approach and are turning to Zero Trust Privilege (ZTP) to solve this challenge today. ZTP grants least privilege access based on verifying who is requesting access, the context of their request, and ascertaining the risk of the access environment. Designed to secure infrastructure, DevOps, cloud, containers, Big Data, and scale to protect a wide spectrum of use cases, ZTP is replacing legacy approaches to Privileged Access Management by minimizing attack surfaces, improving audit and compliance visibility, and reducing risk, complexity, and costs for enterprises. Leaders in this field include Centrify for Privileged Access Management, Idaptive, (a new company soon to be spun out from Centrify) for Next-Gen Access, as well as Cisco, F5 and Palo Alto Networks in networking.

  • Analytics and security dominate enterprise’ IoT management plans this year. 66% of enterprises are prioritizing analytics as their highest IoT data management priority this year, and 63% an actively investing in IoT security. The majority are replacing legacy approaches to Privilege Access Management (PAM) with ZTP.  Enterprises competing in healthcare and financial services are leading ZTS’ adoption today, in addition to government agencies globally. Enterprises investing in Lifecycle management solutions increased 11% between 2017 and 2018. Please click on the graphic to expand to view specifics.

May 20

1 Comment

Roundup Of Cloud Computing Forecasts, 2017

  • Cloud computing is projected to increase from $67B in 2015 to $162B in 2020 attaining a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19%.
  • Gartner predicts the worldwide public cloud services market will grow 18% in 2017 to $246.8B, up from $209.2B in 2016.
  • 74% of Tech Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) say cloud computing will have the most measurable impact on their business in 2017.

Cloud platforms are enabling new, complex business models and orchestrating more globally-based integration networks in 2017 than many analyst and advisory firms predicted. Combined with Cloud Services adoption increasing in the mid-tier and small & medium businesses (SMB), leading researchers including Forrester are adjusting their forecasts upward. The best check of any forecast is revenue.  Amazon’s latest quarterly results released two days ago show Amazon Web Services (AWS) attained 43% year-over-year growth, contributing 10% of consolidated revenue and 89% of consolidated operating income.

Additional key takeaways from the roundup include the following:

  • Wikibon is predicting enterprise cloud spending is growing at a 16% compound annual growth (CAGR) run rate between 2016 and 2026. The research firm also predicts that by 2022, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will reach $43B in revenue, and be 8.2% of all cloud spending. Source: Wikibon report preview: How big can Amazon Web Services get?

Wikibon Worldwide Enterprise IT Projection By Vendor Revenue

Wikibon Worldwide Enterprise IT Projection By Vendor Revenue

Rapid Growth of Cloud Computing, 2015–2020

Rapid Growth of Cloud Computing, 2015–2020

Worldwide Public Cloud Services Forecast (Millions of Dollars)

Worldwide Public Cloud Services Forecast (Millions of Dollars)

  • By the end of 2018, spending on IT-as-a-Service for data centers, software and services will be $547B. Deloitte Global predicts that procurement of IT technologies will accelerate in the next 2.5 years from $361B to $547B. At this pace, IT-as-a-Service will represent more than half of IT spending by the 2021/2022 timeframe. Source: Deloitte Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions, 2017 (PDF, 80 pp., no opt-in).

Deloitte IT-as-a-Service Forecast

Deloitte IT-as-a-Service Forecast

  • Total spending on IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switches) for deployment in cloud environments will increase 15.3% year over year in 2017 to $41.7B. IDC predicts that public cloud data centers will account for the majority of this spending ( 60.5%) while off-premises private cloud environments will represent 14.9% of spending. On-premises private clouds will account for 62.3% of spending on private cloud IT infrastructure and will grow 13.1% year over year in 2017. Source: Spending on IT Infrastructure for Public Cloud Deployments Will Return to Double-Digit Growth in 2017, According to IDC.

Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Market Forecast

Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Market Forecast

  • Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) adoption is predicted to be the fastest-growing sector of cloud platforms according to KPMG, growing from 32% in 2017 to 56% adoption in 2020. Results from the 2016 Harvey Nash / KPMG CIO Survey indicate that cloud adoption is now mainstream and accelerating as enterprises shift data-intensive operations to the cloud.  Source: Journey to the Cloud, The Creative CIO Agenda, KPMG (PDF, no opt-in, 14 pp.)

Cloud investment by type today and in three years

Cloud investment by type today and in three years

AWS Segment Financial Comparison

AWS Segment Financial Comparison

  • In Q1, 2017 AWS generated 10% of consolidated revenue and 89% of consolidated operating income. Net sales increased 23% to $35.7 billion in the first quarter, compared with $29.1 billion in first quarter 2016. Source: Cloud Business Drives Amazon’s Profits.

Comparing AWS' Revenue and Income Contributions

Comparing AWS’ Revenue and Income Contributions

  • RightScale’s 2017 survey found that Microsoft Azure adoption surged from 26% to 43% with AWS adoption increasing from 56% to 59%. Overall Azure adoption grew from 20% to 34% percent of respondents to reduce the AWS lead, with Azure now reaching 60% of the market penetration of AWS. Google also increased adoption from 10% to 15%. AWS continues to lead in public cloud adoption (57% of respondents currently run applications in AWS), this number has stayed flat since both 2016 and 2015. Source: RightScale 2017 State of the Cloud Report (PDF, 38 pp., no opt-in)

Public Cloud Adoption, 2017 versus 2016

Public Cloud Adoption, 2017 versus 2016

  • Global Cloud IT market revenue is predicted to increase from $180B in 2015 to $390B in 2020, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17%. In the same period, SaaS-based apps are predicted to grow at an 18% CAGR, and IaaS/PaaS is predicted to increase at a 27% CAGR. Source: Bain & Company research brief The Changing Faces of the Cloud (PDF, no opt-in).

60% of IT Market Growth Is Being Driven By The Cloud

60% of IT Market Growth Is Being Driven By The Cloud

  • 74% of Tech Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) say cloud computing will have the most measurable impact on their business in 2017. Additional technologies that will have a significant financial impact in 2017 include the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence (AI) (16%) and 3D printing and virtual reality (14% each). Source: 2017 BDO Technology Outlook Survey (PDF), no opt-in).

CFOs say cloud investments deliver the greatest measurable impact

CFOs say cloud investments deliver the greatest measurable impact

Cloud investments are fueling new job throughout Canada

Cloud investments are fueling new job throughout Canada

  • APIs are enabling persona-based user experiences in a diverse base of cloud enterprise As of today there are 17,422 APIs listed on the Programmable Web, with many enterprise cloud apps concentrating on subscription, distributed order management, and pricing workflows.  Sources: Bessemer Venture Partners State of the Cloud 2017 and 2017 Is Quickly Becoming The Year Of The API Economy. The following graphic from the latest Bessemer Venture Partners report illustrates how APIs are now the background of enterprise software.

APIs are fueling a revolution in cloud enterprise apps

APIs are fueling a revolution in cloud enterprise apps

Additional Resources:

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