The IT Landscape Report 2019
The IT Landscape Report 2019
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The IT Landscape Report 2019
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The IT Landscape Report 2019
Contents
About this report ...... 4
The current landscape in 2018 ...... 5
A look back to the priorities of a CEO ...... 5
Making good on the promise of digital transformation ...... 7
Innovate or get left behind ...... 8
Technology for good ...... 10
Harnessing the fourth industrial revolution ...... 10
Digital’s impact on the public sector ...... 11
Achieving a common goal through partnership ...... 13
2018 Growth in the tech sector ...... 14
AI is shaping the new culture of work ...... 14
Data and AI- A match made in heaven ...... 15 Taking a data journey to improve accuracy & forecasting with Azure machine learning ...... 15
Unlocking the benefits of Marston’s data ...... 18
Unlocking the potential of data in your sector ...... 19
UK businesses risk falling behind due to a lack of AI strategy ...... 21
With great AI comes great responsibility ...... 25
Birth of the modern Workplace ...... 30
A platform for change ...... 30
Working smarter working anywhere ...... 31
Impact on the Public Sector ...... 33
Another shift towards the cloud specifically O365 ...... 34
working collaboratively in the modern age – The battle for the app ...... 38
Making good on your investment ...... 40
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Cloud computing – What that means in 2019 ...... 43
Walking before you can run – Cloud strategy ...... 43
No app left behind ...... 45
The Cloud Wars ...... 46
GDPRs impact on the cloud ...... 49
Security of privacy ...... 50
Adopting a DevOps culture through cloud ...... 51
The Challenge of Change ...... 54
The digital economy and filling the AI skills gap ...... 56
Skills and abilities for jobs of the future ...... 56
The need to plug the UK digital skills gap ...... 59
Females in IT or the lack off ...... 63
Tech Trends for 2019 ...... 67
Advancements in AI ...... 68
Blockchain & AI for better privacy ...... 68
Robot process automation & Bots ...... 70
An augmented reality (AR) Virtual reality (VR) world ...... 71
Big data just getting bigger ...... 72
IOT, a catalst for digital transformation ...... 74
Bibliography ...... 77
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The IT Landscape Report 2019
About this report Here at risual we pride ourselves for being one of the most agile and diverse IT partners in the UK with vast experience stretching across many industries and sectors. This brings with it an abundance of insight we can take into our customers’, leaving us well versed and equipped to supply strategic solutions that not only solve problems but allow our customers to innovate and digitally transform to overcome key pain points and industry challenges. Our “learn it all” approach as a business puts us in a prime position to impact our customers by assessing the market, focus on key technology trends, emerging industry challenges, ongoing security threats and maintaining our skills to deliver the latest solutions from Microsoft.
Last year we released our IT landscape report externally for the first time to a fantastic reception. For anyone reading who has supported this report by "I always say this to any supplying feedback, we thank you. This student who is joining report is supported with statistics from Microsoft or looking to join the survey, along with primary and Microsoft. I say to them, secondary research collated from our 'Look, if you want to be findings and analysis of the business IT cool, go look for landscape. someplace else. But if you The report itself will help us shape and want to join a company tailor our offerings to align with your that is committed to challenges, priorities and ensure we making others cool, join can better support your business. Microsoft.'"
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The IT Landscape Report 2019
The current landscape in 2018 A look back to the priorities of a CEO Many organisations today look completely different to how they looked 3-5 years ago.
In more recent years the changes in modern business, such as culture and automation have grown even more clear and thanks to technology have sped up rapidly.
We touched on the fact last year spectrum of industries, but why is that many businesses in all sectors this the case? have so many options and In 2017 Gartner conducted approaches available at their research into CEO and C level fingertips it is not easy to business execs around their determine which approach to take. priorities, concerns and attitudes We also found that organisations in towards technology related issues. the same vertical, such as the Their survey showed the CEO’s Public Sector, priorities and views number one priority was growth on technology are diverse in nature with some slight preference and only by challenging on change towards profit growth than just do you start to make headway. top-line revenue. The second highest priority was technology 42% say “digital related business change in first” or “digital to response to the question “what are your organisation’s top strategic the core” is now business priorities over the next their company two years?”. This is the highest priority for an IT related response business posture alongside product improvement & innovation which were just behind This is clear across the whole growth. (Gartner, Highlights of the
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2017 CEO Survey: CIOs Must Scale Up Digital Business, 2017)
and CFO’s attitudes that CEOs are not CEOs recognise about funding digital doing enough to the need for transformation. develop the talent they will need to Self-funding from cultural change drive digital digital revenue is the transformation. (Gartner, 2018) top source of finance (Gartner, Highlights for digital of the 2017 CEO 42% of CEO’s quoted transformation. Survey: CIOs Must “Digital first” or A focus report on the Scale Up Digital “digital to the core” CFO subset of Business, 2017) as their company’s respondents digital business When the question posture. was asked again 53% of regarding thoughts However, half of the for 2017/2018 “which CEO’s still have no CEOS could of these will be digital success metric not provide stronger at your to measure against. company?”. 53% could not a clear provide a clear metric for 57% noted, Building metric for success in-house information success and had no KPIs in technology and place whilst 47% use digital capabilities. metrics including explored the ways Whilst 29% opted for revenue sales and corporate finance outsourcing profit among others. leaders are information developing digital technology and Further results from financing and digital work to the survey revenue. However, external providers. highlighted CEO’s the survey suggested
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We are pleased to find that overall, CEO’s understanding of “digital business” is improving.
Making good on the promise of digital transformation Recent years have shown us that CEO’s are aware of the pressure and need to digitally transform their business, and that they need to decide whether to drive that change through either building and exploiting in-house capability or to work with external expertise.
But how are they making good on their promises? How have their priorities changed? According to a more recent survey conducted again by Gartner in May 2018, Growth, Corporate strategies, IT and workforce issues have returned as a CEO’s top priorities and high on the agenda. Growth it appears will be hard to knock off the top however IT is still playing a major part and through innovative technology, they are scaling. Growth is being achieved naturally and organically through the creation of new jobs, cost savings and through applying the better usage of data. More to be said on that through the report but the main takeaway is that technology is the driving force behind the growth.
The results also showed however that simple implemental growth is becoming harder to achieve, instead CEO’s are putting their concentration towards changing and upgrading the structure of their companies, this ties into up-skilling and new jobs that help give a deeper understanding into digital business.
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Although growth number 3 this year and important is the meaning remains the CEO's that key buzzword behind it. The number of biggest priority, there “Digital Transformation” CEO’s mentioning was a significant fall in is at the forefront of workforce in their top 3 simple mentions of it this priorities rose from 16% year, from 58 percent in to 28%, this is because it 2017 to just 40 percent in CIOs should was acting as an 2018. This does not inhibitor to digital mean CEOs are less leverage this growth. When quizzed focused on growth, bullish they described instead, it shows that sentiment by they are shifting workforce as the biggest perspective on how to encouraging internal constraint to obtain it. "The their business growth. 'corporate' category, Expansion of this was which includes actions leaders in to drilled further down to such as new strategy, making “no explain CEO’s felt that corporate partnerships way back” employee and talent and mergers and issues or therefore the acquisitions, has risen commitments lack of were the biggest significantly to become to digital the second-biggest inhibitor of digital priority," said Mark business growth in 2018. (Gartner, Raskino, vice president change 2018) and Gartner Fellow - Mr. Raskino Innovate or get So, towards the end of left behind Q4 2017 CEO’s (Gartner, 2018) examined their business It’s not just the need for issues and within this conversation. organisations to digitally was the technology Interestingly coming in transform it’s also a big impact on the agenda. at fourth and rising element of want also. ‘Wanting’ is an IT, in general, remains a rapidly was “Workforce”. understatement, as more high priority again at The reason why this is so 8 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 and more CEOs now see transportation industry making "no way back" their companies as forever. This is all down commitments to digital innovation pioneers. to innovation, Uber are business change," said Companies such as Uber pioneers in their Mr. Raskino. "However, are exploiting industry. Taxi firms and superficial digital change technology, in their case private hire cars have can be a dangerous an application. You been in existence for a form of self-deceit. The could say this is old news long time, the difference CEO's commitment must however it’s the story being is Uber were and be grounded in deep behind the innovation are pioneers using fundamentals, such as that we are eluding to. technology to digitally genuine customer value, Uber themselves are a transform. (Journal, 2018) a genuine business high-tech company model concept and On the same Gartner founded back in 2009. disciplined economics." survey “CEO priorities Their innovation comes are shifting to embrace Innovation is happening in the form of an app Digital business”, all around us and every that brilliantly connects showed a percentage of day and it could not be the transportation respondents who think better timed. The world industry with technology their company is an is facing global via the ride-sharing app. “innovation pioneer” has challenges some are By 2014, its value was at reached a high of 41 urgent, and some are a staggering $40 billion. percent (up 27 percent unpreceded across all Uber offered its services in 2013), with fast industries and sectors, to over 200 cities in 53 followers not far behind luckily, they coincide with countries. at 37 percent "CIOs an era of unparalleled Today it is valued should leverage this innovation and around the $120 billion bullish sentiment by technological change: mark and has changed encouraging their the so-called fourth the taxi and business leaders into industrial revolution.
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Technology for good Harnessing the fourth industrial revolution Making the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) a successful revolution lies within its opportunity and in understanding its potential in order to harness the powerful technology to make the best and appropriate impact. The 4IR is and has not only shaped the landscape we are reporting on but is being tethered to impact on a global scale. It is being used to address and tackle some of the of the earth’s problems in environmental, social and economic challenges. With support from public policy and investment, the aim is to accelerate technology’s impact in a smart and sustainable way.
The Guardian reported that it could unlock in the region of £445bn for the UK alone if harnessed correctly and create thousands of jobs and putting Britain at the forefront of technologies in the process.
The Manufacturing sector could unlock that sum of money over the next decade if it cracks the 4IR and carves out a successful post Brexit plan. On the job front, a successful deal between government would push the UK to the front of the tech queue with advancements in AI, 3D printing, Augmented & Virtual reality whilst giving a much-needed productivity injection and according to the Government commission review, create 175,000 highly skilled jobs. (Guardian, Fourth industrial revolution could unlock £445bn for the UK, report reveals, n.d.)
Prohibiting our impact to truly benefit from this window of opportunity are the 51% of industry leaders who do not currently have an AI strategy, this being despite 41% of business leaders saying that their current business model will cease to exist in 5 years’ time.
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Digital’s impact work and live, around consumption disrupting business as a one-off, and on the public models and capital investment as sector challenging society to addictive, he The 4IR has reshaped rethink everything. continued to say that putting all these the landscape, and Looking closer to resources together to through continuous home in central connect half the innovation, the digital government one of world, or into AI and landscape is the roles of changing every day. parliament is to Its impact is of a embrace the 4IR by casting ahead a “look “The 4th “If you don’t to the horizon and tackle the great Industrial like change, challenges of our Revolution will I’m afraid I time. “Back in 2017 the now Secretary of change the don’t have State for Health and kinds of jobs so much Social Care and former Minister of needed in good news.” Digital, Matt Hancock industry. Our Matt Hancock addressed the all- party Parliamentary strong view is MP group on the 4IR that as a nation autumn reception. global scale and the we must create He began by talking UK is paving the way about the nature of the jobs of the in terms of technologies that are advancement. future” - Matt materially different to Innovative what has come in the Hancock MP technologies are re- past when talking framing the way we 11 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 the effects are the seven pillars on ambition to harness exponential. which success will be AI by automating measured: work, humanising Matt continued that jobs, allow machines the changes ahead • Skills to do the dangerous, have reshaped the • Infrastructure less rewarding and whole feudal system • Supporting the repetitive jobs that in Central tech sector come from the Government before • Rules & ethics adoption of new making the quote at of big data use technologies. This will the start of his • Cyber Security create and enable speech “If you don’t • Supporting the jobs that allow much like change, tech sector humans to be I’m afraid I don’t • The digitisation creative, empathetic have so much good of industry and and interactive. It is news.” The UK is government also good to see among other world Mr. Hancock focus on the full leaders when it concluded his speech spectrum of digital comes to key stating that any skills, covering technologies the likes revolution brings with through from school of AI, Nano and it disruption and the to retirement. Coding additive fear that AI may put is now being covered manufacturing are jobs at risk as we in curriculum from but a few. Backed up adopt the change. AI the age of 8. For by Matt Hancock in is there to support those in his speech he said redeployment, not employment, the that “the UK is take jobs. The key digital skills determined to use its takeaways that play entitlement provides strengths into using access to basic collaboratively and as Technology for Good training and the a nation, we will play is central promotion of lifelong a big part.” The governments’ learning. (Speech) strategy also sets out 12 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019
Achieving a common goal through partnership The UK government continues to encourage the wider public sector to take likes of risual and shortage and skills a cloud-first other members of gaps which continue approach. the SME community to emerge especially Government as well as tech giants around AI and Data. departments since like Microsoft, etc. By embracing 2010 have enjoyed the UK has already modern technologies the benefits of benefitted from the and the thriving UK frameworks such as public sector realising tech sector, social G-Cloud and more the benefits of the challenges and issues recently the Digital 4IR from an early are being addressed Outcomes stage. framework. With or at least improved Government leading Whilst the benefits thanks to the power the way, other have been impressive of modern-day sectors including in terms of results, technologies and is LRG, Education, and the 4IR and the proving to be a force Blue Light government’s for good. The ‘Cloud organisations have collaborative agenda for Good’ policy seen the benefits of has led to the tech paper published last partnering with the sector further year by Microsoft UK tech sector. struggling to meet gives real examples demand and is very of how technology is By working in much highlighting positively impacting partnership with the the current skills key issues being
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 faced by our health world behind Silicon is leading the way, and social care Valley in the US. aligning with sector system which According to the challenges and struggles to grapple Tech Nation Report optimising existing with our global and 2018, the UK digital processes, educating national ageing tech sector is worth leaders to see the populations, diseases nearly £184bn to the benefits of AI. such as obesity and economy, a rise AI is shaping diabetes. from £170bn in 2016. the new culture 2018 Growth in The turnover of digital technology of work the tech sector companies grew by Back to our survey - 4.5% between 2016 The report has so far “Looking forward shown that central and 2017, compared what are your top government is heavily with 1.7% growth in priorities for 2019?” invested in UK GDP. The growth technology for good The majority of is attributed to the and truly embracing responses collected rising demand for UK the 4IR, yet they can’t answered that “the businesses to further without help. As a automation of direct impact, the UK their understanding business” was a top tech sector is growing of technology’s priority for FY19. This and growing fast. impact and data is is a considerable the key to unlocking Interestingly the UK increase from last technology sector is their full business year. Businesses are growing more than potential. With now adopting a “new two-and-a-half times Innovative new ways faster than the overall culture of work of decisions being economy and through AI and the made using the London has been better use of data, power of AI to ranked as the second applicable across the change their most connected broad spectrum of place for tech in the infrastructure. sectors, AI is Microsoft technology
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transferable and can professional service, It is beginning to be used for good better data usage, show great business regardless of whether and AI is relevant to benefit in terms of your business is in your industry.AI is added insights and manufacturing or changing the way we supported with provides a work but it is only analysis of now really starting to unstructured data, fully impact and that can lead to a “Automation penetrate the better understanding, workplace causing businesses can start of business leaders to rethink to predict trends and processes” how their businesses look to forecast are run using data better and Was your and AI to increase dramatically impact top priority efficiency, save time their cost savings and and costs automating in turn, their bottom for 2019” and eliminating line. redundant processes.
Data and AI - A match made in heaven Taking a data journey to improve accuracy & forecasting with Azure machine learning Our report shows that AI can and is playing a big part in the new way of working and challenges leaders in to unfamiliar ways of utilising it. Specialist surveys from 2017 predicted around 62% of organisations would be using artificial intelligence business apps in some capacity by 2018 (Raconteur). And indeed, they are, what it also showed is that the other respondents may not fully understand the concept or grasp how AI can play a part in their own business or industry.
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“The first thing we needed to do to control our costs is to improve our forecasting and our accuracy. We needed every pub manager to ensure they were providing the most accurate sales forecast for the upcoming week – they do this based on occasions, weather forecast, sporting, seasonal elements and more
PAUL HUME, HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AT MARSTON’S PLC
Marston’s PLC are a UK based brewery and currently have over 1100 managed pubs located up and down the country. The licensed retail industry itself is highly competitive with a constant pressure to keep up with demand for something new and improved. For Marston’s to remain competitive as with any organisation, there is constant pressure to control costs and manage expenditure. In addition to existing tools and processes, Marston’s were looking for an innovative way to create a more tailored weekly rota, as staffing contributes to one of their highest overheads. allowing them to
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 forecast better and ensure they maintained a balanced staff to customer ratio.
Working with Marston’s we used our expertise to create an AI solution that utilised Azure machine learning applied to their existing and external datasets. Marston’s now have control over their data from start to finish and have begun generating more accurate and tailored rotas for every pub. This is particularly effective over the summer months during the World Cup event in 2018 when their pubs were likely to be busier giving better insight into stock and staffing decisions. The machine learning element adapts to spikes in consumer demand and allows the business to forecast and predict more accurately and manage demand.
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Unlocking the benefits of Marston’s data
ACCURACY Azure Machine Learning allows Marston’s to gather more accurate sales forecasts and at varying intervals. Currently, forecasting is produced daily, but to provide better and more impactful data predictions, Marston’s are working towards generating hourly forecasts.
EFFICIENCY Azure Machine learning will be able to provide quick and accurate data helping to save costs, produce accurate and reliable decisions and free up pub managers to spend time front of house delivering a better experience to their customers.
TRENDS Azure Machine Learning can allow Marston’s to view insight they usually wouldn’t see from pubs, the data provided will allow trends to be identified and used to support the staffing of the pubs. Azure Machine Learning provides Marston’s insight normally not seen, the data provided will allow trends to be identified and used to ROI All areas in Marston’s are generating forecasting including, the operations team, operation managers, finance team, information team and more. All areas in Marston’s are generating better forecasts across the operations team, operation managers, finance, and more. Marston’s have embarked on the Azure Machine Learning journey to begin immediate cost savings and see an ROI in the short and long term. Marston’s plans over the next six months to integrate automated forecasting into 18 | P a g e
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Unlocking the potential of data in your sector Data is king, commonly referred to as the oil of the 21st century. Businesses just like Marston’s are now unlocking its full potential. It’s important to point out that whatever industry or line of work, data is critical. The Marston’s story told their data journey and how that applied to the retail industry for better forecasting, cost savings for staffing, the same logic can be used across sectors, the key is to unlock its potential.
Technology and data can be a huge benefit for health and the social sector. Looking at the NHS, data can enhance the way our hospitals, social services, and other professionals come together unlocking data to again better forecast the types of resource and expertise required in every area of the country, this will aid planning for the notoriously straining winter months through forecasts using data from previous years and
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items to purchase based on current order information and historic “The UK has fewer doctors customer data. This forward way of and nurses than many thinking is impacting every business large or small as they other comparable uncover new insights buried within countries both in Europe data to optimise and change their and worldwide. To fend off strategy in an increasingly challenging landscape. a winter NHS crisis by handing the service an immediate £335m bailout and an extra £1.6bn from April to cover the 2018-19 An equal 50/50 split financial year” answer that Department of Health implementing data & AI strategy in your business current demographic data. In a was equally a priority a country where people are living high and low priority. longer increasing demand leads to an increase in flu jab vaccinations IT Landscape survey 2018 and more staffing.
Other sectors such as Policing, Manufacturing, Schools, and Universities also have examples of their own data journeys in 2019 with top priorities to retain data or meet regulatory compliance. This can manage the supply chain, giving suppliers a predictive list of 20 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019
UK businesses risk falling Microsoft reported that AI is behind due to a lack of AI changing so fast that nearly half of UK business bosses believe that strategy their business will cease to exist The Landscape survey that many of 2023. This is a very real and scary you kindly completed showed that revelation and is very much for some “implementation of Data something to consider. This and AI in to your business strategy” mentality is forcing leaders to tells us some of you are unlocking rethink and better understand AI. its potential more than others. From what we know from earlier in Interestingly in last year’s 2017 the report and from Matt survey “70% of respondents felt Hancock’s speech, The UK is the and didn’t feel their organisations shining light of Europe and front- used data effectively!” so this year runner, this country has a unique it looks like the revolution towards opportunity to lead the world in an innovative new way of development only if companies rethinking how a business moves believe in it and trust it. The to become a more strategic player overview of the same report also in their industry, using data as a flagged, whilst 41% of business catalyst and AI as a business case leaders believe they will for the change. In a recent dramatically change the way in Microsoft report around the topic, which they work within the next 5
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 years, more than half (51%) do not Microsoft’s research, which was have an AI strategy in place to conducted in partnership with embrace challenges. The Chief Goldsmiths, University of London Operating Officer of Microsoft UK said: “AI represents a huge opportunity, but only if UK “We’re just at the organisations embrace its application in the right way. AI is beginning of the AI not about making UK businesses journey. That 5% leaner, it’s about how we use the technology to make them stronger. performance boost will In doing so, we can make our work start to accelerate, more meaningful and boost UK competitiveness.” quickly.” Michael Wignall,
The report gave examples of UK CTO Microsoft UK businesses who are already using AI to improve how they work, and YouGov, revealed that examples given are Centrica who companies that have started to use are using tech to analyse data, AI are already outperforming Great Ormand Street Hospital is organisations that have not by 5%. improving patient outcomes, Whilst The Chief Technology Officer at Confused.com is utilising AI to Microsoft UK, Michael Wignall who empower its workforce. (Microsoft earlier this year attended our event AI report, 2018) as a guest speaker to talk around PwC in a separate report found the impacts of GDPR, commented that AI could help the UK economy that “We’re just at the beginning of grow GDP by up to 10.3% while the AI journey. That five percent spending power could increase by performance boost will start to between £1,800 and £2,300 per accelerate, quickly.” household. (PwC, n.d.) Microsoft went on to say that fifty- nine percent of UK employees are
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 open to experimenting with AI and considerations of this generation over half (52%) believe using and the next. Only by applying. AI technology to automate tasks and in the right way can we unlock its additionally this can create time for extraordinary potential for good. more meaningful work, but 51% “It is our firm belief at Microsoft are not using it in any form at work that a human-centric approach can in their day-to-day. help organisations positively impact their businesses, employees, and Microsoft highlighted that the customers. Yet success tomorrow blame in this lies in the lack of
requires action today – strategy and direction from leaders organisations must act now to and employees. What the report maximise the AI opportunity.” flagged was that 41% believe the widespread introduction of AI will Microsoft used and reinforced the potentially force older generations future of IT lies in AI recently at of workers to be left behind. Cindy Future Decoded back in October Rose, Chief Executive of Microsoft with the keynote talks setting the UK, said: “How society, business, scene for the theme of the event. and people adapt to AI will Michael Wignall kickstarted the become one of the most pressing conversation with this powerful
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 statement on how tech has highs and lows of plays, plot twists. advanced – “Five years ago people AI shows its Romeo who suffers were just getting into the cloud. from extreme emotional volatility. This is the fifth year we have been AI has the power to do this.” hosting Future Decoded. Satya She closed off her keynote Nadella stood on this stage, since message with this, “we have no then we have seen an evolution of doubt that AI will power the next tech. wave of digital transformation. We are in era of intelligent cloud Microsoft is working with and intelligent edge, with AI at its companies in every sector who are core!” already using AI to improve productivity and create new Microsoft UK CEO Cindy Rose was revenue streams. AI could add up next to take the stage and show to £230bn to our economy. It is the true power of AI and gave critical to the future prosperity of consideration on its impact – “AI is UK. It will be game-changing.” showing up in unexpected places. AI even being used to map The world today produces more Shakespeare plays, highlighting data than humans can make sense
“41% of business leaders believe they will have to dramatically change the way they work within the next five years, but more than half don't have an AI strategy in place to address those challenges” Microsoft UK
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 of. Cloud enables rapid With great AI comes great understanding of this data and responsibility Microsoft is investing billions in the cloud. We need to adhere to clear Technology has advanced so much principles when creating AI. We it could be argued that some of should look at what should we these new advancements should build with AI. We need to intensify be given away for free it is indeed our efforts to prepare today’s saving lives around the world. We workforce for the jobs of have a great responsibility to make tomorrow. Success tomorrow sure that we are using the needs action today. We need to advancements to help in areas that ensure no one is left behind.” Cindy need it most such as Healthcare Rose emphasis was again on the and factors affecting our planet on UK leading and paving the way a global scale as mentioned earlier urging organisations in attendance in the report. that today and now is the time to Now is the time to train and upskill get started on AI. The UK has a real people for the jobs of the future, opportunity to lead on this. so it is pleasing to see that we are (Decoded, 2018 ) looking at this as a priority.
Microsoft occupies a unique position in AI – striking a balance between opportunity and responsibility. They are looking at how to capitalise on the benefits while applying it to benefits of workforce and humanity. Dr Chris Brauer, Goldsmiths University of London
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Reminiscent of our own risual listed that they are working hard education division which was born on the biggest challenges in the out of our own apprenticeship field of AI, so we can develop tools scheme to create a skilled that will change lives and workforce, has since been rolled organisations across the world. out across the UK to numerous LEP They mentioned and provided regions to develop IT apprentices examples of this such as Skype for employers across all sectors to Translator has helped people begin bridging the IT skills gap. communicate in many languages (see section on digital skills gap). and countries, another example Microsoft recently revealed their was a cross-platform framework for partnership with the University of model-based machine learning Cambridge to bridge the AI skills that has been used in asthma gap and to boost the number of AI research and gene analysis, among researchers in the UK. The many other areas. Microsoft Research-Cambridge Partners like risual and Microsoft University Machine Learning are becoming increasingly Initiative will provide support for important to the UK economy as Ph.D. students at the world-leading only 18% of workforces are learning university and offer a postdoctoral new skills to keep up with future research position at Microsoft changes. Research Lab, Cambridge. Our aim is to realise artificial intelligence’s The announcement also listed the potential in enhancing the human parts of society that will benefit experience and to nurture the next most from machine learning will generation of researchers and need sophisticated solutions that talent in the field. reflect the complexities of the world in which we live. Such This move shows further intelligent infrastructure has the Microsoft’s future commitment potential to support decision- towards AI and Technology for making in numerous fields, good. In the announcement article including healthcare, education, released in October, Microsoft 26 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 transport, urban planning, and Much of the current wave of agriculture. However, Microsoft excitement (and fear) about AI acknowledged they cannot make results from the impressive the necessary advancements alone, performance of deep learning nor should we do so at the since 2012 but, in the AI research expense of academia hence the community, there’s a growing partnership. sense of “what now?” as some question the foundations of deep Chris Bishop who is the lab Director learning (backpropagation) and of Microsoft Research Cambridge others look to move past what they as part of the partnership consider “brute force” approaches announcement gave his view on AI (lots of data, lots of computing and emphasized its impact power), perhaps in favor of more “The amount of data in the world neuroscience-based approaches. doubles every couple of years, it’s Far from fearing robot world growing exponentially. There are domination, many in the AI many exciting things we can do research community are concerned with machine learning. One is a that continued over-hyping of the collaboration between Microsoft field may eventually disappoint and and Adaptive Biotechnologies, lead to another AI nuclear winter. which allows them to sequence (Truck, Great Power, Great genetic material. They are learning Responsibility: The 2018 Big Data & to decode the immune system to AI Landscape, 2018) diagnose disease. Matt Turck MD at FirstMark wrote We want to take advantage of that an article on the subject and the capability, to use machine learning great debate on AI and its and the cloud to produce a phenomenon. Data and AI is at the universal blood test. It will detect front and center in 2018 data cancer at a much earlier stage and technologies (Big Data, data find any conditions you may have. science, machine learning, AI) continue their march forward,
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becoming ever more efficient, and that one of the key themes in the more widely adopted. businesses corporate world in 2018 so far has around the world. It is no accident been “digital transformation”.
The term may feel quaint to some remains as exciting and vibrant as (“isn’t that what’s been happening ever, with a rich tapestry of for the last 25 years?”), but it innovative startups, mature “scale- reflects that many of the more ups”, and many aggressive public traditional industries and technology vendors. Most companies are now fully engaged importantly, many customers large into their journey to become truly and small are deploying those technologies in production at scale and reaping undeniable value from their efforts. Buzzwords come and go As the cycle of replacing older IT Fewer people talk about technologies with more modern “Big Data” and more and data products continues, it seems more conversations are that the Big Data market (infrastructure, analytics) is cycling taking place using the through many buyers and term “AI” in 2018 transitioning into much of the traditional adoption curve. In LinkedIn Trend addition, the data world continues its inexorable evolution towards the cloud. It is staggering to see how data-driven. (Truck, Great Power, fast the large public cloud Great Responsibility: The 2018 Big providers (AWS, Azure, Google Data & AI Landscape, 2018) Cloud Platform, IBM) are growing When looking at infrastructure & at pace. (Truck, Great Power, analytics it is an exciting time for Great Responsibility: The 2018 Big Industry perspective and Data & AI Landscape, 2018). standpoint the data ecosystem
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Looking at conversations and a You will likely remember the rising trend on LinkedIn around the Facebook trial around data privacy topic, many are voicing their breaches from earlier this year, opinion and joining the great AI Facebook and other social media debate, concern affecting the platforms have a huge advantage subject on responsibility. Issues of in the race to produce even more data privacy (ownership & security) powerful AI due to the amount of are a prevalent concern, if this data they hold. Landscape report were to have Technology has grown so much it been conducted back in the early now allows us the ability to spot 2000s this would have meant an irregularities in data lakes and even entirely different thing as data determine and predict outcomes privacy meant protection of what (Marston’s AI data story) including we did online which in comparison more tech that recognises faces was marginally small in terms of such as the iPhone X. usage and activities. Today it has far greater meaning as just about Never the less an emerging theme every element of both our personal and something we touched on in and professional lives are linked last year’s report was Blockchain, a and stored on the internet across a theme that is looking to counter multitude of connected devices, it’s the risks of AI. We will discuss safe to say the stakes are higher. Blockchain more in the conclusion.
The concern stems from the Blockchain as a possible foil against amount of data held by a collective the risks of AI, as well as a way for of large powerful US Tech others, outside of GAFA, to companies such as GAFA (Google, produce great AI. Crypto Apple Facebook, Amazon). The EU economics are viewed as a way to does not want to let large incentivise individuals to provide companies of their caliber go their personal data and for unchecked. machine learning engineers to build models by processing this data anonymously. It all remains 29 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 very experimental, but some early through technology, this on a marketplaces and networks are wider scale has shaped the current emerging. (Truck, Great Power, landscape for 2018 and paved the Great Responsibility: The 2018 Big way for the Modern Workplace to Data & AI Landscape, 2018) start to take form. 60% of
Birth of the modern respondents to our 2018 survey answered that “on reflection what Workplace was your biggest business A platform for change challenge facing your IT dept this year” were Digital Transformation Digital transformation is a or the implementation of Microsoft buzzword that you will be more Office 365. Challenges to than familiar with. The survey implement were often due to responses collected from the 2017 budget cuts and funding to achieve report showed a priority for you to a modern workplace stood in the digitally transform your business way. 30 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019
The workplace whether that is an The CIPD which is the professional office, factory or shop floor can body for HR and people take many forms, the common development released a report this theme is, that is the place where year on techs impact on employees people spend much of their time. they stated that advances in People also respond to their technology are seen to have more environments which in turn has of a positive than negative impact many effects on them including on employee well-being, although their general wellbeing, their 29% are ambivalent, reporting the overall satisfaction their job and overall impact is neither positive their productivity whilst at work. If nor negative. Three-quarters report the environment is right, then that one of the main benefits has people feel more relaxed and been enabling flexible working, comfortable in turn making their such as home or remote working. time at work more effective and The most common negative effect productive. If something is not of technology on well-being, right with the setting this can have reported by 87% of respondents, a big impact on attracting new relates to employees’ inability to talent to your organisation or switch off out of work hours, clearly retaining your current workforce, linked to the ‘always-on’ culture who will jump ship to a company that is a widely acknowledged who provides a better working feature of the modern workplace. environment (The Modern A high proportion of respondents Workplace) Technology such as (70%) also refer to the stress that O365 is making a big impact to results when technology fails. employee’s wellbeing in this (CIPD, 2018) Something we address current landscape and as it further with a managed service. (rms) gets embedded in to organisations with adoption on the increase, it Working smarter working will continue to shape the anywhere landscape for 2019 and beyond.
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Not only does this working flexibly from or simply from home element of agile a hot desk, whilst can be a very cost- working benefit an travelling to a effective solution that employee’s wellbeing meeting on the train also saves on space. Microsoft mobile and comms many organisations identified that at the turn of the year key themes began to emerge within customer conversations:
✓ Best practices for productive working ✓ Possibilities for the modern workplace ✓ Policies that protect modern businesses ✓ New or next in collaboration innovation driving may already use and comms productivity, this all Office 365, it is not eludes to “the new until Office 365 is Evolution through culture of work.” viewed as the catalyst the year has led to Office 365 has for a change in increasingly granular become the culture to better ways discussion of best cornerstone of this of working that its practices for transformation over real value becomes productivity and the past year. Whilst apparent. more focus towards 32 | P a g e
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Impact on the under increasing are with technology. Public Sector pressure, Phillip The findings drilled Hammond current further in to the 2025 Chancellor Of The vision for connected Exchequer has been councils stating that taxed with finding future councils will be Over 51% of you £4billion worth of lean, agile and data- responded that savings. So, cost- driven. Siloed “increasing end cutting is high and services will be ripe throughout the replaced with multi- user PS that we know and agency teams that consumption of can see, what is not form around specific O365” was a always apparent local challenges. A straight away is a truly mobile priority for FY19 solution to support workforce has freed IT landscape the cuts. A report up public space. from Nesta examines Almost all survey 2018 how digital transactions take technologies could place online. Instead 50% from this year’s help councils save of two-dimensional survey labelled money in local council websites, improving remote government, foster interactive platforms working capabilities local economic connect users with as a priority for 2018. growth and deliver third-party apps and Interestingly diving better outcomes for services and stream deeper, the data residents and personalised content flagged that most communities. It lists on local democracy, respondents that out a vision as to jobs, and services. make up the 50% where councils might The report went on belonged to a public be in 2025 to better to deep dive in to sector organisation. understand what relational services The Public Sector is their opportunities (such as social care) 33 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 still rely heavily on The new agile and Another shift face-to-face contact. flexible technology towards the But digital tools help approach brings people to manage further benefit to cloud their own long-term cost cutting exercises. specifically conditions and It has the potential to O365 connect to a broader eliminate the need network of support, for real estate, Brexit is bringing with such as peer people can now work it an era of mentors, health from anywhere and uncertainty for many coaches, friends and work smarter, the businesses and family, volunteers shift towards the across all industries, and group-based cloud has brought it’s that not knowing activities. Digital many benefits that is making technologies have especially within the leaders reconsider helped councils take PS as it also ticks the their way of working a more ambitious security box. Real to remain approach to place- estate can be rented competitive. Others shaping. A larger out creating a new may see Brexit as an share of public revenue stream and opportunity that contracts goes to pump much-needed presses the reset high-growth SMEs. funds back in to the button and evens the Councils savings pot and playing field. The systematically against that £4billion Public Sector is not engage residents in deficit. taking risks and last decisions about how year UK.gov services are approached commissioned, Microsoft with a deal delivered and that will avoid a £15M evaluated. (Nesta, post-Brexit price hike. 2016) The pan-government deal applies to
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200,000 licenses. The government already Office 365 cloud Government had a pricing deal in product. (Register, engaged with place with Microsoft 2017) Microsoft to strike a until June 2017. In 2015 the MOD deal in which it would Under a signed the largest memorandum of Microsoft Enterprise Understanding, it is Agreement across likely that a deal has the Public Sector, "As part of our been agreed with designed to drive to improve the Cabinet Office's gradually shift more efficiency, the Common users to the cloud, Technology Services government specifically O365 to extend that worked with realising its cost- agreement by Microsoft last saving and security another year. year to continue benefits potential, the the existing As of last year, impact has resonated Microsoft is reported throughout the PS. migration plans of to have around The policing sector is a number of £400m in public one of them. Tying in central sector licenses. This to their policing government story around PS vision for 2025 – ( transformation gives departments to that sets the goal of context to the shift Office 365.” delivering police towards the cloud. business functions in The Cabinet Office That very agreement a more consistent has sped up the manner to both drive prevent Whitehall movement and efficiency and from paying an extra applies to approx. enhance £15mill in license fees 200,000 central interoperability due to a post Brexit government across the entire price hitch. Research customers, as part of police service) is the found that the a move to Microsoft's 35 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019
National Enablement control centres, collaborative data Programme (NEP) sharing back office put to better use The NEP underpins staff and creating delivering a better some of the joint response more efficient and challenges facing the systems are just safer service to the UK’s police, fire some of the ways public. Blue light brigades and that authorities are services still largely ambulance trusts saving money while operate in silos When have changed ensuring the public is dealing with the dramatically in the still protected. majority of demands, last decade. Faced each local agency is The Policing and with ever-increasing focused on its own Crime Act 2017 workloads, those objectives when further reformed tasked with running serving its policing and brought our blue light community. This in significant changes services are under division of to the governance of more pressure to information and fire and rescue make efficiency responsibilities can services, allowing savings while still make it difficult to them to build delivering excellent move beyond capability, improve results. Aside from ‘reactivity’ - resolving efficiency, increase adopting modern issues that are public confidence technologies and currently in progress and further enhance software, many blue or have already local accountability. light services happened. But with (Blue Light Services departments are today’s technology, Conference 2018) looking to increase we have the The NEP will collaboration and co- capability to integrate inevitability see blue operation with their heterogeneous light services move to counterparts. systems across the cloud where they Combining multiple agencies, will be able to use command and applying analytics each other’s 36 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 and automation to history of violence and support a range enable a shift away against women, the of needs. The result, from incident-based data on this could be though, will be reactions and held by the NHS improved services towards pre-planned from a previous with increased interventions. The incident, for safety efficiency; challenge, therefore, and protection and standardisation of is how to organise to cost savings, data systems will make it exploit these would help to easier to share capabilities. (Bradley) identify a male officer services and improve would best placed to delivery. (Bradley The NEP will utilize deal with the n.d.) technology as the situation. This key to unlocking the The NEP has Information would potential of shared orchestrated a wider not be highlighted data sources and shift in the landscape due to a lack of cloud computing, towards O365 and collaboration and true collaboration naturally the cloud to siloed data held by can be achieved. combat this and it blue light services. Imagine a scenario will inevitably result in Fire and police where a police call cloud services that services have similar comes in and it could enable them to emergency be determined which change and adopt deployment models, officer should be sent with more movement whereas the based on the data set to follow as Brexit ambulance service held on the agitator, looms ever closer has different and which officer and we begin 2019. requirements. In would be best order to create a true risual has a rich dispatched to deal joint control room, IT history delivering with the incident, an systems and transformation example being a call infrastructures will services to UK Blue- out to an offender need to be reworked Light organisations who has a previous 37 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 and successfully delivering, both from productivity, capture completed a Pilot a cash-releasing and and realise significant Office 365 project to quantifiable benefits across all Devon & Cornwall perspective and very four Forces and to Police and Dorset much look forward to bring energy to push Police in 2017. working with the user adoption of Working alongside SERIP Forces to help Office 365 services. partners within the them to drive NEP, the lessons that increased levels of we all learned across that project have been incorporated into the designs, methods and, processes that now form the basis for NEP delivery across the UK.
We are extremely proud of our heritage with UK policing and the benefits that we have contributed toward working collaboratively in the modern age – The battle for the app It is now over a year the landscape with UK but the world to since Microsoft technology coming a become better introduced long way and this has connected, leading Microsoft365 in to helped not only the to a more 38 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019
collaborative modern easier with a vast The second workplace. 75% on array of productivity productivity tool average of an tools at our finger “Skype for business” employee’s time is tips. You will all be has been an familiar with two of organisation’s the biggest Microsoft household name tools currently since its release in 32% of you said battling for 2015, Skype for supremacy which is business is a cloud that “breaking Skype and Teams. based down data silos Teams is a cloud- across based app that departments” combines the 29% of you said functionalities of was a priority for that developing Slack and O365 into 2019 one platform with the new business The IT landscape survey possibility of applications was 2018 integrating 3rd party your least apps. spent interacting with priority for 2019” Teams is certainly a fellow employees powerful tool and The IT landscape survey over email, skype or many businesses are 2018 teams on various using it to better cross projects and work collaboratively communication tool departments. what may be winning service, that supports True effective it the race is that it professionals at collaboration is the does indeed support home, on the road backbone of a strong chat, calls and video and in the office, its performing team. As conferencing with an video conferencing stated, collaboration attractive and agile capabilities can has become a lot interface. support up to 250
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people which is why businesses to mantle, the app is we use it here at transition from skype quickly becoming the risual to host our to teams over the leading messaging webcasts and next two years. There platform this year in meetings. is no deadline in 2018. Teams
“Microsoft teams will bring together chat, meeting, notes, Office, Planner, PowerBI, and a host of extensions and applications to help teams get work done.” Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO
At the end of the day place, however you completes the it does still come can begin to see and Microsoft vision to down to a company’s utilize many of its become to ideal preference as both benefits by adopting platform, a complete have many early, Whilst Skype workspace packaged productivity benefits. for business will for optimized Microsoft at this eventually fall from productive year’s ignite posed the top, it has a great collaboration. the question to successor taking its . Making good on your investment The survey that you kindly filled in adoption to O365 was key. This has earlier this year fed back some is backed by further secondary interesting figures. Your reported research and it seems you are not back that a main priority for 2019 alone. Many organisations have was in fact increasing your user made the investment and given
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 their employees a terrific see value in the new tools at their opportunity to improve the way in disposal. which they work, however what still seems to be the case is that users are not using O365 and all its capabilities to its full potential. The “To all users of technology business goal that lead to the who are willing to take a investment would be to enable a more connected, collaborative and chance, make a choice, and structured way of working and thus try a new way of doing far it seems you and many things so that we can businesses like you are not yet reaping the benefits due to lack of nurture and enjoy a happy, adoption and usage. healthy planet” Structured user adoption Katherine Murray approaches are the best route to Author take when looking to make good on your investment that enables employees to share your vision and Here at risual we have found that the best rollouts have taken place
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 when we demonstrate our champion program something, we do with our customers to increase adoption. This has been successful to raise awareness around the benefits and change their mindsets around the new way of working.
The champions can spread the word and build excitement about the change and evangelise their peers to a new way of doing their day to day jobs which will increase engagement throughout the business. The adoption rate of Office 365 varies according to industries. Organisations that provide financial services are the biggest industry-wise users of Office 365. They are also frontrunners in using MS Office, MS Excel to be precise. In the finance industry, OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business are most used application with 39.3% and 17.3% active users. Both manufacturing and media industries are adopting to Exchange Online at a high rate. In the healthcare Office 365 applications. (Cooper, industry, Skype for Business has 2018) 14.2% users, the highest among all 42 | P a g e
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Cloud computing – What that means in 2019 Walking before you can While it was useful to have the run – Cloud strategy term “cloud computing” as a way to distinguish self-service, API You could ask the question why the addressable technologies from term “cloud computing” even exists other models, it is going to anymore; the phrase has become become more and more obvious so ubiquitous that it could really that the “cloud” model is simply just be called computing. As how we do IT going forward. (CTO, predicted in our last report in 2017 2017) it once again dominated the landscape right across all technology and all forms of computing. We are or have already 55% of you said that shifted to a “cloud first” world. Taking in to account even private migrating more IT data centers. From experience of services to the cloud” was working with customers we have a priority in 2019 found that once a business has The IT landscape survey 2018 moved to the cloud, the issue has been not realising its benefits and A clear strategy will be key when how to optimise and get more looking at cloud computing. You from their investments. may be familiar with the “lift and Chip Childers, CTO of the Cloud shift” option when thinking about Foundry Foundation spoke around migrating applications to the cloud. how the use of cloud technologies From our experience this is not is changing how we think about always the best approach, infrastructure, application platforms something we do is challenge your and software development. way of thinking to look at the
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 bigger picture and see maximum IT. Cloud computing is gaining benefit from your investments. significant investment from end Lifting and shifting can potentially users and vendors as the result of be a bad thing, having complete widespread adoption success control over your data is key, you stories. However, fear and general do not want to fall trap to concerns about relative cost and uploading data you do not need as trust — combined with the this is counterproductive and confusion caused by "cloud costly. Our specialist AI partners washing" (using the term "cloud" to Automated Intelligence state that obscure and make unsubstantiated on average 80% of an claims about cloud) — sometimes organisation’s data is DROT; this counteract the enthusiasm and means it is duplicate, redundant, excitement. Balancing value against obsolete or trivial. Using machine these concerns is a key part of any learning AI. DATALIFT analyses cloud strategy. Enabled and fueled what data is being held. It then by the consumerisation of IT, the intelligently categorises it to be SaaS cloud solutions that either migrated to, or archived in, individuals and business units have the cloud (Microsoft SharePoint brought into the enterprise are and Azure) or deleted. This creates shifting the way IT organisations substantial cost savings. respond to the immediate and (Intelligence, 2018) imminent demands of their users. These users also influence the Last year we reported that the providers from which IT cloud was the future, once. It has organisations buy and the vendors cemented itself firmly in the now. on which they depend. Gartner Gartner reported that Cloud is revealed in a recent statement that becoming a vehicle for much of crafting a cloud strategy is one of what is the future of IT — digital the top issues for Gartner clients. business, artificial intelligence (AI), The goal is often to create a the Internet of Things (IoT), blueprint for migrating to algorithmic business and bimodal
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 cloud services. in a centralised way new challenges to However, the will work in most the systems difficulty with this cases. development life type of approach is cycle. (Gartner, Cloud that it assumes cloud Computing Primer This year has sprung computing adoption for 2018, 2018) Cloud new conversations will follow the is here and will firmly on social media and technology adoption be staying, its old topics around re trends of the past. It news. What is thinking ways in assumes that generic interesting is the big which to utilise data decisions about shift to IT mobility to its full which workloads infrastructures cloud possibilities. should go into the is bringing along with cloud or how to new platforms and govern cloud services
44% of you said that “Achieving greater business value from cloud services” was a priority focus for 2019 The IT landscape survey 2018
No app left behind Combining testing in to your strategy will support you when you come to lifting and shifting apps to the cloud, one of the top trends of 2018 has been for organisations to focus on a hybrid cloud, testing out efficiency cross platform on the likes of Azure and AWS. This is way of doing cloud-based things is leading to this versatile multi cloud strategy allowing consumers to “try out” other applications on different platforms in a quick and cost- effective manner.
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According to oreilly.com, organisations are embracing a the multi cloud approach as part of their digital transformation strategy, mainly to meet various business and technology requirements because no single cloud model can fit the diverse requirements and workloads across different business units.
Every major cloud platform—including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform—has a range of data-related services in the areas of cloud data warehousing, big data, NoSQL, and real-time streaming, to name a few. Some workloads run better on one cloud platform while other workloads achieve higher performance and lower cost on another platform. By adopting a multi-cloud strategy, companies can choose best-in-class technologies and services from different cloud providers to create the best possible solution for a business. (Oreilly, 2017)
The second reason supporting the multi cloud trend as businesses go through their digital transformation journey, multi-cloud environments will be increasingly used to transition and migrate from the old model of customer engagement to newer multi-pronged models. The trend is moving toward deeper and broader cloud engagement, so a well-defined multi-cloud strategy will be key to achieving maximum return on investment (ROI). (Oreilly, 2017) The Cloud Wars Mat Clothier CTO & CEO of Microsoft partner Cloudhouse, detailed on a report collected from IT news site The Stack which collected views from sector leaders on their stance. Mat said, “that as more organisations begin their move to the public cloud providers like Microsoft and its Azure cloud, we’re going to see others up against the challenge of migrating and modernising non-cloud-native, legacy apps.”
Apps have never been more important for business, and this will continue well into the new year; in order to avoid tricky rewrites, however, IT teams
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“There are a number of old-guard technology companies who either genuinely believe or are hoping people will believe that companies aren’t going to move to the cloud that quickly or that a very large amount of workloads will remain on-premises forever. I don’t believe that. And I don’t think any of the data shows that’s happening,” AWS CEO Andy Jassy
need to be thinking about investing in software that can provide ‘lift and shift’ portability for legacy applications without making a single code change.
As a cloud solutions provider, risual has the understanding that one solution is not a fix all solutions. Being adaptable has been key in our migration projects undertaken so far, some of which have indeed been a hybrid solution where businesses have split their production workloads across public clouds. The landscape has revealed this approach is because enterprises do not wish to be locked in there for the so called “cloud wars” will result in cost wars with businesses looking to make significant cost reduction on infrastructure per annum. In 2018 it is reported that organisations are leveraging 5 clouds and another trend in 2018 of the same fashion has been the rise of private cloud adoption across the board. Competing in the cloud wars are the market leaders Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud compete for the enterprise with no clear winner due to the new multi cloud approach taken by businesses.
Right scale when sharing cloud industry insights from a 2018 state cloud survey detailed that AWS leads in users with 50+ VMs while Azure continues to grow its footprint faster than all its competitors. Both public and private cloud adoption grew in 2018, with larger enterprises increasing their focus on public cloud. As recently as December 2018, Microsoft expanded its 47 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 presence of in-region data storage for the Azure cloud platform by announcing Southeast Asia is now an Azure Availability Zone and by adding a Machine Learning managed service to its portfolio of cloud applications.
AWS is no longer the runaway leader as Azure has grown rapidly and is now on an even keel, especially among enterprise users. The infrastructure- and platforms-as-a-service offerings in Azure (IaaS/PaaS), together with the software-as-a-service products in Office 365 and Dynamics 365 (SaaS) are collectively known as the Microsoft Cloud and this has become the cornerstone of Microsoft’s business as it moves towards a subscription-based delivery model. Microsoft stated that ss companies are turning to the cloud, on-premises datacenters still have a significant role to play for global companies that face data sovereignty and regulatory requirements, have mission-critical systems that need to remain in local datacenters, or compliance needs that require keeping data on-premises or in-country. Microsoft understands this reality and has built the only consistent and comprehensive hybrid cloud. Today, we are announcing new hybrid capabilities to help you manage your data, create even more consistency, and secure your hybrid environment.
Market analysts are now predicting Microsoft's cloud business could be bigger than Windows by 2021. Across the 2018 fiscal year, which ended in June, Microsoft's Windows revenue came out to $19.5 billion, standing for 17.7 percent of the entirety of the company's revenue The KeyBanc analysts think that in that period, Azure had $7.1 billion in revenue, or 6.4 percent of the pie.
The KeyBanc analysts believe Azure will grow 72 percent in the 2019 fiscal year, with $12.2 billion in revenue. They think Azure will represent 9.7 percent of total revenue for the company, while Windows will grow more than 2 percent at $20 billion in revenue, or 16 percent of the total.
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In the 2020 fiscal year, the analysts think this pattern of strong Azure growth and slight Windows growth will continue, even if Windows will still be larger than Azure, at $20.1 billion and $18.5 billion, respectively.
Analysts predict that Azure will do $26.4 billion in revenue, up 42.5 percent, and Windows will have revenue of $20.3 billion, up just 1 percent by 2021. GDPR’s impact on the cloud You will know that this year the nation was hit with the new data legislation known as GDPR which became the priority for most IT departments up and down the country and across every sector. Which some took as an opportunity to re think their security approach and where they store data. Most organisations were not ready to cope with the new act - something we found as a big topic of conversation when we held our GDPR workshop in February this year. From the feedback from our business analysts team working with customers on data projects, for many organisations it has highlighted many new challenges and for cloud providers to support them with.
One of these challenges in cloud computing is connected to the sensitivity of the entrusted information. As an enterprise you can host almost any type of information in the cloud, including sensitive information, which increases the risk of uncontrolled distribution of this information to third parties (i.e. competitors). Third parties you do not want to give access to your information. If a cloud computing solution is chosen where data processing and/or storing premises are shared, the risk of information leakage is present. (Deloitte, GDPR and the impact on cloud computing, 2018)
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Security of privacy As a controller (in accreditation, this is leverage cloud control of your data) why we consider technologies. To you are not in control customer data of up address this concern over the cloud most importance, Microsoft, SAP, and provider’s (IT) look out for ISO Adobe have made a environment and you 27001 certified joint announcement must rely upon (IT) (information security that they have all controls that the management system) created the Open provider has in place. being ISO 27018 Data Initiative. The Therefore, it is always certified (code of whole idea here is to necessary to assess practice for ensure that services to what extent the protection of from these three provider is able to personally platforms all play comply with your IT identifiable nicely and are Security information (PII) in certified to work requirements. This public clouds acting together in a reliable could be done via as PII processors). fashion. All the while the third-party risk (Deloitte, GDPR and giving the end management the impact on cloud customer, full control process. Next to this, computing, 2018) and full transparency you also must assess in how the data is During this year’s what kind of IT used, stored and Microsoft Ignite it Security and privacy accessed. Security was discussed measures or covers the whole around with the certifications the “Azure Sphere” from proliferation of the provider has in place. Satya Nadella’s cloud, access and Cloud providers can comments during the control of data has demonstrate keynote at Ignite it is (rightly so) become a compliance with clear that Microsoft huge concern for security and Privacy technology is companies starting to by Design in ways of covering the wide 50 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 range of security and Adopting a this goes all out for DevOps culture IoT. Microsoft see IoT 7 DevOps Myths as not only the next through cloud exploding area of IT You will have at • but also the next some point heard the DevOps is only battleground for word DevOps for start-ups cyber-attacks. Satya mentioned, the • DevOps replaces Nadella said right in phrase has spread Agile his keynote that they rapidly through the • DevOps is do not see the next tech community and major attacks has continued to do incompatible happening on a so right through with ITIL “traditional 2018, you may have • DevOps is computer” but on an seen our campaign incompatible IoT edge device, such around it earlier this with information as an HVAC system year. Yet with any security & controller, or new and popular something of that term there are still compliance nature. Azure Sphere those that confuse its • DevOps means is a new service that meaning hence the 7 eliminating IT will help IT Pros wrap DevOps myths in the Operations or their hands around sidebar. (Kim, 2016) “NoOps” IoT devices and DevOps is a term for secure them for the a group of concepts • DevOps is just next generation of IT that are not “infrastructure workloads. necessarily new as code” (Microsoft, Ignite themselves but when • DevOps is only 2018 , 2018) grouped as a for open source collective collaboratively make software the term DevOps.
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DevOps itself is a stranger to DevOps unmanaged new term emerging and have supported applications with from the collision of our customers this developers building two major related year to realise its things their own way trends. The first was benefit and the with no guidelines also called “agile consequences of not processes in place. infrastructure” or changing or what we Finally, they did not “agile operations”; it refer to as “The have a way of sprang from applying impact of doing controlling costs or Agile and Lean nothing!” One of charging them back approaches to those recent which was a real operations work. The customers was NATS. issue. second is a much- NATS is the UK The “impact of doing expanded leading provider of nothing” for NATs understanding of the air traffic control was critical, the value of collaboration services, they handle application sprawl between over 2.2 million with over 400 development and flights and 220 unmanaged apps operations staff million passengers a was continuing to throughout all stages year working with grow with no of the development airlines, airports, repeatable process, lifecycle when ANSPs and their shadow IT was creating and governments in over getting increasingly operating a service, 30 countries. inconsistent with a and how important lack of innovation. operations has Working with NATS With cost savings not become in our we highlighted many achieved and the increasingly service- of their challenges cost of shadow IT oriented world. that ranged from spiraling out of (Admin, n.d.) Legacy technology, control, NATS had lots of unknown, risual as a busy failed to see the lack managed and company are no of value driven 52 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 through their heavy have been in the Cloud and DevOps investment in Azure. region of £500,000! have evolved in response to three We helped NATS There is a real fundamental societal through a risual relationship between transformations. First, DevOps solution with the cloud and we are in a transition services that we DevOps, both are from a product already have in place independent but economy to a service including managed mutually reinforcing economy. People are services that wraps strategies for delivery placing less emphasis around and keeps business value on things and more controls in place with through IT. emphasis on an ongoing review to InfoQ in an article experiences. While ensure efficiencies in written by Jeff Sussna companies still service. We also (the founder & produce products, engaged with NATS principle of and has they wrap them to explore options 20 years of inside services. BMW where we have experience across the includes routine recommended the field of Dev/QA/Ops maintenance in the app be re- spectrum)-titled price of a new car. provisioned and “Cloud & DevOps: a Cadillac integrates migrated into Azure. match made in the OnStar service The work so far has heaven commented into its vehicles. helped and that “in order to Much of the power supported NATS to really understand the of the iPhone comes see true benefit from relationship between from its integration their investment and cloud and DevOps, with iCloud and keep control of their it’s helpful to take a iTunes. The transition costs with more rigor step back and from products to and consistency of consider the larger services is impacting services within the context in which both software delivery as cloud. Overall early are happening. well. Previously, savings for NATs 53 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 development workflow engines, (Sussna, 2013) companies-built and application software products, containers. Software- The Challenge and delivered them as-a-Service delivers of Change to customers who on-demand business Our Survey and took responsibility for functionality. At every others like it showed operations. With the level, providers allow the need and want advent of cloud, customers to you to join the many companies that consume services DevOps movement build software also based on demand, and change the operate it on their pay for them based workings with AI and customers’ behalf. on consumption, and DevOps Software as service is offload responsibility implemented in to happening at all for their your organisations. layers of the IT stack. management to the The dream being, to At the bottom, provider. Second, the have developers and Infrastructure-as-a- 21st-century business operations to work Service delivers on- environment is more synergistically demand virtual forcing companies to together in IT machines, networks, shift their focus from harmony resulting in and storage. stability and more agile faster Platform-as-a-Service efficiency to agility time to market. delivers on-demand and innovation. databases, caches,
Yet the road ahead may be paved with good intentions, the end goal does come with its own challenges.
The obstacles are in fact not IT related, instead they are cultural barriers which poses one of the bigger challenges between developers and operations rather than any shortcomings of technology. Microsoft and Saugatruck research conducted some analysis and found that overcoming
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 those barriers are both the primary and also the biggest opportunity for helping customers to achieve the DevOps goal. During their research they surveyed over 300 development and IT operations professionals and managers," and found that 71% of IT shops had pockets of automation, and 54% were testing DevOps practices on individual small projects. That's a good start, but only 37% say they have formal DevOps strategies. Because getting people to overcome personal habits and established workflows is a huge challenge. More than half of respondents said that "overcoming cultural habits inside my organisation/company" was the primary hurdle to formalising DevOps practices, with 37% saying that the real issue is that they simply don't understand it. (Microsoft S. T., 2014)
There could be other struggles which could boil down to finances, you understand that you must invest to realise your savings. This can be a challenge as budget is not always readily available and often needed elsewhere and you are struggling to justify your expenditure all the while money is being lost in places currently out of your control, so the change is needed and pressing. There are options available to you, we have teamed up with Microsoft and offer flexible financing options for your technology investments that can support your vision despite limited resources and varied stakeholders’ priorities.
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The digital economy and filling the AI skills gap Skills and abilities for jobs of the future With modern technology and the emergence of new AI capabilities, the world is becoming a complex place, technology is sometimes moving quicker than we are.
We spoke earlier in the report around the Microsoft partnership with Cambridge university to train and skill people that will take up jobs of the future working with AI.
You may be familiar with risual education, in which we developed our own apprenticeships scheme to create and upskill people to take on more IT related and skilled jobs and fill that digital skills gap, in a similar fashion our learning as service platform aims to help employers upskill their current workforce and learn new abilities that they can apply to their position helping the business in general to become innovative in the process. #Learnitall
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We are proud to be one of only eight partners in the UK to be an official learning partner offering direct skills and training. Yet with this training available and accessible less than half of executives believe they have the skills and abilities to lead in the digital economy.
According to Deloitte in a report released earlier this year:
Only 16% of executives believe their teams have the capabilities to deliver their digital strategy.
41% of organisations have invested in AI, up from 22 per cent in 2017.
Half of respondents do not believe their organisation’s leadership has a clear understanding of AI.
“The pace of technological change is accelerating, however in the rush to keep up many organisations are yet to develop a coherent strategy for investing in digital technologies. More efforts need to be made to align learning and development alongside strategy and investment. End-to-end digital transformation is not just about advances in technology, but about changing the ways of doing business.” Vernon Harcourt
Deloitte reported that despite a significant uptake in investment in emerging technologies in the past 12 months, UK executives lack confidence in their own digital skills. They conducted a survey that showed that less than half (45 per cent) of executives are confident in their own digital skills and ability to lead their organisation in the digital economy, while just 16 per cent believe their talent pool has enough knowledge and expertise to deliver their digital strategy.
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The survey threw up some notable topics for discussion, interestingly there is a lack of confidence which comes as 40 per cent of executives say they do not receive the support they need to develop their own digital skills and 54 per cent do not believe their learning and development curriculum supports their digital strategy.
The same report showed that confidence in digital skills is currently low, half (49 per cent) of executives plan to invest more than £10 million in digital technologies and ways of working by 2020. 35 per cent plan to invest more than £10 million in the 2018 alone. 38 per cent of executives who say their organisation will invest in three or more emerging technologies over the next two years say that they do not have a coherent strategy in place. (Deloitte, 2018)
AI again comes up when talking about digital skills and abilities.
As we have shown through this landscape report significant investments are taking place with two in two in five (41 per cent) businesses have invested in AI technology which is up from 2017.
The good news is that this reported lack of confidence in skills has not stunted the growth of organisations embracing AI, it is again the lack of understanding of how AI can benefit the business and drive change (ref the Marston’s study). The lack of awareness of the new tech is acting as a significant barrier towards adoption, supporting a lack of preparedness through the leadership in businesses on how AI will impact them and their workforce making that skills gap bigger as more advanced tech emerges.
In the same report Deloitte talks about the skills gap and how worryingly only 12 per cent of leaders believe UK school leavers and graduates have the right digital skills, down from 20 per cent who said the same in 2017. Over three- quarters are experiencing challenges in recruiting employees with the relevant digital skills. Data scientists and analysts remain the most difficult roles to recruit and retain.
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While executives continue to worry that not enough school-leavers and graduates have the right mix of digital skills, only 17 per cent believe that UK companies lead the way with digital. (Deloitte, 2018)
“There is a digital skills gap that needs to be addressed urgently. Digital is not just about technology. It is about what technology enables. It can fundamentally change how work gets done, how organisations interact with their customers and how decisions are made. To realise the potential of digital technologies and benefit from these, it is vital for businesses to join together in addressing the digital skills gap.” Vernon Harcourt
The need to plug the UK digital skills gap Government statistics have revealed that the number of apprentices starting work over the last year has slumped by 100,000. The UK is still suffering with a shortage of skilled workers in science, technology and engineering, with one in six new hired in the UK technology sector were European union citizens. The apprenticeship levy scheme that you are likely familiar with that launched last year (The Apprenticeship Levy is a UK tax on employers which can be used to fund apprenticeship training) Yet according to according to the Institute of Directors (IoD), the UK’s oldest and largest organisation for company owners and directors, only 14 per cent of its members think the apprenticeship levy is fit for purpose.
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The IoD’s Head of Policy Research, Seamus Nevin, says employers are supportive of the levy in principle, “One of the biggest and want to do more to address the skills gap, but would like to see issues is going to changes. “The new system is not be the gap in skills. working as intended,” he says. “It was supposed to be employer-led Getting the skills but the narrow and often centrally- required to analyse controlled design means that’s not happening.” and manage all of
Malgorzata Kuczera, who recently this data is going to co-authored a report on be difficult.” apprenticeships in the UK for the Sanjay Brahmawar Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development stated Global head of strategic that there should be more on-the- business development job training, employers need to be IBM more organised and involved, and must have a clearer understanding British apprentices receive a day off of what’s required of them. Ewart each week to train off-site, and that Keep, an Oxford University affects productivity, he says. He professor who researches also warns that some companies apprenticeships added that the and universities are rebranding government should focus on existing training programmes into supporting companies trying to apprenticeships to avoid losing navigate the new regulations while money or to claim against the levy. grappling with higher costs of running apprenticeship When you begin to think that the programmes. skills, we have today are not the right skills for the future it is rather worrying. The future is more about
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 the business understanding and forgoing more than £140 billion to the data understanding. that end.
Every sector is going through The UK is facing the biggest talent business change with the new shortage. The approach of Brexit technology available for them to next year is threatening to stifle the innovate and stay ahead of the flow of labour between Britain and competition. This was reinforced the continent, the effects of an earlier in 2018 by Tanja Rueckert, ageing population could see executive vice president LoB Digital almost 3 million jobs left unfilled by Assets for SAP. She stated that the 2030. This is a trend mirrored manufacturing sector is across the major economies of the experiencing a huge world, which universally face the transformation, referring to the proposition of an ageing “fourth industrial revolution”. This population, if not the problem of can be characterised by an tightening borders. integration of big data, cloud (UK, n.d.) computing, robotics, artificial- intelligence and additive Digital technologies and AI for manufacturing. good and automation (see Technology for good section) are Consultancy UK in a detailed report often spoken of as a potential stated that there could be remedy for this, with the increased catastrophic losses if G20 countries efficiency and accuracy of fail to adapt to meet the needs of technological solutions the new technological era, they compensating for the loss of a could be in line to miss out on as portion of the physical workforce. much as $1.5 trillion in GDP growth At the same time, however, many over the next 10 years. A growing Human Resources (HR) skills shortage means that much of departments still underestimate just the potential of digitalisation could what is required of them to make go unrealised, with the UK facing the most of technological progress, by way of re-training and up- 61 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 skilling their incumbent workforce, Our risual education combats the as well as adapting their hiring skills gap by delivering Microsoft processes to foster new, digitally certified qualifications as part of a savvy, talent. (UK, n.d.) course. Plus, the added benefits of academic experts at our partner Here at risual we recognise that the colleges in our regional risual gap is still very much open and Academies and Microsoft with an increasing innovative Showcase classrooms we can offer portfolio of technology available, the unique scheme we deliver to employers need their workforce our own apprentices to employers upskilled or need specialist trained across the UK helping to bridge the apprentices with the skills and UK digital skills gap. abilities to implement and work around AI, Data and all other technologies.
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Females in IT or the lack off Women make up around 49% of the UK labour, yet that accounts for just 17% of IT professionals in IT sector. It is safe to say that it remains a male dominated industry.
The Guardian reported in an article that since the promotion and visibility of Marissa Mayer, the recently promoted Yahoo chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the number two at Facebook, comes as the number of women in the industry in the UK at least has been falling over the past 10 years. There are dozens of groups promoting women in tech, from pub meetups to formal networking and corporate efforts, yet few seem to be taking Karren Brady's advice in her autobiography that pioneers in any field need to hold the door open "as wide as possible, for as long as possible, to allow other women to march through it". (Guardian, Why are so few women working in technology? , n.d.)
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There are a few theories on what career in out of bounds," she says. has caused the deficit, in an article "If any other comparable industry posted by the Guardian, one had a female workforce of only 17% there would be an outcry." (Guardian, Why are so few women Tech companies working in technology? , n.d.) with women on There are actions in place to management teams address the Last year Microsoft UK’s CEO, Cindy Rose said that the have a 34% higher technology sector needs men and return on women with passion and energy as investment well as digital skills. CATALYST report Cindy Rose spoke to hundreds of schoolgirls and students at Microsoft HQ at part of a DigiGirlz event, the aim of the event was to woman who believes the problems encourage more young women to start much earlier is Belinda pursue jobs in science technology, Parmar, who founded the Lady engineering and math’s. (STEM) Geek marketing agency in 2010, Research conducted by Microsoft advising corporate clients, back in 2017, revealed that teachers including Sony, Ubisoft and and parents in the UK have a five- Vodafone, how to recruit and sell year window to foster girls’ interest to women. She is often shocked, in STEM before it starts to wane. she says, by the "shrink it and pink UK girls’ interest in STEM subjects’ its mentality" of tech marketers, but peaks at the age of 11 but then falls that's hardly surprising when there by 16. In addition, less than half are so few women employed in the (43%) of those surveyed said they industry. "I have a four-year-old would consider a career in STEM. daughter and I want her to think that anything is possible, that no
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Around 160 girls aged 12 and 13 a world in which artificial from schools across the South and intelligence and machine learning Midlands took part in the 10th are changing the workplace. annual DigiGirlz event at (Microsoft, Passion is as important Microsoft’s office in Reading. The as skills, says Microsoft UK CEO youngsters heard from several Cindy Rose, 2017) employees, including recent graduates from the company’s recruitment scheme, about what a career in the technology sector was like and how firms are adapting to
“You don’t need to be a coder or amazing at math to work in technology, that’s just not true anymore. I loved technology, and I wanted to be creative and have an effect on people’s lives. Bring energy and passion to the world; and there is a lot to be passionate about what we do. We use AI and machine learning to change people’s lives and we need the most creative people to do that. Anyone can now come into the sector, and when they do they will find that it’s a very inspiring career.”
Cindy Rose
CEO, Microsoft UK
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Here at risual we are diverse in Activities are wide ranging and may nature which forms part of our take the form of attendance at culture, some of our female careers talks or fairs, running consultants have blogs on the practical workshops within schools subject and working in the industry. or being involved in competitions, all with the aim of engaging risual are proud supporters of the students and helping them to national STEM Ambassador identify career routes to pursue. By initiative and actively support our engaging them to understand the employees to volunteer as STEM fulfilling STEM careers they could Ambassadors, promoting STEM undertake encourages students to subjects and careers to school age consider STEM more proactively. children and young people of all Subjects through to GCSE and A ages. As well as actively supporting Level. Schools benefit from the rich Microsoft’s Girls into IT initiative, resource that having the the STEM Ambassador programme involvement of a STEM enables us to promote the IT Ambassador can bring; with STEM industry across many minority Ambassadors developing their own demographics, who traditionally skills through session planning, might not pursue a career in IT. presenting and communicating 10% of risual’s workforce have with different age groups. signed up to be STEM Ambassadors to date.
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Tech Trends for 2019
Thank you for taking the time to read this report, we hope you enjoyed it and found it helpful when planning for the year ahead. We hope you have come away with some new insights and learned newfound knowledge on technology and how it is impacting the industry that you work in. We would like to end the same way in which we ended our previous landscape report and look at emerging trends and based off the findings that made up this report, what we can expect to start to shape the landscape in 2019.
Throughout this report you will have seen that AI and its uses have been prevalent throughout and shaped the landscape for 2019. In comparison, Quora reports that there will not be a single trending technology in 2019, instead a bunch of technologies will make their presence known in the year ahead!
When it comes to the possibilities and perils of artificial intelligence (AI), learning and reasoning by machines without the intervention of humans, there are lots of opinions out there. Only time will tell which one of these quotes will be the closest to our future reality. Until we get there, it’s interesting to contemplate who might be the one who predicts our reality the best. (Forbes, 2017)
The likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft are all investing heavily in AI within their own suites of technology. There ongoing commitment to training is creating and now establishing jobs of the future; we can expect to see more progress here in 2019 and beyond. This will continue to foster healthy competition, creating new possibilities with AI tech. Whilst some are still understandably skeptic, AI in line with technology for good is impacting on a global scale for the better, it can be moulded to every industry in every vertical. Some are already using it whilst others remain stagnant. The key is unlocking its true potential and 2019 is looking to be the year when that potential is unlocked.
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Advancements services and is being Blockchain & AI taken more seriously for better in AI in the UK, as the AI has been a big Government are privacy buzzword through looking for the UK to We reported that this report and in the be the shining light Blockchain would be landscape over the of Europe and the a trending topic in last year or so, it’s rest of the world as it 2018 and it was, it will not going away, and embraces AI. continue to be the it will likely continue We expect there will case in 2019 also. To to dominate the be growing concern bring you back up to landscape in FY19. for the use of AI speed, Blockchain is We can expect it will being used to the distributed ledger lead to further transform businesses system, you may be advancements in and we will likely see familiar that it is the Machine learning backlash. Companies technology behind and deep learning are more serious the crypto currencies algorithms. All about using it and as such as Bitcoin. Its businesses are it begins to get purpose is to save looking to stay ahead further advanced, so the transaction of the competition by will the ethical between two parties innovating with new concern around AI or platforms and cutting-edge delivery replacing employees does so in that automates and with AI based cryptographically speeds up their systems making the secured blocks of business processes, employee redundant. data which are AI is top of that list of timestamped and go priorities. AI is a very through stages of real means to consensus achieve business mechanism all of the goals by said blocks are linked transformation of to each other by a
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hash pointer which better AI. (Truck, We expect to see AI links back to the LinkedIn, n.d.) intersection between previous block. Here Blockchain and AI, We expect to see is where Blockchain mainly the Machine Blockchain crop up a sits on an executive’s learning element and lot in 2019 and for radar over the next blockchain are both good reason, Privacy. two years: Overall by still experimental, it is Financial privacy 2020, 82 per cent of proving both a means being able to executives plan to challenging and transact without invest in AI, while 70 exciting topic, revealing or leaking per cent plan to questions are being identifying invest in robotic and asked and we can information. The goal cognitive automation expect to see some is to make it as and 57 per cent in of the links fall in to difficult as possible blockchain. place before 2020 for others to profile Blockchain emerged connecting AI and your crypto use. as a powerful Blockchain. Pioneers Privacy puts the user response to political in the field are in charge of their and organisational looking at concepts data. They can problems, rather than of a completely remain compliant by purely technical ones decentralised selectively revealing It is argued that it marketplace. themselves without could be a deterrent revealing their The concept shows a and leveraged as a activity to the entire landscape in which foil against the pitfalls world. businesses could of AI and could provide their data, potentially create (Cifford, n.d.) completely privately
“The key to artificial intelligence has always been the representation.” — Jeff Hawkins, Founder of Palm Computing
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 and securely in an (spending, health actually a robot or open data exchange. information). Over computer, something AI models competing time, the that could unsettle to provide the best marketplace(s) would some people at the results, and everyone accumulate a lot prospect of a compensated fairly in more data, and computer dealing the process. We are higher quality data, with decisions that looking at over the than what GAFA has can affect your life if coming years, the access to. On top of you are on the idea to create a the data, machine phone regarding a decentralised learning experts job application or marketplace that would be incentivised insurance decisions would help create to compete, and which are being better AI. highest performing informed based on models would get algorithms. To summarise the disproportionally high-level idea is as Automation of rewarded. (Truck, follows: All of us processes was a key LinkedIn, n.d.) (individuals, priority based on the institutions) would be Robot process primary research in financially automation & to the survey results, incentivised to so it will please many provide our personal Bots of you reading that and professional We can expect to see automation will be a data. Knowing it more and more Bots key trend in 2019. It would be kept in 2019 and more will come in the form completely secure jobs become of “the automation of and private (through automated and a the repeated clerical decentralization and very real possibility of software tasks” which secure not knowing if a are performed in computing), we'd feel person on the other organisations is the more comfortable end of the phone is simple definition of sharing sensitive data Robot Process 70 | P a g e
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Automation. Quara time and efficiency of space, the concept is explained that Robot the processes and genius because process automation systems and we can instead of forking out as the name defines expect more of this to build a new is the automation of type of automated rollercoaster, they the processes which technology to can just swap out the are repetitive in emerge through 2019 VR scenario or video nature. For example, interlinked with AI and hey presto, they the simple task of and machine have a new ride. filling up the form by learning. Most people have collecting various (Quora, n.d.) experienced some parameters by the form of AR/VR now, customer's ID cards An augmented but it is not just a fad. can be done by RPA reality (AR) We can expect to see very efficiently and more of it in 2019. effectively. Virtual reality Businesses are RPA is based on the (VR) world beginning to see its AI and Machine AR/VR is everywhere benefit. learning in which the already, consumers In recent news the software records the are buying houses Microsoft HoloLens human workflow and before they are even has been used in the then adapts it to built by putting on a NHS. For the first work more efficiently VR headset and time in the UK, than a human. It walking around a midwifery students automatically learns virtual idea of their are using Microsoft’s the processes in the would-be home. HoloLens technology due course of time Staffordshire’s as part of their by deep learning and famous theme park training. machine learning Alton towers have a algorithms. RPA will rollercoaster in which Students at improve the you wear a headset Middlesex University productivity; cycle and fly through are shown virtual 71 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 reality images of high streets are glasses and see what what is happening struggling to they look like without inside the anatomy, compete. trying the glasses on. with the aim to teach Their co-founder The retail sector will them about all the Mary Perkins was invest more heavily in obstetric quoted saying “[VR] VR and transform emergencies that technology really their business could occur. excites us and we’re entirely. In order to trialing new stuff in The technology costs do so and remain in stores, which could tens of thousands of business we would involve diagnosing pounds, but can it expect them to go eye conditions by really be a substitute virtual and invest doing things such as for experience from online, with putting on a real-world training is innovative new ways headset.” the question being for shoppers to buy, asked? But we can virtual shops could We are likely to see expect to see more allow people to try more and more and more this on their cloths examples and stories experimental testing virtually before of virtual reality with VR in the new purchasing. An emerge through 2019 year. example of this is outside of the Specsavers who are entertainment and We will see the retail testing out VR retail sectors as more sector look at AR/VR headsets to help and more firstly due to more spread awareness to organisations trial it and more pressures customers of the risks to innovate. of online forcing of eye disease. In them to change up some stores they also Big data just the way they do have a mirror in getting bigger business. A fifth of all which you can stand shopping is now We already live in a in front of to view online and the UK world of big data and then click virtual 72 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 it is only going to get where it is stored in Another reason why bigger and bigger. case someone files data is going to We are seeing a rise for a subject access continue to rise is year by year not only request. New because of cloud in the sheer volume legislation such as computing and of data but also in GDPR is making storage. Data storage the variance of types businesses live in fear prices have dropped and where it is of a fine therefore whilst the space and stored. One thing is they are retaining capacity for certain, Big data is data, so they at least companies to hold getting bigger. know where it is data has gone up Average when responding. dramatically, there is organisations are For professional no added pressure dealing with service organisations like there was years exponentially more this can be a worry ago to delete files data in 2018 going in data will just keep because of increased to 2019 than they stacking up and up. storage. were a few years ago Adding to data We now live in a time with no sign of it retention for the blue when organisations letting up. light organisations see data storage as who capture security There is more opportunity rather data such as competition in the than a problem recorded telephone marketplace today because of its insight logs and surveillance with aggressive and learning benefit footage should it be acquisition of with many analytic needed for a case or companies and the tools available, data a connected case, merging of data, is king and will they are stored for permanent retention continue to be so in years because of this of data for a period 2019. reason and often due to fear of losing remain there. Microsoft are looking it and having a to combat the rise of quickfire answer of 73 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 big data and for data processing and Networks that announced it back in or machine learning, have separate September at the nor for storing and identifiers and an Microsoft Ignite analyzing data in ability to transfer conference, they unstructured formats, data independently. spoke about SQL such as media files. Practical examples of server 2019 being in IoT application today The SQL Server 2019 preview. It detailed include precision preview extends its what is included was agriculture, remote unified data platform Apache Spark and patient monitoring, to embrace big and Hadoop Distributed and driverless cars. unstructured data by File System (HDFS) Simply put, IoT is the deploying multiple for scalable compute network of “things” instances of SQL and storage. This that collects and Server together with new architecture that exchanges Spark and HDFS as a combines the SQL information from the big data cluster. Server database environment. engine, Spark, and (Ignite, n.d.) (Mind, 2018) HDFS into a unified data platform is IOT, a catalyst IoT is sometimes called a “big data for digital referred to as the cluster.” transformation driver of the fourth Industrial Revolution Up until now a single An article around IoT (Industry 4.0) by instance of SQL as the catalyst for industry insiders and Server was never digital transformation has triggered designed or built to say IOT is defined as technological be a database engine a system of changes that span a for analytics on the interrelated Physical wide range of fields. scale of petabytes or Objects, Sensors, Gartner forecasted exabytes. It also was Actuators, Virtual there would be 20.8 not designed for Objects, People, billion connected scale-out compute Services, Platforms, 74 | P a g e
The IT Landscape Report 2019 things in use be digitally disrupted exponentially. They worldwide by 2020. this year is making need help finding the IoT developments them act, we insights in the vast bring exciting understand that a stream of data and opportunities to key driver is to manage digital make our personal remain competitive is assets. lives easier as well as by innovating, The article went on improving efficiency, something that will to say both drive productivity, and aid the rise of IoT consumption. Digital safety for many being a trending services easily prove businesses. (Mind, buzzword is that their own worth. 2018) many of your Bundle products with competitors will look We can expect IoT to digital services and to embrace it. trend in 2019. content to make it According to IDC, Companies need to easy for customers to 70% of global transform and the consume them. discrete two are linked manufacturers will Both make heavily. offer connected companies IoT combined with products by 2019. understand digital transformation Data plays in to this customers better. can be attributed to and as reported by Use integrated a business’s Open Mind channels, big data, longevity. The enterprises are predictive analytics, average company’s overwhelmed by and machine learning lifespan has data and digital to uncover, predict, decreased from 67 assets as it is. They and meet customer years in the 1920s to already struggle to needs, increasing 15 years today. manage the data and loyalty and revenues, Combined with the digital assets they IoT and AI are at the stat that one in 3 have, and IoT will heart of this. Using business leaders will expand them both is future-proof
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The IT Landscape Report 2019 the business. Make and service portfolio, visualization, and the right strategic and future #AI. (Mind, 2018) bets for the investments using IoT company, product data analytics,
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billion in GDP growth. Retrieved from https://www.co nsultancy.uk/n ews/18895/digi tal-skills-gap- could-cost-uk- 1415-billion-in- gdp-growth
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