The IT services industry is often overlooked in favor of flashier tech segments like cloud computing and AI, but its growth story is no less remarkable. Forrester’s report reveals that IT services currently capture over a third of global tech spending, dwarfing the annual expenditure on computer equipment.

“By 2028, annual spending on IT services will reach $2 trillion,” noted Michael O’Grady, principal forecast analyst at Forrester. “Despite strong forecasted growth over the next few years, IT service firms must stay ahead of current challenges, including optimizing headcount for cost and efficiency, staying abreast of competition from software and engineering firms, and utilizing GenAI judiciously to reshape service delivery.”

Key Drivers of Growth

Financial Services and Manufacturing
Financial services, manufacturing, and energy are central to the IT services industry’s growth, with the ten largest companies generating 44% of their revenue from these segments. Accenture estimates that only 5% of manufacturing and engineering companies scale mature digital capabilities across their organizations, highlighting a significant opportunity for IT service firms to expand.

Managed Services
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is projected to nearly double its share of the IT services market, growing from 8% in 2022 to 15% in 2028. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are leading the way, benefiting from an enterprise shift toward cloud-based infrastructure. Google Cloud and AWS saw growth rates of 26% and 13%, respectively, in 2023, while Azure and other cloud services experienced 17% growth for Microsoft.

Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity spending remains a critical driver of growth. Canalys estimates that two-thirds of the $224 billion projected for 2024 will be allocated to IT services such as consulting, outsourcing, managed services, solution deployment and integration, maintenance, and support.

Generative AI and Automation
Generative AI (GenAI) is reshaping how IT services are delivered. In the US, 57% of the jobs lost to automation in professional services are expected to be directly attributable to GenAI. By increasing productivity and reducing project delivery costs, GenAI could free up resources to tackle project backlogs and support the shift toward project onshoring as parts of consultant roles become semi-automated. For IT service companies, harnessing the productivity gains of automation will be crucial to improving margins while managing headcount reductions.

Market Overview and Regional Dynamics

The global IT services market is poised for robust growth, with Forrester forecasting annual spending to reach $2 trillion by 2028. This growth will be fueled by an average annual growth rate of 4.6% across the industry. While infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is expected to lead the way, averaging nearly 16% growth annually, other critical segments like cybersecurity and managed services will also contribute significantly.

Regional Trends and Dynamics
Growth in the IT services market will not be uniform across regions. Asia-Pacific is set to outpace the global average, with nearly 6% annual growth driven by rapid digital transformation in emerging economies and a growing appetite for advanced IT solutions. Countries like India, China, and Japan are becoming innovation hubs for technology services, particularly in areas like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.

North America remains the largest market for IT services, with the US leading the charge in cloud adoption, cybersecurity, and managed services. The region’s financial services, healthcare, and retail sectors are substantial consumers of IT services, reflecting their need to stay competitive through digital innovation. Major US companies like Accenture, IBM, and Cognizant are investing heavily in emerging technologies like generative AI to bolster their service offerings.

In Europe, the IT services industry is expected to grow more modestly, at approximately 4.5% annually. This growth will be driven by heightened regulatory compliance requirements and the need to modernize legacy IT systems across the continent. European companies are increasingly partnering with US and Asian IT service providers to gain access to global expertise and advanced technologies, particularly in cybersecurity and cloud computing.

Latin America and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) are emerging as promising markets due to rising IT adoption rates and their respective governments’ digital transformation efforts. Latin American companies increasingly source IT services from global firms with nearshoring capabilities in the region, such as Eastern Europe. In MEA, governments invest in digital infrastructure projects, creating opportunities for IT service firms to capitalize on cloud computing, data analytics, and cybersecurity services.

Strategic Challenges for IT Services Firms

Despite strong projected growth, the global IT services industry anticipates subdued results in 2024 due to economic headwinds like trade conflicts and geopolitical tensions. Forrester outlines several key challenges IT services firms must address.

Optimizing Headcount and Automation
One of the primary challenges facing IT service companies is balancing headcount and automation. Many firms expanded their workforce to meet the pandemic-fueled surge in demand, only to now find themselves needing to reduce their payrolls. According to Forrester, headcount and revenue have historically been closely linked, meaning that workforce reductions could negatively impact service quality and profitability.

Automation, especially through generative AI, offers significant productivity gains that could help IT service companies cut costs and improve margins. However, while many firms explore automation, most of its benefits remain unrealized. For instance, integrating generative AI into professional services could reduce 57% of jobs due to automation, according to Forrester. Nevertheless, these productivity gains could free up resources to address project backlogs, optimize project delivery costs, and streamline internal processes.

Managing Competition from Software and Engineering Firms
Competition from adjacent sectors, particularly software and engineering firms, poses a significant challenge for IT service companies. These competitors are increasingly moving into consulting, security, maintenance, digital, and networking services, traditionally dominated by IT service providers. This competition drives firms to forge closer partnerships with software companies to bolster their capabilities.

A prime example is Cognizant’s acquisition of Thirdera, strengthening its strategic partnership with ServiceNow for AI-driven automation. Collaborating with software companies allows IT service firms to tap into cutting-edge technology and offer a broader range of services, helping them stay competitive in the rapidly evolving marketplace.

Integrating Generative AI into Service Delivery
Generative AI is set to reshape service delivery by automating processes, reducing project costs, and freeing up enterprise dollars for additional modernization. Companies like Capgemini and Accenture plan to increase their in-house data and AI specialists by 17% and 11% over the next three years. However, fully integrating generative AI into service delivery presents challenges in managing workforce reductions and ensuring a seamless transition to semi-automated processes.

As parts of consultant roles become automated, firms must identify areas where human expertise is essential and upskill their workforce accordingly. This will require comprehensive training programs and strategic workforce planning to ensure employees can add value to the new AI-driven landscape.

Navigating Economic Uncertainty
Economic headwinds, driven by trade conflicts, geopolitical tensions, and budgetary caution, have dampened IT services revenue projections for the near term. Forrester predicts that real global GDP growth will only exceed pre-pandemic levels in 2025, making it crucial for IT service companies to navigate this period of uncertainty strategically.

Firms must remain agile in adjusting their business models, pricing strategies, and service offerings to align with changing market conditions. They should also explore diversifying their client base and expanding into new geographies to mitigate the risks of economic downturns in specific regions.

In summary, the IT services industry stands at a crossroads where strategic foresight, adaptability, and embracing automation determine which firms thrive and which falter. Forrester’s report emphasizes that companies that skillfully navigate these challenges will be well-positioned to capture a significant share of the $2 trillion market opportunity by 2028.

Co-Innovation and Global Collaboration

In an increasingly interconnected global economy, co-innovation and collaboration are emerging as essential strategies for IT service companies to differentiate themselves and drive growth. According to Forrester, the technology services market represents nearly half of the $4.2 trillion global tech economy, and companies that leverage strategic partnerships can maximize their potential in this rapidly evolving landscape.

To understand how organizations select and work with technology services providers, Forrester surveyed 1,955 enterprise service decision-makers globally. The study revealed that 29% of respondents see investment in emerging technologies as a primary benefit of partnering with IT service firms. In particular, generative AI has the potential to significantly enhance productivity and streamline processes, enabling organizations to focus on higher-value activities.

Generative AI exemplifies how co-innovation can revolutionize service delivery. Providers like Accenture, Cognizant, and Capgemini actively incorporate AI tools and methodologies to transform their service offerings. Accenture, for instance, has invested billions in AI development and workforce upskilling. The firm sees a significant opportunity in AI consulting and has already booked $600 million in new generative AI-related projects. Meanwhile, Capgemini plans to increase its in-house data and AI specialists by 17% over the next three years to meet the rising demand for these skills.

Global collaboration has also become a cornerstone of IT service delivery. Nearshoring is gaining traction as enterprises seek to balance cost efficiency with the benefits of proximity. More than half of the decision-makers surveyed expect their providers to source labor from Eastern Europe, while 41% anticipate sourcing from Latin America. Working with nearshore and onshore providers facilitates seamless collaboration in blended agile teams and enables transformative work across multiple time zones.

However, successful collaboration requires a solid commitment to coordination. In the survey, 70% of respondents working with multiple providers to implement business applications indicated using outcomes-based contracts. By aligning providers with common outcome metrics, enterprises can motivate collaboration and ensure that all parties work toward shared goals.

These trends underscore the importance of treating technology services providers as extensions of an organization’s internal capabilities. Companies that adopt a strategic partnership approach focusing on shared goals and mutual success can unlock new levels of innovation and business value.

In this context, IT service companies must adapt their business models to become indispensable co-innovation partners. By fostering strategic alliances, investing in emerging technologies like generative AI, and optimizing global collaboration, they can enhance their value proposition and capture a significant share of the $2 trillion market opportunity by 2028.

Pivotal Juncture

The global IT services industry is at a pivotal juncture, facing significant opportunities and considerable challenges. Forrester’s “Global IT Services Market Forecast 2023-2028” paints a picture of substantial growth, with annual spending expected to reach $2 trillion by 2028. However, this growth is contingent upon the industry’s ability to navigate an evolving landscape shaped by automation, competition, and the rapid rise of generative AI.

Generative AI, in particular, stands as a transformative force capable of reshaping the industry. While it promises to enhance productivity, streamline project delivery, and reduce costs, it also presents challenges regarding headcount optimization and displacing traditional roles. IT service firms will need to strike a delicate balance between embracing the efficiencies of automation and maintaining a skilled workforce capable of delivering high-quality services.

Moreover, competition from software and engineering firms intensifies, with adjacent sectors increasingly encroaching on traditional IT service domains. Strategic partnerships and acquisitions will enable IT service companies to bolster their capabilities, particularly in emerging cybersecurity and AI-driven automation technologies.

The concept of co-innovation is poised to redefine how companies engage with their technology service providers. The survey findings underscore that clients seek more than just capacity and expertise; they seek partners who can bring cutting-edge technologies, strategic alliances, and a commitment to shared outcomes. Firms that deliver on this promise will stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Global collaboration and nearshoring trends offer additional avenues for growth. By sourcing talent from regions like Eastern Europe and Latin America, IT service firms can enhance their agility and facilitate closer collaboration with clients. The shift toward outcomes-based contracts further reinforces the need for coordination and shared goals across multiple providers.

The road to $2 trillion presents a complex yet rewarding journey for the global IT services industry. As Michael O’Grady, principal forecast analyst at Forrester, aptly notes, “IT service companies that manage these challenges well will thrive and scale globally.” The firms that embrace strategic partnerships, harness the power of generative AI, and navigate the intricacies of global collaboration will be best positioned to lead the market in the years ahead.

Introducing M4 Instances with Dynamic Resource Management

Central to Google Cloud’s new offerings are the M4 instances, which incorporate the latest advancements in processor technology with Intel’s Emerald Rapids chips. These instances are equipped with Google’s exclusive Dynamic Resource Management (DRM), a feature that optimizes resource allocation dynamically, ensuring high efficiency and performance. This capability allows M4 instances to offer unparalleled price-performance advantages, making them an attractive option for companies seeking to enhance their cloud capabilities while managing costs.

“The unique aspect of the M4 instances is their ability to efficiently utilize resources, which directly translates to cost savings and improved performance for our customers,” explained Yang Liu during the presentation.

Hyperdisk: Revolutionizing Cloud Storage

Another innovative introduction by Google is Hyperdisk, a high-performance storage solution designed to work seamlessly with the M4 virtual machines. Hyperdisk excels in IO performance and throughput, significantly speeding up data processing tasks. A standout feature of Hyperdisk is its storage pooling capability, which allows multiple instances to share a common storage resource. This approach reduces the need for dedicated storage provisioning for each workload, effectively cutting storage requirements and costs.

“By allowing different workloads to share the same storage pool, our customers can achieve significant reductions in their storage needs, which, combined with data storage cost savings, leads to overall reductions of 30 to 40 percent in storage expenses,” Yang highlighted.

Managed Instance Groups for Enhanced Efficiency

Google Cloud is also enhancing its Managed Instance Groups (MIGs), which enable customers to cluster different instances together under varied policy settings. MIGs automate backend operations such as auto-healing and autoscaling, thus improving resource utilization and operational efficiency. This automation supports more effective load balancing and optimal CPU usage, reducing costs.

“These managed instance groups are designed to help our customers maximize their resource utilization while minimizing waste, which is a key part of our strategy to help businesses reduce their overall cloud spend,” added Liu.

Empowering Businesses to Achieve More

These developments reflect Google Cloud’s commitment to providing scalable, cost-effective solutions for businesses navigating the complexities of cloud adoption. Google Cloud strengthens its competitive position by continually innovating and improving its technology stack. It delivers substantial value to its customers, helping them achieve their business goals with improved efficiency and reduced costs.

As businesses increasingly rely on cloud computing for operational needs, Google Cloud’s enhancements are timely. They offer companies the tools to manage their cloud expenditures more effectively, ensuring they can invest more resources into growth and innovation.

Looking ahead, Google Cloud’s focus on advancing cloud technology and reducing costs will likely influence future trends in cloud computing, setting new industry standards for efficiency and cost management. This proactive approach benefits Google Cloud’s clientele and pushes the entire cloud computing industry towards more sustainable and cost-effective practices.

Adkins’s role at the NYSE involves overseeing the Innovation program across the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and its portfolio companies. This entails collaborating with cutting-edge AI firms like COH to host transformative events like the recent AI hackathon. The hackathon, focused on enterprise solutions, yielded tangible results, with winning projects poised for real-world implementation. Adkins emphasizes the importance of practical, real-world applications of AI in driving innovation and fostering collaboration within the industry.

Reflecting on current trends in the AI tech space in an interview on NYSE TV, Adkins highlights automation’s prevalence as a critical driver of progress. By streamlining processes and eliminating mundane tasks, AI enhances productivity and improves employee satisfaction—a crucial consideration in today’s competitive landscape.

However, Adkins acknowledges the challenges of implementing AI technologies in a rapidly evolving landscape. His advice to entrepreneurs and CEOs is clear: identify specific problems within your organization that AI can effectively address. By focusing on practical applications, businesses can maximize the impact of AI on their operations and bottom line.

Looking ahead, Adkins emphasizes the importance of collaboration and knowledge-sharing in driving technological progress. The upcoming Tech Summit, hosted by the NYSE in San Francisco, provides a platform for tech leaders to convene, exchange ideas, and chart the course for future innovation. With a focus on thought leadership and community engagement, the Tech Summit underscores the NYSE’s commitment to fostering a collaborative ecosystem that propels technology forward.

Adkins aptly concludes, “Together, we can push the boundaries of what’s possible and drive meaningful change in the world of technology and finance.” With leaders like him leading the charge, the NYSE is well-positioned to lead the way into a future powered by AI innovation.

In a recent interview, Mr. Nguyen shed light on the bank’s ambitious migration to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its profound impact on Techcom Bank’s operations.

“Before we even moved to AWS, we were on very old legacy systems,” Mr. Nguyen explained. “So when we decided to move to AWS, we had to move all of those systems into the cloud as well.”

The challenge was formidable: seamlessly transitioning critical banking systems to the cloud without disrupting business operations. However, armed with a strategic vision and a commitment to innovation, Mr. Nguyen and his team embarked on the arduous task.

“Within 18 months of signing the contract and partnering with AWS, we were able to migrate 60% of our workload onto AWS,” Mr. Nguyen proudly shared. This feat, achieved in a relatively short timeframe, speaks volumes about the bank’s determination and the effectiveness of the migration process.

The key systems successfully migrated to AWS are Oracle Fraud Detection, Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and Oracle Financial Services Analytical Application (OFSAA). These critical components form the backbone of Techcom Bank’s operations, safeguarding against financial fraud and ensuring regulatory compliance.

The migration’s benefits extend beyond mere technological upgrades. Mr. Nguyen noted a significant uptick in productivity and agility among bank staff. “People are getting more agile, nimble, self-serving, and more self-initiative in what they need,” he remarked. This newfound empowerment has ushered in a culture of innovation and efficiency within the organization.

Moreover, Techcom Bank’s migration to AWS has yielded tangible cost savings. “We were able to reduce costs by up to 20% if managed correctly,” Mr. Nguyen revealed. These savings, coupled with improved operational efficiencies, underscore the bank’s financial prudence in embracing cloud technology.

The partnership with AWS professional services is central to the migration’s success. “The AWS professional services have partnered with us from day one,” Mr. Nguyen emphasized. Their expertise and support have been instrumental in navigating the complexities of cloud migration and ensuring a smooth transition.

Looking ahead, Mr. Nguyen remains optimistic about Techcom Bank’s future in the cloud. “The uptime has been significantly improved,” he noted, highlighting the reliability and resilience of AWS infrastructure. With the cloud business office and structured migration processes in place, the bank is poised to continue its journey of innovation and growth in the digital era.

As Techcom Bank blazes a trail of technological innovation in Vietnam’s banking sector, its partnership with AWS stands as a testament to cloud technology’s transformative power. In an industry where adaptability is paramount, Techcom Bank has demonstrated its readiness to embrace change and chart a course toward a more agile and resilient future.

In Part 1 of this review, we looked at openSUSE’s background, its openQA-provided stability, outstanding installer, choice of desktop environments, and its security. All of these are significant advantages of the distro. Unfortunately, security is also where openSUSE’s disadvantages begin to shine through.

Disclaimer: Some will say the following points are too critical of openSUSE since it’s a more technical distro and not necessarily aimed at desktop users. Nonetheless, openSUSE’s own website says it is: “The makers’ choice for sysadmins, developers and desktop users.” Therefore, my final rating will reflect the distro’s ability to meet the needs of all three of those categories.

Too Much Security?

Security is only a good thing if it’s not so restrictive that people begin disabling features for the sake of convenience, and this is where openSUSE’s disadvantages begin to shine through.

Of all the distros that I have tried to date (Fedora, Manjaro, openSUSE, KDE Neon, Pop!_OS, Kubuntu, and Zorin OS), openSUSE’s security policies are by far the most restrictive. Want to adjust your network settings? You’ll need to enter your password. Want to install a Flatpak app? You’ll need to enter your password. Change your timezone? Enter your password.

What’s more, the default firewall settings are so strict that printer discovery doesn’t work out of the box. To be clear, every single other distro I’ve tried automatically discovers my HP printer on my network and lets me print without installing any additional drivers.

In contrast, openSUSE cannot even discover the printer without changing the firewall profile from the default ‘Public’ to ‘Home,’ or adding the mDNS service to the ‘Public’ profile. Even when making sure mDNS is enabled, openSUSE still requires “hplip” software/driver package installed.

Is it possible to overcome these issues? Yes. But many people, especially less technical users, give up before figuring out how to jump through all these hoops. In fact, a quick look at openSUSE’s Reddit will reveal that two common solutions to printing on openSUSE are a) disable the firewall altogether or b) “don’t print on openSUSE.” Seriously…I have seen that advice multiple times…”don’t print on openSUSE.”

The issues with printing on openSUSE are irritating enough that Linux creator Linus Torvalds famously dumped openSUSE and switched to Fedora because printing was just too hard to bother with. Fans of the distro will point out that it has gotten better since that day…but it’s still not good enough for the average desktop user.

Yast

Yast stands for Yet Another Setup Tool and is one of the defining characteristics of openSUSE. The tool is a throwback to the earlier days of Linux when such setup and configuration tools were more common.

There’s no denying that Yast is a powerful tool, one that is available as both a graphical and command-line package. For system admins, Yast provides a powerful way to administer openSUSE instances. There is almost nothing you can configure via the terminal that can’t be configured via Yast’s GUI, and it’s a tool I miss on other distros.

At the same time, however, like openSUSE’s other hallmark features, Yast is something of a two-edged sword. While it’s undeniably useful — and this is purely subjective — I’m not a fan of how it takes over functions normally handled by a distro’s built-in tools. For example, I run the KDE Plasma desktop, which has excellent built-in tools for printing and firewall management. Yast takes these tasks over, however. Gnome has similarly useful tools as part of the system settings.

As I said, I realize this is very subjective. Some users prefer to have one tool to manage such tasks, regardless of the desktop environment they use. Many users prefer to have one desktop-agnostic tool that never changes. I am not one of those users. I would prefer to use Plasma’s tools when they’re available and fall back to Yast when they’re not.

Btrfs and Snapper

One of openSUSE’s greatest features is its use of the btrfs filesystem and built-in Snapper support. Btrfs is a relatively new filesystem that provides automated system snapshots. This gives users the option to rollback to a previous snapshot from the boot menu in the event something goes wrong.

Tinkering with your system and mess something up? Not a problem, just rollback and it never happened. The same goes for an update that borks something. Just rollback and wait for the issue to be addressed. This is truly a must-have setup for a rolling release distro.

There are two downsides to keep in mind with btrfs (there’s that two-edged sword again):

Btrfs is one of the slower filesystems in use by Linux distros. The excellent DJ Ware, on YouTube, has done extensive benchmarks showing how much slower the filesystem is. While I’ve not done such extensive benchmarks myself, I do have an everyday data point.

When setting up the digiKam photo organizing software for the first time, the app scans your Pictures folder. On any distro using the older ext4 filesystem, it takes digikam anywhere from 4:57 to 5:17 to scan my 49GB of photos. In contrast, digiKam on openSUSE takes more than 7:50 to complete. This result, which I have been able to consistently reproduce, jives with DJ Ware’s benchmarks.

The other potential downside is in regard to data integrity. Given that it’s still a young filesystem, there are still an uncomfortable number of reports about btrfs filesystems becoming hopelessly corrupted. Without a doubt, openSUSE has the most mature implementation of btrfs, but your mileage may vary.

Patterns and Recommendations

One of the things that makes openSUSE so successful at providing stability with a rolling release is its use of Patterns and recommendations.

Patterns are collections of software that are related and share dependencies. For example, there’s a KDE Plasma Pattern, KDE Apps Pattern, Office Suite Pattern, Mobile Pattern, and more.

The power of patterns is that it allows openSUSE developers to update an entire collection of software rather than try to determine what is or is not installed on a machine. Similarly, openSUSE defaults to installing any and all recommended dependencies when installing an application, unlike almost every other distro, in the interest of making sure no app is installed with any missing features.

On paper, both of these seem like good ideas, and, to be clear, they are…to a point. Both of these features contribute greatly to openSUSE Tumbleweed being one of the most stable rolling-release distros.

Unfortunately, Patterns and recommendations also result in some unfortunate side effects. For example, if you delete an application that is included in one of the default Patterns, it will be reinstalled on the next update. You will need to manually block the package, or the entire Pattern, in order to prevent its reinstallation.

Random Papercuts

Slack Issues

In addition to the major things highlighted above, openSUSE running KDE has a bug that makes it almost impossible to add the workspaces I’m subscribed to. I can easily add three of them with no problem, but the fourth one always fails.

The only way I can get it added to the Slack client is to try importing that workspace along with three or four defunct workspaces. After trying this one or three dozen times, the troublesome workspace will finally get imported. From what I’ve been able to tell via research, the workspace string that gets passed from browser to Slack clients gets mangled.

At one point, I thought this was a KDE Plasma bug since it doesn’t happen on Gnome or Xfce. However, this only happens on openSUSE. It doesn’t happen on Manjaro KDE, Kubuntu, or KDE Neon. I have no idea what the problem is but, at least in my experience, it is a uniquely openSUSE issue.

Network Login

On multiple installs of openSUSE, I’ve had issues where I was constantly prompted to enter my root password and network password in order to stay connected. Wake the computer from sleep…enter my passwords. Needless to say, this got old quick.

Conclusion

openSUSE Tumbleweed is one of the most well-engineered distros on the market and offers a tremendous amount of features and abilities. Unfortunately, some of those features are a two-edged sword that cause as many problems as they solve.

openSUSE Tumbleweed is a distro I love to play with and would love to use as my daily driver. Unfortunately, the inconveniences quickly wears on my nerves in daily use, and I end up moving on.

That being said, for the right person, openSUSE is hands-down the best distro available.

Rating

For System Admins: 5 out of 5 stars

The combination of Yast and its enterprise connections makes openSUSE quite possibly the best distro for system admins.

For Developers: 4 out of 5 stars

On the one hand, having the latest and greatest packages can be a big help to developers. On the other hand, the papercuts and irritations may take unnecessary time away from development.

For Desktop Users: 3 out of 5 stars

Before writing about tech, I was a software developer for over a decade. I’ve created software for major universities, companies, and the commercial market. In spite of that high-tech background, openSUSE was just too irritating and difficult for me to use on a daily basis, and I would never recommend it to most everyday users. It would have to be a special breed of desktop user, one that wants to spend as much time managing their computer as using it before I could recommend it to them.

Aongus Hegarty, President of International Markets at Dell Technologies, says that the CIO role is now core to the business strategy in the enterprise. Hegarty was interviewed by Tim Crawford, ranked as one of the most influential CIOs and is the CIO Strategic Advisor at AVOA:

The CIO Is Now Central To The Business Strategy

If you stand back and look at the CIO role I think it’s gone from being a role traditionally which was very much in the back office. The CIO was focused on keeping the systems working and maybe often only out in the c-suite discussions when there was a challenge or an issue with systems or email, etc. The CIO now has become front and center and central to the business strategy. From the c-suite perspective, they are now seen as a key individual around investment in technology to enable the business from a growth and transformation point of view. There has been fundamental change.

What’s driving the change is the recognition by CEOs, c-suite, and companies that technology is disrupting industries and disrupting businesses. It’s driving significant efficiency and operational enhancement and/or a brand new set of business models, products, and services enabled by technology. Companies need to quickly move forward around their digital transformation or they will be left behind or significantly disadvantaged quite quickly. There’s an urgency in the c-suite to bring the technology strategy front and center underpinning the business strategy.

The CIO: A Critical Role Now And Into The Future

The CIO within that c-suite is in an absolutely critical role now and into the future. The breadth of skills and competencies required has broadened significantly. Now the CIO role very much encompasses an individual who has vision and collaborates across the organization. The CIO has strong communication skills and ability and can work and navigate between obviously the tactical and executional elements of the role but also the strategic elements of the IT strategy. They they must match that and understand how it fits into the business strategy. 

To all the CIOs out there I think it’s absolutely an exciting time and a great opportunity. You can be sure that Dell Technologies will be there every step of the way with you.

Mark Sunday, CIO of Oracle, discussed the increasing need for enterprises to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards information security in an interview with Michael Krigsman of CXOTALK:

Security is Increasingly a Big Part of the Discussion

It’s really been interesting to see the dramatic change in the awareness around security. Quite frankly, the threats have gotten much greater. Security is increasingly a big part of the discussion. If I look at the one area that my organization has increased year on year on year, it’s what we’re investing in security. We’re the norm in that. We’re not the exception. Then also the increased sophistication of the threats, the increased sophistication of the tooling, and so forth required, is putting more and more focus on this. It really becomes job one.

I think that boards have now become aware and that they are accountable to assure that the people, the processes, the technology, that all the steps that one needs to do in order to ensure the integrity, confidentially, privacy, and security, of not only a customer’s data, the company’s data, but in fact the employees data as well.

Security is Not Just the Role of the CIO

Security is getting its place at the table, whether it’s within the IT organizations, at the corporate level, or at the board level. Security has always been something that’s been out there, something that we’ve had to take into account, but more recently there have certainly been more high profile incidents that have highlighted just what the impact of security can have. But also it’s been highlighted that you need to have the focus that security is not just the role of the CIO, not just the role of the CISO, but it’s everyone’s responsibility.

It begins with making people aware of what they need to do, what the threats and the vulnerabilities are, and what their role is in defending against that. Security needs to be built into every line of code we write, every configuration we enable, every computer that we manage the configuration asset the patching level on and the updates on. It affects essentially most roles within the organization.

Every Enterprise Has the Security it Deserves

Just given the scale, size, complexity, and the opportunity for human error, you really need to take a holistic, comprehensive, and automated approach towards how you deal with configuration management, change management, and vulnerability management. All of these are key aspects. It’s very difficult if it’s done you know manually. You have to look at a comprehensive program that allows you to simplify, standardize, centralize, and automate all the aspects of how you deal with those things that you know could expose your company to security and privacy concerns.

Every Enterprise has the security it deserves. It begins at the very top. It truly begins with the board, CEO, the Executive Committee, to set the culture and to ensure that the people, process, technology, and the governance processes are in place to ensure the security of customers, companies, and employees information.

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With OpenAI’s ChatGPT powering Microsoft Bing, Google developing Bard, and Baidu working on Ernie, the UK government wants to make sure it’s not left behind. According to The Guardian, the UK government is investing in a supercomputer to build its own “BritGPT.”

The supercomputer will “allow researchers to better understand climate change, power the discovery of new drugs and maximise our potential in AI.”

The supercomputer is an exascale computer, capable of “more than one billion billion simple calculations a second, a metric known as an “’exaflops.'” There is only one other known exascale computer housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US.

“We think there’s a risk that we in the UK, lose out to the large tech companies, and possibly China, and get left behind … in areas of cybersecurity, of healthcare, and so on. It is a massive arms race that has been around for some time, but the heat has certainly been turned up most recently,” said Adrian Joseph, BT’s chief data and artificial intelligence officer, speaking to the Commons science and technology committee.

“Because AI needs computing horsepower, I today commit around £900m of funding … for an exascale supercomputer,” said the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.

The CSA is an organization dedicated to helping secure cloud computing. A survey the organization conducted with Netskope found that DLP solutions are a critical component used in cloud security.

Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends. While companies are relying on DLP systems, nearly a third struggle to use them effectively.

Among the top challenges cited by organizations are management difficulties (29%), too many false positives (19%), the need for manual version upgrades (18%), and deployment complexity (15%).

“DLP solutions are an integral part of organizations’ data security strategy, but leaders are still struggling with this strategy and the implementation of solutions, especially for how complicated legacy and on-prem based solutions are to manage and maintain,” said Naveen Palavalli, Vice President of Products, Netskope. “These findings highlight the need for a comprehensive and easy-to-use cloud delivered data protection solution that integrates into their existing security controls and is a key tenant of their Zero Trust security strategy.”

Cloud security is increasingly in the spotlight as more and more organizations experience data breaches at a time when the cloud is becoming integral to more companies and industries.

The Biden administration has signaled it is preparing to regulate cloud security in an effort to better protect organizations. If the CSA’s findings are any indication, it looks like the industry could use the help.

Java 20 is not a a long-term support (LTS) release, so it will only provide updates until version 21 comes out in six months. Nonetheless, this version provides a number of bug fixes and improvements.

“Instead of making tens of thousands of fixes and delivering close to one hundred JEPs (JDK Enhancement Proposals) every few years, as we did with yesteryear Major Releases, enhancements are delivered in leaner Feature Releases on a more manageable, predictable, six-month schedule,” writes Sharat Chander Director, Java SE Product Management. “The changes range from significant new features to small enhancements to routine maintenance, bug fixes, and documentation improvements. Each change is represented in a single commit for a single issue in the JDK Bug System.

“Of the 21,604 JIRA issues marked as fixed in Java 11 through Java 20 at the time of their GA, 15,420 were completed by people working for Oracle while 6,184 were contributed by individual developers and developers working for other organizations.”

Java 20 also includes a number of significant new features and improvements, including:

• (D)TLS Key Exchange Named Groups
• Add GarbageCollectorMXBean for Remark and Cleanup Pause Time in G1
• Unicode 15.0 Support
• Improved Control of G1 Concurrent Refinement Threads
• New JFR Event: jdk.InitialSecurityProperty
• New JFR Event: jdk.SecurityProviderService
• …and much more

For more information, check out Oracle’s full release announcement.

Microsoft’s latest versions of Windows have disappointed and angered users by making it unnecessarily difficult to change the default web browser and other apps. In fact, when Windows 11 first dropped, changing the default browser required changing the default handler for each and every file type web browsers normally handle.

While Microsoft eventually changed its stance and made it easier to change the default web browser, the company is taking it a step further.

“Today we’re reaffirming our long-standing approach to put people in control of their Windows PC experience and to empower developers to take advantage of our open platform,” write Tali Roth & Aaron Grady.

“We want to ensure that people are in control of what gets pinned to their Desktop, their Start menu and their Taskbar as well as to be able to control their default applications such as their default browser through consistent, clear and trustworthy Windows provided system dialogs and settings.”

The company is adding a new option in the Settings app that will allow users to set their preferred apps.

“For defaults, we will soon introduce a new Settings deep link URI for applications to take their users directly to the appropriate location in Settings for the user to change their defaults,” Roth and Grady add. “This is an extension to our existing ms-settings: URI scheme. Learn more about ms-settings: URI schemes.”

It’s nice to see Microsoft listening to user feedback and making it easier for people to use the apps of their choice.

The IT industry, along with every other, is struggling with an economic downturn, with inflation increasing at near record highs. While IT spending is increasing, it’s not keeping pace with rising inflation.

Gartner surveyed more than 2,000 CIOs to gain insight into the state of IT spending. The survey found that, on average, CIOs expected their IT spending budgets to increase by 5.1% in 2023, but that’s behind the estimated inflation rate.

“The pressure on CIOs to deliver digital dividends is higher than ever,” said Daniel Sanchez Reina, VP Analyst at Gartner. “CEOs and boards anticipated that investments in digital assets, channels and digital business capabilities would accelerate growth beyond what was previously possible. Now, business leadership expects to see these digital-driven improvements reflected in enterprise financials.

“CIOs expect IT budgets to increase 5.1% on average in 2023 – lower than the projected 6.5% global inflation rate. A triple squeeze of economic pressure, scarce and expensive talent and ongoing supply challenges is heightening the desire and urgency to realize time to value.”

To help combat the trend, Gartner said CIOs must prioritize spending in the right sectors, such as

“CIOs must prioritize digital initiatives with market-facing, growth impact,” said Janelle Hill, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner. “For some CIOs, this means stepping out of their comfort zone of internal back-office automation to instead focus on customer or constituent-facing initiatives.”

“Leading CIOs are more likely to leverage data, analytics and AI to detect emerging consumer behavior or sentiment that might represent a growth opportunity,” added Hill.

Rob Locascio, CEO of LivePerson, predicts that the AI-driven conversational space will ultimately have as much impact and be as big an industry as ecommerce, search, or social. Locascio was interviewed by Jim Cramer on CNBC:

Ecommerce, Search, Social… and Conversational Space?

When I look at the conversational space I think it’s going to have as much impact as ecommerce or search or social. The ability to talk to a machine and have a natural conversation, it’s in the collective consciousness of people. We all believe the Alexa type situation should happen with every company. 

We do that with Delta and T-Mobile and all these big brands. What we’re looking at now is how do we take that to the world? LiveIntent is proprietary technology to look at the intent that a consumer is having with the brand. In terms of I want to buy something, we have a way to analyze that and then use machine learning algorithms to then scale those conversations. That’s what this is about. 

Healthcare Companies Defending Themselves From Amazon Via AI

In Q4 we signed a couple healthcare companies. They want to talk about defending themselves from Amazon because Amazon said they want to go into healthcare. The way they think they can do that is scaling the conversations they are having with their customers and creating a totally different experience. You go to a doctor, you have an experience with them, you capture that on a messaging platform and an AI will help you with whatever is wrong with you. You want to process a bill instead of calling and being put on hold, you do that through a conversational experience. 

They want to game change it. The only way they’re going to defend themselves is to get into the conversational space. That’s what they see and we’re the company they’re trusting to scale their operations with the conversational platform.

Conversational Space Is Going To Be As Big As Search and Social

The conversational space is going to be as big as search and social. I think you’ll see one day that there will be a trillion dollar company in this space and I want it to be us. The things we’re investing in right now and setting up for will allow us to do that. That’s what’s important. The Amazon’s and the Facebook’s and Apple’s, they’re in the space. Jeff Bezos made a big bet obviously in Alexa to say this is the way it’s going to be. 

It can’t just be Amazon and Alexa. It has to be other companies getting access to that technology and that’s what we are providing. Who else is providing it? We’re one of the largest companies in the world to do this. Even though we’re not big tech, we are large enough to go ahead and go after them. We are large enough to go ahead and define a space and win it.

Avishai Sharon, Co-founder & CEO of TrenDemon, discussed their software on ILTV:

How Do You Connect Content Marketing to Sales?

My personal background was heading a marketing agency for many years and one of my biggest struggles was how do I prove our value and our effort to our customers and how do you connect the impact of what we call content marketing to business goals and to sales? When we couldn’t find an easy way to show that correlation three and a half years ago we went ahead and founded TrenDemon to help companies do just that.

We connect their marketing efforts, which today rely mostly on content, you want your audience to consume valuable content, as opposed to just advertising. The big challenge is how do you attribute those efforts to sales? There’s actually a prior problem, how do you actually map the customer journey? How do you track those different touch points into one picture?

Reverse Engineering Successful Customer Journeys

The first thing we do is look at all the different touchpoints that a customer has had over his lifecycle. We ask the question, not just where do they come from, but how deep was their engagement? Did they actually watch the video? Did they actually read the article? Then you can start reverse engineering those successful journeys and say what’s common about all of these successful journeys.

What we found, and this is the interesting thing, we’re working with over 90 companies today worldwide and the vast majority of content the companies produce, over 90 percent, is ineffective at driving business goals. As you guys know it’s very expensive to create quality content and it takes a lot of effort.

If People Read the Right Content They Will Covert to a Sale

The second interesting thing is that if you do manage to find those 10 percent and you find a way to get it in front of the right people you’re actually able to improve dramatically your results. So there’s not just a correlation between what buyers did beforehand, there’s also a causation, a causal relationship, that if people read the right content at the right time they’re more likely to follow a path. We’re not probably as sophisticated as we believe that we are.

We’re a SaaS company, a cloud-based solution. We’re working a lot in the US and one of our biggest markets and growing markets is Japan. They’re investing a lot of content and a lot on technology. Essentially, because we look at the customer journey and not necessarily specific languages we can operate in any environment which allows us to grow pretty much anywhere. As long as they have content, which means that they’re producing something other than just advertising, they want people and audiences to actually engage with what they’re producing and they do have some business outcomes that they’re looking to measure.

About TrenDemon:

Founded in 2013, TrenDemon is the world’s leading content marketing attribution and optimization solution, helping marketers prove and improve their content’s impact.

TrenDemon insights can help you uncover your content marketing ROI, impact on business goals, and engagement to help guide the content strategy. Our optimization units will help you increase conversions and shorten time to convert on your owned assets.

TrenDemon proudly serves a wide range of customers, from Fortune 500s and brands to SaaS, B2B, and financial companies and is backed by leading VCs.

Dan Springer, CEO of DocuSign, discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and he says that businesses are not going back to a manual world:

COVID Pandemic Accelerated Digital Transformation

We’ve been really pleased with the growth we’ve had since going public a few years. We have also seen significant acceleration since the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s obviously a horrible pandemic and our number one priority has been the health and wellbeing of our employees so we can take good care of our customers. As you can see in our Q1 earnings we did see an acceleration of our bookings to 59 percent.

Traditionally, if you look at the billings-type metric they have been in the mid-30s’. A significant portion of that (increase) was due to increased use cases from customers driving that digital transformation faster with services like DocuSign.

Companies To Stay In This Digitally Transformed World

One of the things we’ve seen with the pandemic impact is that it has really accelerated the path that companies were already on to drive that digital transformation. We don’t see companies after the pandemic settles down going back and saying they want more paper and more manual processes.

Once they’ve got the benefits from that efficiency in their business, the better customer experience, and the better employee experience, they’re going to stay in a digitally transformed world. They are going to use DocuSign and other fantastic services to do that.

The Future Is Going To Have eSignature At The Center

We really think that the future is going to have eSignature at the center of what we call the overall Agreement Cloud. Companies want to be more agreeable. They want to be easier to do business with and be easier to do business for. They’re going to not just use DocuSign for signature but all of the other components of preparing agreements and managing those agreements digitally once they’ve been created. That’s why we’re excited about our very robust future.

We just past a billion dollars in revenue (for DocuSign eSignature). We are only four percent penetrated today and we’re six times larger than the next biggest player in the space. There’s not a lot of penetration yet in that core business. Notary is still predominantly done manually. We are making investments there. We believe we can bring the same ease of use that we brought to eSignature we can bring to notary.

AI To Power The DocuSign Agreement Cloud

Much bigger than that, even expanding upon the opportunity of eSignature is that broader Agreement Cloud opportunity. We think this is the next big cloud opportunity. You are going to see companies increasingly say I don’t just want to do the workflow and signature. I also want to drive the creations of those agreements. I want to think about artificial intelligence and search capability to manage my agreements. This would enable me to actually manage my business and make my company more agreeable.

Those are some of the investments we’re making. That’s why we just finished the acquisition of Seal Software last month so we can bring additional artificial intelligence and analytic capability to help people run their businesses better.

The cloud computing market is experiencing major growth, due in no small part to the pandemic and the rise of hybrid work. All three of the top providers are experiencing major growth, with no signs of it slowing down. According to McDermott, cloud computing’s success is because of its “pervasive” and transformative nature.

“It simplifies everything. Everything’s on the mobile. Everything’s beautiful and easy to use,” McDermott told Yahoo Finance.

“It’s one platform that can single thread business across an entire enterprise, all functions of the business. So, it is a great unifier in a sense, because some people have very powerful Chief Information Officers, others have Chief Digital Officers, others have Chief People officers, others have these wonderful data managers,” McDermott added. “But to have one platform, that single thread, all of those powerful relationships to deliver great experiences is super exciting to us.”

While the economic downturn has many companies hedging their bets and cutting costs, McDermott believes the cloud computing market can continue growing, buoyed by companies’ digital first strategies.

“Ninety-five percent of CEOs have a digital first strategy. So, they’re leaning in to digital transformation. Because it’s the only way out. On one hand, it’s software as the great deflationary force,” McDermott said. “On another hand, if you can’t transform and recreate your business model, and innovate digitally, you lose the game. So, CEOs are very well aware of this. So, that tailwind is super strong.”

McDermott’s predictions are good news for the cloud market and underscore the opportunities available to cloud providers.

Not only has Salesforce transformed the way they work with Slack but so are the customers of Salesforce. The company sees Slack as a core platform for powering digital transformation.

“Customer 360 and Slack are powering this transformation for companies in every industry in every region of the world,” said Taylor in yesterday’s earnings call. “Slack outperformed our expectations in the first full quarter as a part of the Salesforce family. The number of customers on Slack who spent over $100,000 was up 44% year-over-year. The adoption of Slack Connect was up an astonishing 176% year-over-year. Slack is not just a product, Slack is a network, and it’s just incredible to see that growth.”

The company seemed pleasantly surprised about how transformative Slack is to the operations of large enterprises. As Slack brought on millions of new users during the pandemic they focused on innovation that has made Slack much more than a simple communications platform.

“Slack also continues to innovate at an unbelievable pace,” notes Taylor. “Slack Huddles, which is Slack’s new real-time audio capability, is already used weekly by over 1/3 of Slack users. And Slack Clips, the new asynchronous video capability, are being played nearly 1 million times a week. And this month at Slack Frontiers, which I hope all of you have watched; and if you haven’t, you can watch it online. Stewart and the team are now the next generation of Slack’s platform, and it’s going to truly transform the way companies think about workflows and automation.”

Customer 360 and Slack are powering this transformation for companies in every industry in every region of the world, according to Taylor.

Slack outperformed our expectations in the first full quarter as a part of the Salesforce family. The number of customers on Slack who spent over $100,000 was up 44% year-over-year. Adoption of Slack Connect was up an astonishing 176% year-over-year. Slack is not just a product, Slack is a network, and it’s just incredible to see that growth.

Slack also continues to innovate at an unbelievable pace. Slack Huddles, which is Slack’s new real-time audio capability, is already used weekly by over 1/3 of Slack users. And Slack Clips, the new asynchronous video capability, are being played nearly 1 million times a week. And this month at Slack Frontiers, which I hope all of you have watched; and if you haven’t, you can watch it online. Stewart and the team are now the next generation of Slack’s platform, and it’s going to truly transform the way companies think about workflows and automation.

“That is definitely what I saw firsthand,” said Co-CEO Mark Benioff. “I was like, how could it be that an airline is basically front-ending their entire system with Slack? That’s a shock to me.”

“Slack is the system of engagement for every workflow, every application, every person on your enterprise,” added Taylor. “It’s really an amazing platform vision. And absolutely watch Slack Frontiers. If you haven’t seen it, I think it will blow your mind.”

“Every CEO and every Board I talk to is focused on how they can succeed in this era of flexible work,” says Taylor. “According to Slack’s research, 93% of workers are looking for flexibility when they work, and 76% are looking for flexibility where they work. Companies need to connect their employees, their partners, their customers from anywhere because we all know we’re not going to be in the office 5 days a week.”

“Our offices aren’t going away,” he said. “It’s just that your digital headquarters is going to be more important because it’s truly the infrastructure that connects all of it, and especially in this new normal. And Slack and Customer 360 together are really powering this transformation.”

Zoom has launched a $100 million fund to help stimulate and grow the app ecosystem surrounding the videoconferencing platform.

Zoom emerged as a front-runner in the early days of the pandemic, with companies, schools, religious organizations and individuals turning to the platform to stay connected. As a result, Zoom experienced meteoric growth, far outpacing some of its rivals.

The company is looking to ensure its long-term success, by helping build out the ecosystem of apps, hardware and integrations that will continue to improve the service Zoom offers.

“I founded Zoom in 2011, nearly ten years ago. Without the support of early investors, Zoom would not be what it is today,” said Eric S. Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom. “What I’ve learned over the past year is that we need to keep meetings productive and fun. My hope is that the Zoom Apps Fund will help our customers meet happier and collaborate even more seamlessly, and at the same time help entrepreneurs build new businesses as our platform evolves.”

According to Zoom, portfolio companies will be eligible for investments “between $250,000 and $2.5 million to build solutions that will become core to how Zoom customers meet, communicate, and collaborate.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is partnering with DuckDuckGo to include the latter’s HTTPS dataset in its HTTPS Everywhere browser extension.

The EFF and DuckDuckGo are closely aligned in their commitment to protecting user privacy. DuckDuckGo’s privacy browser extension for the desktop, and its standalone privacy browser for iOS, rely on the company’s Smarter Encryption technology.

Smarter Encryption upgrades a standard unencrypted (HTTP) website connection to an encrypted (HTTPS) connection where possible. Smarter Encryption is more advanced than many competing options, since DuckDuckGo crawls and re-crawls the web to keep its dataset current.

The EFF is now adopting DuckDuckGo’s Smart Encryption dataset for use in its own HTTPS Everywhere browser extension. Like Smart Encryption, HTTPS Everywhere is designed to help upgrade insecure connections. The EFF’s solution previously used “a crowd-sourced list of encrypted HTTPS versions of websites,” a less efficient and less comprehensive solution than DuckDuckGo’s.

“DuckDuckGo Smarter Encryption has a list of millions of HTTPS-encrypted websites, generated by continually crawling the web instead of through crowdsourcing, which will give HTTPS Everywhere users more coverage for secure browsing,” said Alexis Hancock, EFF Director of Engineering and manager of HTTPS Everywhere and Certbot web encrypting projects. “We’re thrilled to be partnering with DuckDuckGo as we see HTTPS become the default protocol on the net and contemplate HTTPS Everywhere’s future.”

“EFFs pioneering work with the HTTPS Everywhere extension took privacy protection in a new and needed direction, seamlessly upgrading people to secure website connections,” said Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo founder and CEO. “We’re delighted that EFF has now entrusted DuckDuckGo to power HTTPS Everywhere going forward, using our next generation Smarter Encryption dataset.”

TSMC has delivered further bad news on the semiconductor shortage, predicting supplies chain tightness won’t completely ease until 2023.

The world is experiencing a significant shortage of semiconductors, with multiple industries currently being impacted. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has warned the shortage could last a couple of years, and now TSMC has issued a similar assessment.

TSMC specializes in manufacturing semiconductors for partner companies, and is the premier chipmaker for Apple. The company also makes chips for Qualcomm, Alphabet, AMD, NVIDIA and Huawei, and will make the i3 for Intel.

According to Bloomberg, TSMC believes shortages will begin to ease for the auto industry next quarter, but the overall industry will continue to experience shortages throughout the rest of the year and into next.

“We see the demand continue to be high,” CEO C.C. Wei said. “In 2023, I hope we can offer more capacity to support our customers. At that time, we’ll start to see the supply chain tightness release a little bit.”