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FEATURE: 2019 TECHNOLOGY FORECAST
WHAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN IS HOW
MANY BUSINESSES WILL REALISE
THE IMPORTANCE OF TOOLS THAT
MANAGE THE DELIVERY OF THESE
APPLICATIONS ACROSS A GLOBAL
NETWORK OF DATA CENTRES.
Neil Barton, CTO at WhereScape
Working with a tech partner that has the
technical capability to gather this data as well
as provide consultancy of how it is used will
be highly influential in helping organisations
drive the benefit of AI in their businesses.”
The priority will be security and
data protection
Naaman Hart, Managed Services Security
Engineer at Digital Guardian, commented:
“Windows 7 will continue to be an issue.
When Microsoft released Windows 10 it
essentially gave it away for free to vast
swathes of the globe. The hope was to disrupt
the massive number of machines that were
still running Windows XP – many of which
were known to be part of one of the biggest
botnet armies in the world. And then there’s
Windows 7 which was scheduled to be
‘retired’ – until Microsoft announced that it
will offer extended ‘security update’ support
until January 2023. The problem this model
will cause is that while there is pressure to
move to newer and less vulnerability-ridden
operating systems, companies will now further
delay their migration. Microsoft has set the
tone that a product released in July 2009 will
be allowed to continue past its 13th birthday.
Windows XP was 14 when Microsoft tried to
end its reign with Windows 10, so we have
to wonder whether we’ve learnt anything
from the problems a planet of Windows XP
machines caused. While companies struggle
to mitigate the effects of maintaining
Windows 7 for another five years, they can
count on having to defend against botnets
built up of the same. If companies delay
investing in their IT environments, they will
find themselves defending against insider and
outsider attacks made viable by the same
operating system they’ve clung to so tightly.”
www.intelligentcio.com
The hunt is on for digital
skill sets
Given the digital era we operate in, it comes
as no surprise that companies are on the
hunt for employees with strong digital skill
sets. Liam Butler, Area Vice President at
SumTotal, a Skillsoft company, spoke to us
about this drive. He said: “HR is changing
at an increasingly rapid pace. With the
workforce encompassing five different
generations, areas such as onboarding,
retention and employee nurturing are
more dynamic than ever. In 2018, we saw
Twitter encourage people to apply for intern
positions at the firm via a single tweet after
research found the majority of 18-24-year
olds don’t think CVs accurately portray their
personalities. In 2019, we will see more
companies follow in Twitter’s footsteps – not
in terms of single tweet hiring – but in terms
of creating a more appealing application
experience for candidates.
“Next year, HR departments will pay more
attention to their candidate’s digital
application experience. This will include
making their application processes mobile
friendly in response to the increasing
number of candidates who job hunt via
this medium. To facilitate these changes,
talent management systems will continue
to grow in popularity, as HR departments
find that they make managing the
entire digital recruitment process much
easier. This focus will also move past
the recruitment stage to encompass an
employee’s entire career, with training,
retention, benefits and appraisals all
seeing a digital shakeup.”
While none of us hold a crystal ball to truly
see what the future holds, it’s clear that
industry experts are of the opinion that for
2019, we can expect to see some key areas
develop. These areas include multi-cloud,
legacy systems and AI to name but a few. n
INTELLIGENTCIO
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