7 trends defining the enterprise IT market today

Digital transformation enters 2.0 phase

The way CIOs approach digital transformation programs is changing dramatically, says Shafqat Azim, a partner with global technology research and advisory firm ISG. He notes that transformation initiatives are coming under greater scrutiny as CIOs seek to drive real-world business value.

Azim predicts that enterprises will continue moving away from transactional-SLA-focused service projects that don’t include any transformative elements. “Digital transformation will get embedded within run-and-operate service delivery models, moving from a large transformation program mindset to a continuous transformation mindset,” he says.

Azim advises CIOs to begin viewing digital modernization investments through a value realization and cyber risk management lens, along with a traditional cost optimization focus. “Ensure that solutions for large-scale application and platform transformation … have an explicit overlay of end-to-end digital threads,” he adds.

Passwordless authentication goes prime time

The world has moved beyond the point where a simple password can provide sufficient protection, states David Burden, CIO with open-source identity and access management technology firm ForgeRock.

Spurred by the FIDO2 standard, the move to passwordless authentication is gaining momentum. It’s now the largest trend for enterprise software companies, Burden says. “The industry’s biggest players, including Apple, Microsoft, and Google, among others, have assisted with expanding the FIDO2 standard, announcing plans to enable passwordless authentication across multiple devices, browsers, and platforms.” He points to Gartner’s prediction that by 2025 over 50% of the workforce, and more than 20% of customer authentication transactions, will be passwordless — a major increase from the fewer than 10% today.

Passwordless authentication also promises to significantly enhance customer experience. “With an extensive enterprise authentication process, a user can log into an online account without having to enter a password,” Burden explains. “This eliminates the concern for forgotten passwords and the burdensome task of password recovery.”

Passwordless authentication also saves time. “It protects the most commonly used and vulnerable enterprise resources while also delivering an outstanding user experience and boosting workforce productivity,” Burden says. Overall, he notes, FIDO2 has the potential to improve both security and ease of use for online access while greatly diminishing the risk of stolen credentials by cybercriminals.

Cloud-native as platform of choice

Rajesh Kumar, CIO at digital transformation company LTIMindtree, predicts a bright future for cloud-native platforms, a way of building and running applications that takes advantage of distributed computing capabilities supplied by the cloud delivery model.

Cloud-native apps are designed and built to exploit the scale, elasticity, resiliency, and flexibility of the cloud, an approach that allows adopters to go live via platform configuration without the need for significant custom development. “Any extensions and customizations are built externally by integrating with the platform,” he explains.

Serverless applications running on cloud-hosted platforms differ from traditional enterprise software deployments, in which software is deployed on server infrastructure hosted either on-cloud or on-prem, Kumar says. “This trend extends to developing end-user applications using low-code platforms.”

The concept of developing systems based on requirements built from the ground up is becoming dated. “Today’s approach is to choose the right platform and plan the configurations or development project without having to worry about a deployment plan or scalability architecture,” Kumar says. “With the advent of widely available APIs and platform-driven solutions, CIOs can now focus on innovations that drive business outcomes rather than getting consumed in topics such as infrastructure, hosting, network, and scalability issues.”

Hyperscalers, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, have a major presence in this space, since they possess the horsepower needed to host large-scale platforms while offering massive scalability, Kumar observes. He notes that secondary market players include cloud-native platform providers such as Salesforce and ServiceNow.