A look back at 2022 and the top IT trends for 2023
The new year has already arrived, but it is not too late to reflect on the past year. Honestly, I have no idea why this is so important to a lot of people because technically, we’re looking back every time we see something. That’s because light travels incredibly fast and at a finite speed. So whenever light gets emitted or reflected off something, it takes time to reach our eyes. However, in psychology, a positive look back is a great foundation for a happy and successful new year. Why not give it a go!
Our 2022 highlights
When I asked members of the RNT team about the 2022 highlights I kept hearing the same answer: The possibility of meeting again in person, in the same room as well as traveling to trade shows and conferences. Another amazing highlight to remember was the grand opening of the Mariposa Mountain School in the Dominican Republic. The twinkling eyes of the children and the passion of the teachers in this beautiful yet very remote and poor part of the world reminded us that there is a lot we can do to make the world a better place. All it takes is a dose of humility and the will to change.
For RNT, the realignment of the company with access to the capital market marked a real milestone and will further accelerate growth by opening a wide range of additional opportunities beyond the double-digit organic growth we’ve seen over the past 2-3 years.
What are the hottest 2023 trends in IT?
Great question! The annual round of tech soothsaying from leading analysts provides a direction of travel but is making it very hard to follow my original plan for this blog post. At RNT, we’re not only making IT possible, but we also like to challenge the status quo and do things differently. That’s why I wanted to focus on ranks 6-10 of the hottest IT trends for 2023 and had a close look at the predictions from Gartner, Forrester, IDC, 451.research, and CCS Insights. Unfortunately, plans had to change because, besides sustainability, AI/ML, and bridging virtual and real worlds, the various 2023 rankings do not have a lot in common. Instead, let’s have a closer look at some of the top trends we’ll be focussing on next year.
1. Sustainability
Gartner predicts that delivering technology alone will not be enough in 2023 but how sustainable can the IT sector be? Technology itself is still a main driver of the climate crisis and emitted over 1 billion tons of global greenhouse gas (GHG) according to The Eco Experts. Although we have seen great improvements in the data centre world with regards to a shift towards renewable energy, reduction of energy consumption, and carbon footprints, there is a lot more we as hardware manufacturers need to do.
While I think that the term ‘green IT’ is a contradiction and is mainly used to describe companies and products that spend more time and money on marketing themselves as ‘environmentally friendly’ than minimising their environmental impact, I do believe that innovative hardware designs can make a real difference. Many of our hardware designs provide a density you’ve hardly seen before. We put 5 nodes in a 3U chassis to minimise electronic waste, reduce cooling and save rack space. By design, we’ve only put the enterprise-grade components in that are needed to get the job done. Bigger, faster, and more resource hungry is not the answer to every single use case and it doesn’t always have to be an SSD either. Using quality components with an extended lifetime is another option to contribute to sustainability and we will keep looking for further innovations to protect the wonderful world we live in. When all players in the IT segment unite and take sustainability seriously, we’ll continue to see great improvements over the next 12 months.
2. Cybersecurity and data protection
I might sound like a broken record but unshielded home networks, shadow and old legacy IT, untrained employees, and the absence of a proper cybersecurity culture will continue to support the ongoing rise of ransomware and other serious cyberattacks. Therefore, cybersecurity will have to remain a top priority for all business owners, big or small. Small business owners often struggle when they have to put a budget in place because cybersecurity doesn’t come for free and executing an appropriate cybersecurity strategy is a complex task. However, ransomware attacks are still lucrative because too many victims still pay the ransom and the days when criminals demanded a ransom of only a few hundred bucks are long gone. Today, critical services and infrastructure are held hostage with no guarantee that all data can be recovered or decrypted.
Another critical area where hostile states are looking to cause disruption with cyberattacks is critical supply chains. Remember the SolarWinds supply chain attack that was one of the largest incidents of recent times. The cybercriminals placed malware into software updates that infected networks and kept sitting there for months before anyone spotted them. No one had ever considered that being a good citizen and keeping software up-to-date would compromise several US government federal agencies as well as big tech companies and many others.
Storage is usually the last line of defense in any cybersecurity strategy and a backup that can neither be overwritten, encrypted nor deleted is a business imperative. That’s why we launched our Yowie Appliance portfolio this year that brings enterprise-grade security including award-winning Object Lock to all businesses with data volumes up to 150TB usable with Simplicity-as-a-Service in mind. ‘How much is your data worth?’ That’s the key question business owners will have to address when investing in a modern and state-of-the-art cybersecurity strategy.
3. Are you ready for the metaverse?
The metaverse is more than just a vision from a crazy tech lover. On one hand, it’s a single, shared, immersive, persistent, 3D virtual space which is considered to be the next iteration of the internet. On the other hand, access seems to be for free but in fact, users of the metaverse pay with a dedicated and highly valuable currency called ‘personal data’. Forbes predicts that next year the direction of the metaverse will be defined for the next decade and by 2030 it will add $5 trillion to the global economy.
Companies have already started using metaverse technology like AR and VR to conduct training and onboarding. Microsoft and Nvidia are developing metaverse platforms for collaborating on digital projects and Accenture has already created a metaverse environment called the Nth Floor to carry out HR-related tasks without the need to be physically present in an office.
Analysts also believe that we’ll see more advanced and ‘real’ avatars in 2023 who could not only look exactly like we do in the real world. Motion capture technology will even let an avatar adopt our unique body language and gestures.
When you might find the metaverse a spooky and scary concept, the following are some really great examples of what can be achieved when technology bridges the physical and digital worlds.
4. Digital twins and 3D printing
Formula 1 lovers might know already that teams have created digital twins or virtual simulations of engines and car components to test new ideas in a safe digital environment and without the risks and high costs associated with real-life experiments. To get a better idea of multiple impacts to a car during a race, they collect sensor data, as well as other data such as track temperatures or weather conditions. The consolidated data is then streamed to the digital twins and the engineers can make design changes on the fly. 3D printers do then recreate parts as physical objects whether in Formula 1 or precision healthcare.
Happy New Year and a warm welcome to 2023!
My biggest wish for 2023 is that we do not lose sight of all the great things that are happening around us despite wars, climate crises, and all the other bad incidents. Especially the young generation deserves positive thinking so let’s make sure we give the people around us a friendly and honest smile every day and always keep our heads up. Because we’ll never find a rainbow if we’re looking down. (Charlie Chaplin).
Wishing you a happy New Year full of joy, health, success, and many rainbows!