Is your infrastructure ready for such data, mobility, resilience, and competitiveness in 2021?
For the vast majority of companies, 2020 hasn't been just another year. COVID-19 has brought to light the challenges that many sectors were facing beneath the surface, especially in terms of digital transformation.
We all knew it was a matter of time, but nobody expected the pandemic to expose these challenges so rapidly and reveal issues related to adaptation and competitiveness.
Large companies and industries (such as banking, retail, manufacturing, logistics, etc.) were already aware that their businesses needed a new approach and strategic changes in an increasingly demanding society.
Society's thirst for information is growing every day, and this makes everyone more competitive. Globalization is a reality at all levels, even if we might not want to acknowledge it. Free trade, industrialization, financial systems, connectivity, telecommunications, migration, and the global order, among other factors, contribute to increased competitiveness in the business world.
Just like businesses, consumers play a vital role in globalization and must make informed decisions when purchasing products or services. They analyze and search online and on social media, attempting to ensure their purchases. They look for user reviews (though in many cases it's hard to tell if these reviews are genuine, bought, or manipulated by companies), ultimately seeking information and data on the internet, thereby increasing the volume of information in data centers.
Now, more than ever, companies that want to remain competitive will have no choice but to invest in useful technology and implement a clear and honest strategy that can provide excellent customer service, all while keeping costs in check and having a clear understanding of their business needs and objectives.
Most likely, C-Level executives in the critical infrastructure sector will invest more in security, mobility, processes, sustainability, unifying information, and optimizing their resources through process automation to become more competitive. In essence, they will have the obligation to transform their technology and processes, retrain their staff, and focus on three key areas directly at the core of their business while ensuring enhanced security and management agility in their infrastructure.
The obsession of companies in all sectors is to acquire and retain customers, whether they are large corporations or small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, the way they acquire, retain, and, most importantly, keep profitable customers will be very different from now on.
The cost of acquiring a new customer is much higher than retaining an existing one. This will lead companies to increase their investments in customer loyalty marketing and scrutinize all available information about their customers (both structured and unstructured data). This will lead to a more than 50% increase in investments in business intelligence and data analysis while adapting their infrastructure accordingly.
Remote work is unstoppable, and its growth in 2021 is projected to exceed 300%, according to studies by large corporations. The traditional office is undergoing significant changes, and the cost savings will be redirected toward customer acquisition and retention through business intelligence (BI) and big data.
The amount of data that companies are beginning to obtain from all of us—our actions, thoughts, reactions in various situations, consumption habits, social media opinions, professional data, and more—collected through cookies, among other sources, is resulting in an increasing volume of data being stored on servers.
In summary, companies will seek to obtain our data through various techniques and hardware, such as sensors, activity trackers, social media opinions, purchasing behavior, and other methods (which are not discussed in this post but would be quite surprising if you knew where your information can be gathered from nowadays). These data are stored on servers and, through appropriate techniques like ETL (Extract, Transform, Load), they can transform this data into useful information for Business Intelligence and Big Data. This allows companies to base their strategies on data rather than the intuitions of owners, managers, or other individuals who might believe that their experience or instincts alone guide the right decisions.
Today, more than ever, companies will need to invest in technology and data knowledge, which, on the other hand, is raising concerns about data security and storage.
The growing mistrust in data security is gaining more followers, and security professionals are revisiting the concept of Zero Trust networks but with new concepts to mitigate the substantial costs associated with vulnerabilities.
In traditional IT models, security relies on containment models, meaning they build walls or moats around the infrastructure to isolate it from the outside world. However, this approach makes access from outside difficult but treats everyone inside as "trusted." Once an attacker is inside, they have access to the entire network, making it easy for them to achieve their primary objective: gaining access to data.
Before implementing a Zero Trust model, companies will need to establish clear visibility (identification and monitoring of all devices), access policies (specific access and conditions), and automation (ensuring processes and policies ensures greater efficiency and decision-making in the event of deviations or issues).
It is clear that companies that have learned from the events of 2020 will include objectives of adaptability, creativity, and resilience in their strategies. If they want to succeed, they will need to analyze the vast amount of available information in detail and quickly move toward models that provide a comprehensive view of their critical infrastructure, with policies and automations, gradually transitioning into a Zero Trust model given the high level of privacy that will be required at all times.
Let it work for you!
