16 Digital Transformation Trends in 2021 and Beyond

(Last Updated On: April 16, 2021)

Digital transformation trends lead the way of moving forward with new technology inventions for the future with survival the fittest. For enterprise organizations, business agility has to turn into virtually synonymous with digital transformation—that’s, the method of using new applied sciences to modernize and even revolutionize how an organization does business.

IDC predicts that digital transformation trends spending will develop to greater than 53 % of all info and communications technology (ICT) investment by 2023, up from 36 % in 2019 with smooth digital transformation trends.

What’s more, IDC says that 65 % of organizations will aggressively modernize legacy methods with extensive new technology platform investments by 2023.

Digital transformation trends

Nowhere is digital modernization more wanted than the legacy network. Many enterprises nonetheless make the most of a hub-and-spoke network that was architected a long time ago to assist computing centered around an on-premises information center internet hosting purposes accessed by staff utilizing stationary, IT-controlled desktop computers.

This network architecture is totally unsuitable to assist and safe cloud-based purposes, direct Internet access, non-IT-managed units, mobile customers connecting from anyplace on this planet, bandwidth-intensive voice and video purposes, and 1000’s or tens of millions of IoT units.

The latter situations are at the moment’s actuality, and so they mirror the wants of among the high applied sciences in enterprise digital transformation trends.

Let’s take a look at 16 main digital transformation tendencies and the way they’re driving the necessity for digital transformation trends.

Ninety-seven % of IT decision-makers are tasked with utilizing a mixture of the latest applied sciences to modernize legacy processes and to establish and implement new business model innovation opportunities.

How do these IT leaders scope transformational tasks? What are the business drivers behind their funding thesis?

What are the near-term and long-term business advantages of digital transformation trends?

The analysis outlines probably the most timely tendencies for 2021 and explores their business influence for the future.

1. Work from Home

Work at home (WFH), or mobility, is a development with hockey-stick development because the pandemic started with digital transformation trends. This is one of the Forbes top 10 digital transformation trends for 2021.

Furthermore, there’s no signal it is going to let up anytime quickly because the societal habits of bodily going someplace to work seem to be completely altered. Different corporations might observe Twitter’s lead and permit people to work at home indefinitely.

This development has utterly upended network site visitors’ patterns. Enterprises with legacy hub-and-spoke networks couldn’t simply scale up their VPNs to assist the various 1000’s of latest WFH customers when the pandemic hit.

Corporations have to rethink, redesign, and re-engineer their networks to securely assist these new work and network site visitors patterns.

2. 5G

5G deployment is forging forward, regardless of the virus, and provide sooner connectivity. This is one of the digital transformation trends in 2021.

COVID-19 solely intensified this demand as staff left their places of work in well-connected areas for at-home places of work with a slower web.

3. Wi-Fi 6

Once more, sooner connectivity for distant staff. In April, the FCC unanimously voted to open the brand new band of spectrum to units that may accommodate it and the first WI-Fi 6 units are anticipated to be launched later this year. This is one of the top 10 digital transformation trends for 2021.

4. Analytics

Information analytics provide an aggressive benefit. This is one of the digital trends in the automotive industry

In response to Forbes, “Utilizing huge information and analytics has all the time been on a gentle development trajectory after which COVID-19 exploded and made the necessity for information even better.”

5. Unified Communications

Unified Communications (UC) is the path to raised connections and productiveness for the dispersed, digital workforce in the form of digital transformation trends.

Individuals who want/need to work from anyplace additionally want to speak with one another from anyplace.

Whereas most people consider VoIP and video once they consider UC, this technology class additionally contains net conferencing, display screen and doc sharing, voicemail, e-mail, textual content messaging (SMS), and instantaneous messaging—all essential functionalities in today’s work-from-home surroundings.

UC completely drives demand for network transformation due to the necessity to prioritize site visitors by sort and to supply error-correcting applied sciences that ship a greater person’s experience. This is one of the digital transformation trends in 2021.

That is particularly necessary for site visitors corresponding to voice and video that requires low latency and a steady link.

SD-WAN offers the perfect technology to prioritize UC site visitors to be routed over the best capability, lowest latency link, to repeatedly monitor and handle that link for superior efficiency, and to reroute the site visitors as wanted if efficiency slips. These capabilities simply aren’t doable with conventional legacy networks.

6. Cloud Computing

Most organizations at the moment have a “cloud-first” strategy. That’s, the first place they’ll think about internet hosting an application or service is within the cloud. This is one of the healthcare digital transformation trends.

Provided that the cloud can’t meet all necessities will they think about on-premises internet hosting.

Many newer companies are cloud-native and cloud-only, eschewing the notion of proudly owning and sustaining on-premises infrastructure.

More established companies have non-public clouds linked to public clouds. This is one of the digital transformation trends in 2021.

Cloud architectures have ceaselessly altered network site visitors patterns—for supplier and company networks, in addition to the Web.

Staff in department or residence places of work have to entry purposes and information in varied SaaS and IaaS platforms.

It makes zero sense to route their site visitors by an on-premises information heart earlier than distributing it out to the cloud or public Internet.

That is the place corporations can profit from a Safe SD-WAN structure that may route site visitors securely and effectively between a supply and a cloud destination without forcing a hairpin flip by a legacy information heart.

7. Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is now a Board-level concern and a critical requirement in all digital transformation trends.

However greater than that, robust safety could be a business enabler by giving confidence to the business and to prospects, and by offering full visibility into what’s taking place on the network.

With the rising significance of cybersecurity, enterprises should acknowledge that conventional perimeter-based safety methods are not enough. This is one of the digital business trends 2021.

There are just too many assault vectors and too giant of an assault floor to construct efficient partitions around everything.

Conventional site visitors patterns have been disrupted (see cloud computing above); entry units are unpredictable, unmanaged, and mobile; and in all places, entry to the Web is nearly imperative for digital transformation trends.

Consequently, the network itself should present the safety, slightly than making an attempt to construct safety across the network.

Any site visitors that enter the network should be secured upon entry, transit, and exit. The network and safety should function as one and the identical.

8. Artificial intelligence and machine learning

Organizations are more and more investing in AI capabilities to expedite and personalize customer service, cut back human bias, and improve productiveness.

They’re studying that the worth of AI and machine studying instruments are dependent upon the data they’re fed. This is one of the digital transformation trends in education.

The analysis anticipates a 95% development projection within the adoption of AI. AI is confirmed to be a strong instrument for personalizing buyer experiences, decreasing human bias, and automating duties.

Machine Studying (ML), primary process automation, and digital agents/chatbots are the most typical use instances of AI. Twenty-five % of customer support operations will probably be utilizing virtual customer assistants by 2020.

9. Blockchain

In April, the Division of Homeland Safety named blockchain a necessary technology for combating COVID-19 and repairing our damaged economy. This is one of the digital transformation and industry 4.0.

Blockchain, if deployed accurately, has the potential to repair broken provide chains by processing and verifying transactions rapidly. This is one of the digital transformation trends in financial services.

10. Internet of Things (IoT)

Estimates for the variety of units on the Internet of Things run into the tens of billions worldwide, and the quantity continues to develop day by day. This is one of the top 10 digital transformation trends for 2021.

We sometimes consider industrial operations within the context of IoT, however even issues like application-related applied sciences, corresponding to servers and containers, might be instrumented with IoT-like sensors to watch and optimize performance.

There’s seemingly an endless listing of numerous units connecting to the network—from automobiles, cameras, and containers, to elevators, environmental sensors and energy controls, and everything in between.

Many of those units lack inherent safety and might open holes for hackers at network entry factors.

IoT site visitors will proceed to surge within the years forward, and safety converged inside the network will probably be ever-more essential to detect and mitigate doable assaults.

11. Process automation

Whilst coronavirus passes, we’ll see increasingly more companies trying to offload as many duties as they will (through RPA/IPA) to make sure that business runs easily as soon as the following international disruption happens. This is one of the digital transformation 2021 trends.

12. Linked units expanded

We’re shifting nearer to linked cities and autonomous automobiles. Automotive corporations are nonetheless shifting the technology ahead regardless of the pandemic. This is one of the top 10 trends for digital transformation in 2021.

13. Everything as a Service

“As a Service” applied sciences will solely proceed to increase as legacy methods are both eradicated or put right into a consumption like a model. This is one of the transformation trends.

14. Conversational AI

Throughout the coronavirus shutdown, one factor that took a significant hit for all corporations was customer support. This is one of the trends in digital transformation 2021.

One option to resolve that: a highly educated military of conversational AI bots able to reply to customer questions and hold their worlds shifting — at the same time as your customer service team is out of service.

15. Always connected PCs

At all times linked PCs ship fixed connectivity utilizing mobile LTE and 5G. Within the wake of so many working at residence and needing good dependable connectivity, At all times Connected PCs might turn into a necessary means to offering quick, battery friendly, always-connected laptops for staff, college students, and anybody else that will not have the identical entry to an office, a faculty or the native espresso store. This is one of the top digital transformation trends.

16. Fueling business performance with APIs

Businesses leveraging APIs are experiencing elevated productiveness, revenue growth, and room for innovation — however, they should be productized and simply reusable to ship full worth. This is one of the business transformation trends.

Ninety-one percent of organizations that own public and/or private APIs are experiencing important business outcomes because of this. APIs allow organizations to innovate faster and smarter for predictable digital transformation trends.