Charting the course: APAC’s tech trajectory for 2024
The last 12 months brought about an unprecedented surge of technology and innovation. The importance of the cloud and the growing preference for a hybrid infrastructure was reinforced as a business imperative. The digital-first world we live in today is enabled largely by the cloud. To deliver data and insights even faster, the edge also emerged as a key differentiator for organizations. However, the hottest commodity was AI. Overnight, it dominated conversations. Most organizations hopped on the AI train, to different extents, with immediacy and a suitcase of uncertainty.
However, amidst the deluge of new technologies emerging at breakneck speeds, and a sense of urgency to adopt these innovations, business decision-makers are starting to find themselves overwhelmed with new solutions. It increasingly feels like technology is happening to people rather than for them.
While AI will continue to dominate conversations, organisations need to take a quick step back and put in place a strong cloud strategy that will pave the way for their journey. It will be crucial to understand their technology stack, focus efforts on (re)building customer trust and cultivate the skills that will allow workers to keep up with the demands of an ever-evolving digital landscape.
Hybrid multicloud will become the default choice for enterprises
Adoption of cloud services across all industries and regions has accelerated and will continue to. Gartner predicts that, by 2025, 75 percent of enterprise data will be created and processed outside the traditional data centre or cloud, up from a mere 10 per cent in 2018.
Organisations have sought to enable a variety of applications, enhance business agility, and optimise costs. Despite this surge, not every workload seamlessly aligns with the public cloud, and many enterprises grapple with legacy applications and data entrenched in on-premises or private cloud environments. Therefore, hybrid multicloud solutions that offer the best of both worlds will become the default choice for enterprises that want to balance performance, security, compliance, and cost. According to the Nutanix 2023 ECI report, 86 per cent of IT decision-makers in APJ expect hybrid cloud to positively impact their businesses in 2024.
On top of all this with the ever-expanding digital frontier, and as AI takes root in everyday operations, the inevitability of the hybrid multicloud as the default choice becomes a catalyst for transformative change. It not only addresses immediate challenges but positions organizations to thrive amidst the uncertainties of tomorrow. The ongoing journey toward hybrid multicloud adoption represents a strategic paradigm shift—one where adaptability, resilience, and innovation collide to redefine the very fabric of modern enterprise IT.
Trust: Overcoming uncertainty and promoting innovation
The last couple of years have been marked by rapid technological advancements and unprecedented disruptions, and overcoming uncertainty and adopting technology are paramount for sustained success but it comes with the shadow of an increase in cyber threats. According to the National Cyber Security Agency (NCSA) in Thailand, the top attack between October 1, 2022, and August 4, 2023, was a hacked website (phishing, defacement, gambling). The most attacked sectors were education (36%), other government agencies (31%), and the financial and banking sector (8%).
Thailand enacted the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) on June 1, 2022. However, since 2021, many organizations in Thailand have faced ransomware attacks that have stolen customer data. These include hospitals being hacked for patient data, private companies being hacked for customer data, and the incident in which a hacker named “9near hacktivist” announced the sale of 55 million Thais’ data. These incidents have all had a significant impact on the trust of customers and consumers. As a result, businesses across Thailand are reviewing and accelerating their cybersecurity plans to ensure that they are in full compliance with PDPA and regain the trust of their customers.
Thus, as the technology sector continues to evolve and innovate, trust will be a potent catalyst, allowing organisations to unlock the full potential of their teams to explore new ideas and take calculated risks. With technology providers continuing to invest in AI and ML solutions and services, it will be essential to embed security, privacy, and transparency into their systems as they are being built.
Skilled workforce: Empowering digital innovation
While technology is advancing at lightning speed, the shortage of skilled professionals across Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) capable of harnessing new and emerging technologies poses a significant hurdle. For Thailand, the PWC Asia Pacific Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023 found that 77% of respondents believe that digital skills are important for careers. They also believe that both hard skills, such as technical skills, and soft skills are equally important for careers. The most important skills are teamwork skills (84%), analytical/data skills (83%), and leadership skills (83%).
With the speed of innovation, it might be difficult to predict what skills will be needed over the next few years. However, one thing is certain: we’ll need to start building education into our workflows to upskill and reskill the current workforce to keep pace with evolving business requirements. Academic programs also need to evolve and ensure that students are being equipped with the right knowledge and skill sets for entering the workforce.
While training should be a fundamental tool and requirement, there is also a need for organisations to place more emphasis on skills, in addition to university degrees, to fully unlock the potential of its future technology workforce. The PWC Asia Pacific Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023 also found that 71% of Thai respondents are confident that their employers will provide them with the skills they need to succeed in their careers in the next five years. Additionally, 70% believe that their skills will change significantly in the next five years as well.
We are standing at the precipice of this transformative year – a journey toward resilience, innovation, and sustainability. As organisations take stock of the last 12 months and the tech odyssey that we’ve been on, it is time now to take full advantage of the innovation. Having the right technology partner, skills, and talent, will be crucial as we take off to new technological heights.
