Ensuring that corporate financial resources are allocated to the most important and value-driven initiatives is imperative, but considerably difficult to achieve. Technology is usually a top concern, but in such a complex and fast-moving landscape, it's a challenge to know which innovations will truly benefit the organization, and which should be passed over.
Today, we'll take a closer look at the changes and advancements taking place in IT, and highlight some of the promising concepts that IT admins and executives should consider for their upcoming investments:
Investigating and pushing IoT to the forefront
There has been considerable discussion of IoT systems for years now, but the platforms that are coming to the forefront in business and technology settings aren't the smart lightning or intelligent refrigerators popular in the consumer sector.
As Digital Doughnut contributor Pragya Sugandha noted, enterprise IT leaders are increasingly looking toward edge servers, intelligent gateways, fob fabric nodes, stream data management, analytics and other advanced IoT solutions. Next-gen IT systems that take advantage of the power of the IoT can bring considerable value for companies, and it's important that decision-makers don't overlook these elements, despite their complexity.
"The industry will use edge computing more to build distributed applications that close the gap between data, insight, and action and lead to an actionable and measurable approach towards technology and organization's goal outcome," Sugandha wrote. "As the organization and industry move to IoT and computing at the edge evolves, it will eliminate centralized and linear technology models and distributed analytics architecture will become key to the ever-expanding IoT ecosystem."
Rising data transmission creates new security concerns
The IoT and other increasingly advanced systems all require and contribute to growing data transmission across the enterprise. Many businesses have already begun taking advantage of these activities, harnessing and analyzing their available data to provide insights into daily operations and other pressing processes.
However, the type of hyper connectivity being established in the current IT landscape also renews security concerns on the part of executives decision-makers and other stakeholders. With so many complex systems in place creating and transmitting data across the enterprise infrastructure, it's imperative that any gaps in security are pinpointed and addressed.
As Riverbed contributor Hansang Bae pointed out, this includes the business's relationships with third-party partners and other outsourced technological functions.
"Someone that is once or twice removed from your infrastructure being hacked makes you just as vulnerable as a nefarious internal actor trying to compromise your data," Bae wrote. "There used to be only so many ways one could gain entry to a system, but now with the explosion of devices and access points, these traditional defenses are simply not going to work anymore."
As infrastructure and connected systems advance, so too must enterprise security.
Video becomes the preferred communication channel
Changes are taking hold when it comes to a business's unified communications as well. While high-definition voice calling will remain a cornerstone of UC technology, many users are beginning to prefer one-on-one video calling and multi-party conferencing over traditional voice calls. Video can bring deeper connections, and enables participants to leverage unspoken cues like facial movements and body language.
As IT Pro Portal contributor Jon Loftin noted, video communications are being quickly implemented to support recruitment efforts, in particular. In fact, it's becoming rare for recruiters and candidates to meet face-to-face for initial interviews, as these are now conducted over high-definition video conferencing.
This same approach can be applied to teleworking, as well, enabling co-workers to communication and collaboration more effectively despite geographic barriers. Experts predict that video traffic will soon overtake voice traffic on corporate networks, meaning this trend toward video UC won't be ending anytime soon.
Advanced UC supports project management and agile strategies
In addition to recruitment and teleworking, enterprise decision-makers are also relying on their UC solutions to enable streamlined project management and agile working styles. As cross-departmental and company-wide initiatives become more common, systems that allow for productive, real-time communications will be essential. And as Loftin pointed out, UC will be the key to supporting agile projects that include team members from various business sectors.
"No longer are projects completed in silo, it is increasingly becoming the norm that the right people with the required skills are pulled from multiple departments to create the 'ultimate team' which has all the expertise needed to create a successful project," Loftin explained. "Logistically, this requires the ability to work across different sites and offices for the length of the project, to then return to working where the 'home department' is based once completed."
Advanced and complete UC systems will be crucial to enabling some of the most valuable next-gen IT concepts on the horizon. To find out more about how UC solutions will power emerging tech-driven initiatives, connect with the experts at Teo today.