As organisations stride towards digitalisation, re-evaluating their business continuity plans and defining how the Future of Work will look for them, cloud adoption is expected to surge. Almost all technologies being evaluated by organisations today have cloud as their pillar. Cloud will the key enabler for ease of doing business, real-time data access for productivity increase, and process automation.
Ecosystm Advisors Claus Mortensen, Darian Bird and Tim Sheedy present the top 5 Ecosystm predictions for Cloud Trends in 2021. This is a summary of our cloud predictions – the full report (including the implications) is available to download for free on the Ecosystm platform here.
The Top 5 Cloud Trends for 2021
- 2021 Will be All About SaaS
2020 was a breakout year for SaaS providers – and a tough one for a lot of on-premises software vendors. SaaS (or mainly SaaS) providers like Salesforce, Zoom, Microsoft had record growth and some of the best quarters in their history, while other mainly on-premises software providers have had poor quarters. SAP is even accelerating the transition to a 100% cloud-based business as their revenue suffers. The race to deploy SaaS tools and platforms is well and truly happening. Many of the usual ROI models and business cases have been abandoned as the need for agility – to drive business change at pace trumps most other business needs. Ecosystm data validates this
This trend will continue in 2021 – in fact, we expect it to accelerate. Most SaaS solutions (such as CRM, ERP, SCM, HRM etc.) are implemented by less than 30% of businesses today – which means the upside for the SaaS providers is huge.
- Hybrid Cloud Will Finally Become Mainstream
The sudden move to remote working in 2020 forced most organisations to increase their use and reliance on cloud-based applications. Employees have relied on collaborative tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and WebEx to conduct virtual meetings, call centre workers had to respond to calls from home – most if not all relying on cloud-based apps and platforms. This trend is set to continue going forward. Ecosystm research finds that 44% of organisations will spend more on cloud-based collaboration tools in the next 6-12 months.
But the forced adoption of these tools has also prompted many – especially larger organisations – to worry about losing control of their IT resources, including worries related to security and compliance, cost, and reliability. As for the latter, both Microsoft Azure and Zoom experienced outages after the pandemic hit and this has made many organisations wary of relying too much on a single public cloud platform. Ecosystm therefore expects a sharp increase in focus on hybrid cloud platforms in 2021 as IT Teams seek to regain control of the apps and services their employees rely the most upon.
- Carrier Investment in 5G Will Give Edge Computing a Boost
The gap between the hype around edge computing and the actual capabilities it offers will narrow in 2021 as 5G networks are built out. One of the most promising methods of deploying edge computing involves carriers embedding cloud capacity in their own data centres connected to their 5G networks. This ensures data does not unnecessarily leave the network, reducing latency and preserving bandwidth. This combination of 5G and the Edge will be of particular benefit to applications that until now have faced a trade-off between mobility and connectivity. Over the last twelve months, the major hyperscalers announced their 5G edge computing offerings, and some of the major global telecom providers have served as test cases by partnering with at least one hyperscaler and will likely add more over the next year. Expect this ecosystem to expand greatly in 2021.
Cloud environments can benefit from pushing computing-heavy workloads to the Edge in much the same way as IoT and provides a great platform for managing the edge computing endpoints. The flipside of pushing containers to the Edge will be the increased complexity and the fact that the number of attack surfaces will increase. Containerisation must therefore be deployed with security at its core.
- Stateful Applications Will Move to the Cloud with Containers and Orchestration
As organisations seek to migrate workloads and applications between platforms in an increasingly hybrid cloud environment, the need for “lifting and shifting”, refactoring and partitioning applications will increase. These approaches all have their shortcomings, however. Lifting and shifting an application may limit its functionality now or in the future; refactoring may take too long or be too costly; and partitioning is often not feasible or possible. A better approach to this task is to modernise the applications to make use of application containers like Docker, Windows Server Containers, Linux VServer and so on, to enable a faster and more seamless way to migrate applications between platforms. We also see container orchestration environments like Kubernetes and containerised development and deployment platforms like IBM’s Cloud Paks.
How these technologies are used to deploy stateful applications in multicloud environments will evolve. A raft of container management platforms, based on Kubernetes, are being released to simplify what was once a complex DIY process. New entrants will look to challenge the cloud hyperscalers, virtualisation giants, and Kubernetes specialists. The emerging features that previously required cobbling together third-party tools, like service mesh, data fabric, and machine learning, will speed up containerisation of stateful core applications. The deployment of containers on bare metal rather than in virtualised environments will also gather pace. The most challenging task will be delivering containerised applications at the Edge, forcing developers and platform providers to create inventive solutions.
- Serverless will take us a step closer to NoOps
As the application lifecycle speeds up and the distinction between development and operations shrinks, the motivation to adopt serverless computing will grow in 2021. While NoOps, the concept that operations could become so automated that it fades into the background, is still a distant goal, serverless computing will make a stride in that direction by abstracting the application from the infrastructure. Having seen the agility benefits of a microservices architecture, many DevOps teams will experiment with breaking services down further into functions. Moreover, the pay-as-you-go model of serverless will appeal to OpEx driven organisations. Expect stories of bill shock, however, as were seen in the early days of cloud adoption. While AWS Lambda is currently considered the serverless industry standard, it is likely that in 2021, Microsoft, Google, and IBM will ramp up efforts in this space. Each of these providers will build out their offering in terms of languages supported, event triggers, consumption plans, machine learning/AI options, observability, and user experience.
Ecosystm had predicted that in 2020, AI and analytics would be a top priority for organisations as they embarked or continued on their Digital Transformation journeys. What we saw instead was organisations collecting the right data – but handling more pressing matters this year. They focused more on cybersecurity frameworks, enabling remote employees and the shifts in product and service delivery. In 2021, as organisations work their way to recovery, they will re-evaluate their AI and automation roadmaps, more actively. Ecosystm Advisors Alea Fairchild, Andrew Milroy and Tim Sheedy present the top 5 Ecosystm predictions for AI & Automation in 2021.
This is a summary of the AI & Automation predictions, the full report (including the implications) is available to download for free on the Ecosystm platform here.
The Top 5 AI & Automation Trends for 2021
- AI Will Move from a Competitive Advantage to a Must-Have
The best practices and leading-edge technology-centric implementations, over the years gives a very good indication of market trends. In 2018 and 2019 AI-centric engagements were few and far between – they were still in the “innovation stage” as trials and small projects. In 2020, AI was mentioned in most applications, showcased as best practices. AI is currently a competitive advantage for businesses. CIOs and their businesses are using AI to get ahead of their competitors and highlighting these practices for external recognition.
That also means that it is a matter of time before AI becomes a standard practice – processes are smart “out-of-the-box”; intelligent applications are an expectation, not the exception; systems learn because that is how they were designed, not as an overlay. If your competitors are using AI today to get ahead of you, then you need to also use AI to catch up and keep up. In 2021, having a smart business will not get you ahead of the pack – it will move you into it.
- AI Will Thrive in Areas where the Cost of Failure is Low
While organisations will be forced to adopt AI to remain competitive, initial exploration of AI solutions will be in areas that they consider low risk. The Financial Services, Retail, and other transaction-oriented industries will use AI to drive improved personalisation, increase customer retention, and improve their ability to lower risk and combat fraud. These are process-driven areas, where manual processes are being enhanced and enriched by AI. Although machine learning and other AI technologies will help improve the speed and quality of services, they will not be a replacement for many of the more complex business practices that companies and their employees frequently overlook to automate. The ‘low hanging fruit’ to add AI to will come first, with various degrees of success.
There will be industries and processes where organisations will be more skeptical about adopting AI. If Google finds a wrong translation or gives a wrong link, it is not a big concern, unlike a wrong diagnosis or wrong medication. In areas that are crucial to our well-being – such as healthcare – AI does not yet have the trust for acceptance of society. There are still questions around ethics and algorithm concerns.
- Technology Providers Will Stop Talking about AI
Technology vendors highlight what they consider their key differentiators, that show that they are ahead of the game. When every piece of software and hardware is intelligent, vendors will stop talking about the fact that they are intelligent. This may not fully happen in 2021 – but ENOUGH technology will be intelligent for those who have not yet made their software smart to understand that they cannot talk about its intelligent capabilities as that just shows they are behind the market.
The good news is that the less we hear about AI, the more intelligent applications will become. AI is quickly becoming a core capability and a base expectation. Systems that learn and adapt will be standard very soon – but be wary, as significant market changes can break these systems! Many companies learned that the pandemic broke their algorithms as times were no longer “normal”.
- Enterprises Will Seek Hyperautomation Solutions
RPA will increasingly become part of large enterprise application implementations. Technology vendors are adding RPA functionality either organically or through acquisitions to their enterprise application suites. RPA often works in conjunction with major software products provided by companies such as Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft, and IBM. Rather than having an operative enter data into multiple systems, a bot can be created to do this. Large software vendors are taking advantage of this opportunity by trying to own entire workflows. They are increasingly integrating RPA into their offerings as well as competing directly in the RPA market with pureplay RPA vendors.
As the RPA offerings continue to mature, enterprises seek to scale implementations and to automate non-repetitive processes, which require more intelligence. They will seek to automate more processes at scale. They will demand solutions that process unstructured data, handle exceptions, and continuously learn, further increasing productivity. Intelligent automation typically incorporates AI, particularly voice and vision capabilities and uses machine learning to optimise processes. Hyperautomation turbo charges intelligent automation by automating multiple processes at scale – and will become core to digital transformation initiatives in 2021.
- Businesses Will Put “Automation Targets” in Place
2020 was the year that many businesses started seeing some broad and tangible benefits from their automation initiatives. Automation was one of the big winners of the year, as many businesses took extra steps to take humans out of processes – particularly those humans that had to be in a specific location, such as a warehouse, the finance team, the front desk and so on (because of the pandemic, they were often working at home instead). Senior management is seeing the benefits of automation, and they will start to ask their teams why more processes are not automated Therefore we will start to see managers put targets around a certain percentage of tasks automated in an area – e.g. 70% of contact centre processes will be automated, 90% of the digital customer experience for a certain outcome will be automated and so on. Achieving these numbers may not be easy, but the targets will change the mindset of people designing, implementing, and improving processes.
The pandemic crisis has rapidly accelerated digitalisation across all industries. Organisations have been forced to digitalise entire processes more rapidly, as face-to-face engagement becomes restricted or even impossible.
The most visible areas where face-to-face activity is being swiftly replaced by digital alternatives include conferencing and collaboration, and the use of digital channels to engage with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
For example, the crisis has made it difficult – even impossible, sometimes – for contact centre agents to physically work in contact centres, and they often do not have the tools to work effectively from home. This challenge is particularly apparent for offshore contact centres in the Philippines and India. The creation of chatbots has reduced the need for customer service staff and enabled data to by entered into front-office systems, and analysed immediately.
Less visible are back-office processes which are commonly inefficient and labour-intensive. Remote working makes some back-office workflows challenging or impossible. For example, some essential finance and accounting workflows involve a mix of digital communications, printing, scanning, copying and storage of physical documents – making these workflows inefficient, difficult to scale and labour-intensive. This has been highlighted during the pandemic. RPA adoption has grown faster than expected as organisations seek to resolve these and other challenges – often caused by inefficient workflows being scrambled by the crisis.
The RPA Market in Asia Pacific
There are many definitions of the RPA market, but it can broadly be defined as the use of software bots to execute processes which involve high volumes of repeatable tasks, that were previously executed by humans. When processes are automated, the physical location of employees and other stakeholders becomes less important. RPA makes these processes more agile and flexible and makes businesses more resilient. It can also increase operational efficiency, drive business growth, and enhance customer and employee experience.
RPA is a comparatively new and fast-growing market – this is leading to rapid change. In its infancy, it was basically the digitalisation of BPO. It was viewed as a way of automating repetitive tasks, many of which had been outsourced. While its cost saving benefits remain important as with BPOs, customers are now seeking more. They want RPA to help them to improve or transform front-office, back-office and industry-specific processes throughout the organisation. RPA vendors are addressing these enhanced requirements by blending RPA with AI and re-branding their offerings as intelligent automation or hyper-automation.
Asia Pacific organisations have been relatively slow to adopt RPA, but this is changing fast. The findings of the Ecosystm Digital Priorities in the New Normal study show that in the next 12 months, organisations will continue to focus on digital technologies for process automation (Figure 1).
The market is growing rapidly with large global RPA specialists such as UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and AntWorks experiencing high rates of growth in the region.
RPA vendors in Asia Pacific, are typically addressing immediate, short-term requirements. For example, healthcare companies are automating the reporting of COVID-19 tests and ordering supplies. Chatbots are being widely used to address unprecedented call centre volumes for airlines, travel companies, banks and telecom providers. Administrative tasks increasingly require automation as workflows become disrupted by remote working.
Companies can also be expected to scale their current deployments and increase the rate at which AI capabilities are integrated into their offerings
RPA often works in conjunction with major software products provided by companies such as Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft and IBM. For example, some invoicing processes involve the use of Salesforce, SAP and Microsoft products. Rather than having an operative enter data into multiple systems, a bot can be created to do this.
Large software vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce and SAP are taking advantage of this opportunity by trying to own entire workflows. They are increasingly integrating RPA into their offerings as well as competing directly in the RPA market with pureplay RPA vendors. RPA may soon be integrated into larger enterprise applications, unless pureplay RPA vendors can innovate and continually differentiate their offerings.
Last week industry leaders, SAP and Siemens, announced a partnership to bring together their respective expertise on creating integrated and enhanced solutions for product lifecycle management (PLM), supply chain, service and asset management, in a move that is expected to accelerate Industry 4.0 globally.
The partnership between SAP and Siemens aims to develop innovative business models to break silos between manufacturing, product development and service delivery teams to establish seamless customer-centric processes. It will provide users with real-time business information, customer insights and performance data over the entire product development cycle.
As the first step of this agreement, Siemens will offer SAP’s Intelligent Asset Management solution and Project and Portfolio Management applications and SAP will offer Siemens’ PLM suite Teamcenter software for product lifecycle collaboration and data management to manufacturers and business operators across the network – complementing each other’s solutions.
Ecosystm Principal Advisor, Kaushik Ghatak says, “The convergence of the Information Technology (IT) and the Operational Technology (OT) worlds is a must for companies to operate in the cyber physical world of Industry 4.0. Historically, these two worlds have operated in silos. This is a great partnership announcement aimed towards meeting the convergence goals by integrating the capabilities of Siemens (an OT leader), and SAP (an IT leader). Together they would be able to offer an exhaustive set of very valuable offerings in the Digital Supply Chain and Digital Manufacturing domain for customers worldwide.”
Ghatak says, “This is not the first such partnership for Siemens. A strategic alliance between Siemens and Atos has been in place since 2011. In 2018 the alliance was strengthened with plans to accelerate their joint business until 2020, with a focus on building innovative solutions by combining their capabilities. However, the difference this time is that SAP has very a deep and wide set of software offerings in the supply chain and manufacturing domains, which when stitched together with Siemens’ PLM solutions can provide true end-to-end digitalisation capabilities across the ‘Design, Source, Make, Deliver and Plan’ continuum of the value chain.”
Ecosystm Comments
Ghatak, however, cautions that while this is a great partnership announcement between two giants in their respective fields, they will need to collaborate actively on three key aspects for this partnership to deliver value for the customers.
- Product Development. Building-integrated solutions with heterogenous data models is not easy. It will require very open collaboration between their product development teams to identify the use cases and build solutions that can enable seamless information flow and actions across the different software modules owned by each.
- Go-to-market. Going to market jointly will need strong collaboration too. In terms of the agreement on customer account ownership, pricing, sharing of pre-sales resources and so on.
- Implementation. And, last but not the least, it will require collaboration to ramp up the implementation capabilities of the jointly developed solutions.
Google recently announced its ‘Google Cloud Acceleration Program’ to support SAP customers in simplifying their transition to the cloud.
Earlier this year, Google initiated a program known as Lighthouse, in partnership with system integrators, to streamline its customers’ SAP journeys to the cloud. The Google Cloud Acceleration Program is a progression of Lighthouse and will provide technical resource, blueprints, employee training and consulting services to partners and customers for migrating SAP to the cloud, as well as upgrading to SAP S/4HANA.
Google Cloud Acceleration Program Partners’ contributions
Several ISV’s and technology providers are already participating in the program. One of these providers, HCL Technologies, recently announced plans for a 5,000-employee division which will focus entirely on helping enterprise customers plan and execute large-scale migration of workloads and applications to Google Cloud. Accenture and Google set up a similar collaboration earlier this year.
Google’s Cloud Acceleration Program will be supported by partners such as Accenture, Atos, Deloitte, and HCL to help migrate workloads. In addition, these partners will also work alongside Capgemini, DXC Technologies, Hitachi oXya, Infosys, NTT, TCS, and Wipro, to create SAP centres of Excellence for Google Cloud.
Commenting on Google’s Cloud Acceleration Program for SAP platform, Principal Analyst at Ecosystm Claus Mortensen said, “Migrating SAP to the cloud has proven to be a notoriously complex task over the years. To help the migration to Google’s Cloud, Google launched its SAP Lighthouse program. The Cloud Acceleration Program can be seen as an evolution of Lighthouse.”
Mortensen added, “Google Cloud Acceleration Program is intended to make migration as simple as it can be under the circumstances – but I don’t think it will ever be easy to migrate SAP to the cloud – it is too complex a system to become simple to migrate. Whether it will succeed in convincing SAP customers to migrate much depends on how well the program partners perform.”
The primary aim of the Cloud Acceleration Program is to boost the adoption of Google cloud services and benefit customers with greater innovation, operational efficiency, and risk mitigation. Google has been active in promoting the programme and in the same spirit, Google recently acquired CloudSimple, a provider of secure, dedicated environments to run VMware workloads in the Cloud. Many organisations are running VMware in their on-premises environments to run a variety of workloads and this acquisition will boost abilities to run VMware on Google Cloud Platform.
As we recently stated in our predictions for ‘the top 5 cloud trends for 2020′, the ability for even the top cloud players to compete will increasingly come down to their ability to expand their service capabilities beyond their current offerings. Ecosystm expects these players to further enhance their focus on expanding their services, management and integration capabilities through global and in-country partnerships. One particular area might be partnerships focusing on Cloud migration between Clouds and from Cloud to on-premises. Google’s Cloud Acceleration program is a prime example of a framework, that has such partnerships in mind.
Speaking on the benefits of Google Cloud acceleration program for SAP customers, Mortensen said “cloud offers a lot of flexibility and agility that would be hard to achieve using an on-premises deployment. So, from that perspective, the Google Cloud Acceleration program should be good news to both new customers and existing customers, who see a benefit from migrating partly or fully to the cloud.”