TechMarketView research theme 2018: Breaking the Boundaries

Every year TechMarketView chooses a theme that we believe sets the tone for the key trends that will determine the shape of the UK tech market and the fortunes of its players for the year and beyond.

In 2016, we were all ‘Surfing the Waves of Disruption’ as competition—especially from new market entrants—forced the pace of digitalisation in traditional business enterprises, including the technology industry itself. Then in 2017, we were ‘Unlocking the Intelligence’; this theme acknowledged the complexity of true digitisation, involving the need to extract value from vast swathes of data created by both legacy and ‘change the business applications’.

In 2018, TechMarketView’s research focus remains on digital transformation, as we watch the story further evolve. Our theme – Breaking the Boundaries – emphasises that, as organisations progress with their digital transformation agendas, they can no longer be insular. They must look beyond their organisational boundaries in ways that they never have before. To fully embrace the possibilities presented by digitalisation, enterprises and government organisations – and the ICT suppliers supporting them - must throw off the shackles limiting progression. They must look beyond their own four walls when it comes to skills & resources, to data, to technology, and to innovation.

With digital skills & resources scarce, creative ways to pull in digital talent must be considered. As well as traditional routes such as partnering (which need to become more innovative), that might also include the use of public freelance marketplaces or crowdsourcing. Such an approach will also allow the flexibility and agility to respond to rapidly changing digital requirements.

In a digital world, organisations are increasingly harnessing the power of data for competitive advantage. So, drawing on data from external sources – particularly if it is difficult for others to access – that can be exploited to advance organisational aims, is highly valuable. Those sources might be public, but they might also come from forming innovative – even exclusive - partnerships with data owners.

Gone are the days when all technology assets sat within internal datacentres. As organisations increasingly adopt as-a-service models, there is an increasing reliance on technology in the cloud. The internet-of-things adds another dimension. Now, the source of more and more data is the raft of sensors sitting on everything from shipping containers to street lights. As organisations adapt their modus operandi to take advantage of the data collected, they become increasingly reliant on third party technology sitting in far harsher, and less secure, environments than a server room. The supplier ecosystem within which ICT suppliers reside will become increasingly complex – with more potential points of failure.

And when it comes to organisations ensuring that their use of technology is advancing at an appropriate pace, innovation can also come from ‘outside’. For suppliers and end user organisations alike, drawing on ideas from academia, hackathons, or innovation hubs to keep ahead of the competition is increasingly common and will grow in popularity.

Crucially, to cope with these changes, our view is that traditional organisations – both end users and technology firms - must push their own boundaries culturally, and adopt an entirely different mindset. ‘Breaking the Boundaries’ has wide implications and the theme will be picked up in each of our research streams throughout the year ahead.

Over the next few days, TechMarketView’s Research Directors will be publishing the 2018 Predictions for their research focus areas: Enterprise Software, Infrastructure Services, Application Services, Business Process Services and in the verticals, Public Sector and Financial Services. They will each explain how our 2018 - Breaking the Boundaries - research theme applies to their area of the market. Today, we start with insight from our BusinessProcessViews Research Director, Marc Hardwick: see Predictions 2018: Business Process Services.

Posted by: Georgina O'Toole at 09:00

Tags: predictions  

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