Looking Ahead: Industry Predictions for 2021

Angie Mistretta
AppDynamics
Learn more about Cisco

This year introduced a number of new challenges for IT teams due to the influx of technology migration, increased demand for resources and rapid digital transformation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lessons we've learned in 2020 will be valuable for us to carry into the "next normal" we're expecting in 2021 and beyond, where work and life are likely permanently changed. As we reflect on the last year and begin to plan for the future, we expect to see trends like prioritization of the user experience and the dependence on IT teams continue, recognizing that what worked yesterday, may not work today or in the near future.

2020 Lessons

As the pandemic spread and people globally were forced to stay in their homes, technology became the only way many people were able to work, learn and stay connected. This put an enormous strain on IT teams to keep day-to-day life moving. As we saw in our own research, 81 percent of technologists stated the COVID-19 pandemic created the biggest technology pressure for their organization they had ever experienced and 64 percent said they were asked to perform tasks they had never done before. The pressure experienced by IT teams led to the rapid adoption of new technologies and techniques and we saw a growing interest in reducing siloed approaches to IT, with the business leaders working more closely with their teams to better understand their needs and help them resolve issues or make changes more efficiently.

The dramatic shift and dependence on technology also made IT more critical to businesses' success than ever before, especially as the digital user experience took center stage this year. The AppDynamics App Attention Index from 2019 found over the next three years, 85 percent of consumers expected to select brands on the variety of digital services they provided. Now, almost every business has had to figure out how to offer their services digitally. With 66 percent of consumers claiming they would avoid trying a brand known for delivering poor digital experience, it is vital now and into the new year that every business has strong, agile IT teams in place to keep everything running efficiently.

2021: What to Expect and How to Prepare

Looking at how the industry evolved this year to keep up with demands while delivering new experiences and innovation has taught us quite a bit. Looking forward, here are some of the changes we expect for the next year and insights on how IT leaders can prepare:

■ Observability will be key. Broader observability will be a strategic priority as companies develop more complex systems and expand their technology infrastructures. As businesses accelerate their digital transformation journeys in the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic, their environments have become more complex than ever. By using observability solutions to pull meaningful data from logs, metrics, traces and events — developers can shift from monitoring everything, to monitoring the data and insights that will impact business outcomes most significantly.

■ Taking risks will be encouraged. More organizations will encourage technologists to take risks to enable more rapid transformation for the user experience. Prior to 2020, the approval process for new business strategies took a long time, but due to demands for faster, more innovative approaches this year, businesses realized they were able to adjust quickly and be more accepting of new ideas.

■ Prioritization of automation and cloud. IT practitioners, especially when supporting their business' migration to the cloud, need five key things to ensure the process before, during and after goes smoothly: visibility, automation, consolidation, simplification and transformation. IT teams are being asked to do more with less, and, in 2021, the automation of digital processes will be what allows them to expand into the cloud with full visibility into data obstructions and the ability to mitigate these risks in a timely manner.

■ An integration of security and user experience. There is a growing demand for tying security to the application and user experience, which will only continue to be a top priority in 2021. Balancing frictionless security and user experience is always a challenge, but full stack observability gives businesses the ability to see where users are hitting roadblocks and disengaging, as well as where security hurdles need to be enhanced or reduced.

It is impossible to know for certain what new challenges or opportunities 2021 will bring, but by leveraging many of the key insights from 2020, we can make it easier to adapt. Business leaders and technologists across all industries came together this year to adapt, survive and hopefully thrive — we should celebrate this alignment and growth while preparing for the future by taking on new challenges and expanding the resources available to IT teams to continue our digital transformation journeys.

Angie Mistretta is CMO of AppDynamics, a part of Cisco

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Looking Ahead: Industry Predictions for 2021

Angie Mistretta
AppDynamics
Learn more about Cisco

This year introduced a number of new challenges for IT teams due to the influx of technology migration, increased demand for resources and rapid digital transformation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lessons we've learned in 2020 will be valuable for us to carry into the "next normal" we're expecting in 2021 and beyond, where work and life are likely permanently changed. As we reflect on the last year and begin to plan for the future, we expect to see trends like prioritization of the user experience and the dependence on IT teams continue, recognizing that what worked yesterday, may not work today or in the near future.

2020 Lessons

As the pandemic spread and people globally were forced to stay in their homes, technology became the only way many people were able to work, learn and stay connected. This put an enormous strain on IT teams to keep day-to-day life moving. As we saw in our own research, 81 percent of technologists stated the COVID-19 pandemic created the biggest technology pressure for their organization they had ever experienced and 64 percent said they were asked to perform tasks they had never done before. The pressure experienced by IT teams led to the rapid adoption of new technologies and techniques and we saw a growing interest in reducing siloed approaches to IT, with the business leaders working more closely with their teams to better understand their needs and help them resolve issues or make changes more efficiently.

The dramatic shift and dependence on technology also made IT more critical to businesses' success than ever before, especially as the digital user experience took center stage this year. The AppDynamics App Attention Index from 2019 found over the next three years, 85 percent of consumers expected to select brands on the variety of digital services they provided. Now, almost every business has had to figure out how to offer their services digitally. With 66 percent of consumers claiming they would avoid trying a brand known for delivering poor digital experience, it is vital now and into the new year that every business has strong, agile IT teams in place to keep everything running efficiently.

2021: What to Expect and How to Prepare

Looking at how the industry evolved this year to keep up with demands while delivering new experiences and innovation has taught us quite a bit. Looking forward, here are some of the changes we expect for the next year and insights on how IT leaders can prepare:

■ Observability will be key. Broader observability will be a strategic priority as companies develop more complex systems and expand their technology infrastructures. As businesses accelerate their digital transformation journeys in the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic, their environments have become more complex than ever. By using observability solutions to pull meaningful data from logs, metrics, traces and events — developers can shift from monitoring everything, to monitoring the data and insights that will impact business outcomes most significantly.

■ Taking risks will be encouraged. More organizations will encourage technologists to take risks to enable more rapid transformation for the user experience. Prior to 2020, the approval process for new business strategies took a long time, but due to demands for faster, more innovative approaches this year, businesses realized they were able to adjust quickly and be more accepting of new ideas.

■ Prioritization of automation and cloud. IT practitioners, especially when supporting their business' migration to the cloud, need five key things to ensure the process before, during and after goes smoothly: visibility, automation, consolidation, simplification and transformation. IT teams are being asked to do more with less, and, in 2021, the automation of digital processes will be what allows them to expand into the cloud with full visibility into data obstructions and the ability to mitigate these risks in a timely manner.

■ An integration of security and user experience. There is a growing demand for tying security to the application and user experience, which will only continue to be a top priority in 2021. Balancing frictionless security and user experience is always a challenge, but full stack observability gives businesses the ability to see where users are hitting roadblocks and disengaging, as well as where security hurdles need to be enhanced or reduced.

It is impossible to know for certain what new challenges or opportunities 2021 will bring, but by leveraging many of the key insights from 2020, we can make it easier to adapt. Business leaders and technologists across all industries came together this year to adapt, survive and hopefully thrive — we should celebrate this alignment and growth while preparing for the future by taking on new challenges and expanding the resources available to IT teams to continue our digital transformation journeys.

Angie Mistretta is CMO of AppDynamics, a part of Cisco

Related Links

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When AI Becomes the Corporate OS

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

The $600 Billion Wake Up Call

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Breaking Down Agentic AI Fragmentation and Complexity with Governance

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

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Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

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As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

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I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

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Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

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For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

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Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

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Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...