Five Predictions for 2022 From Jeff DeVerter, Chief Technology Evangelist

Automating processes

Doing more with data will manifest itself in wholesale adoption of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Processes are the palette; data is the color. Businesses have long-established processes for everything, and people function within those processes. As more and more data is consolidated through the process of digital transformation, it’s become easier than ever to integrate these bots into business processes. This gives us humans the freedom to do more engaging, fulfilling and challenging work.

IT everywhere

As people become more tech savvy, thanks to the forced growth of WFH and the emergence of more end-use tech tools, IT is now everywhere throughout the organization. 

While it’s true that knowledge workers have used IT assets throughout their existence, we are now finding that more solutioning is happening inside of the business, without specific direction from IT. Take Meagan Fleming, for example. Meagan, who works on the social media team at Rackspace Technology, took the tools already provided by IT and further developed them to create an electronic online intake form with an approval and tracking workflow. She did all of this without the need to consult IT. I think we can look forward to more of these types of initiatives in 2022, resulting in less death by email and more custom intelligent solutions developed by non-technicians. 

This type of solution building changes the relationship between IT and the business. IT must now take on the role of coach and curator for almost everyone in the organization, and move away from being the sole source of all things IT.

Intelligent technology

Building on the effects of data consolidation through digital transformation, companies will look increasingly at how to extract intelligent insights from their data. This extraction will take place through the widespread adoption of AI and machine learning. This will also be brought about by new tooling that makes creating AI solutions much easier, as announced at AWS re:Invent this year under the name SageMaker Canvas. Just as RPA brings the machines into processes, the creators of low-code AI and machine learning solutions will help create predictive solutions based on a company’s own data.

The importance of the intelligent use of data will continue to grow. We’ve lived in the never-delete-anything world for a while, but most enterprises don’t know what to do with their data or how to use it to drive business outcomes. APM and observability vendors are going to have a great year, but the biggest hurdle for most companies is how to actually implement and use these tools and their data lakes.

Rapid adoption of multicloud

As much as the hyperscale providers — AWS, Azure, Google and VMware— want to keep you in their own walled gardens, it is clear that we’re living in a multicloud world. And the notion that an enterprise must move everything to the cloud right now is tired and unrealistic. Look for companies to become more cloud-smart, examining their IT estate closely and intelligently choosing the best home for each application.

The talent war is over. Talent won.

Every IT department must accept hybrid and remote work as the new normal after COVID-19. Even so, it becomes a challenge to attract and retain outstanding engineers with modern skill sets. Make sure you caught that – attract AND retain. In 2022, companies need to go out of their way to court the employees they already have. There is no dearth of opportunity for anyone out there – it’s up to leaders to make sure that each employee feels as though they are a vital member of a winning team on an inspiring mission.

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