28 January 2022
COVID-19 has significantly impacted the C&C (communication and collaboration) market. Yesterday’s trends fell into oblivion, paving the way for modern solutions. Preliminary forecasts of Fortune Business Insight show growth of the C&C industry with a CAGR of 13.4% from 2021 to 2028. It is caused by the global digitalization of businesses and the gradual transition to new collaboration models. Gartner reports that global spending on IT exceeded $4 trillion in 2021, and this figure will grow by 5.5% in 2022, reaching $4.3 trillion.
As expected, SaaS technology turned out to be the leading trend. Its capabilities help develop corporate, medical, entertainment, commercial, IT, and other products in current conditions. Cloud technologies are the future, which was confirmed by 88% of respondents by O’Riley, who transferred their IT products to remote servers. It became real due to the loyal pricing of SaaS developers. Zippia says that 39% of successful providers have a flexible distribution model. So, two main factors affect the price: the functionality and the frequency of using the product.
We have crossed the threshold of 2022 and entered the rapidly developing stream of IT innovations. Rocketech experts have studied the latest forecasts for the coming period and prepared a detailed analysis of technological trends in the C&C market up to 2025. So, we present the TOP-5 priority areas in IT development for the next three years.
Cloud Computing
Gartner’s report suggests that about 45% of corporate budgets will be spent on paying for public clouds by 2026. It is a large amount, considering that only 17% of budgets were spent on these platforms in 2021. In total, the revenues of companies providing this service will exceed $482 billion in 2022. It includes not only business clients but ordinary users who use cloud storage on their devices for personal purposes daily. Market giants have already understood the prospects of SaaS and have been investing a lot in this technology over the past 2 years, receiving a good income from digital services. For example, Apple, which has always declared itself as a manufacturer of the best smartphones and tablets, has changed the vector and aimed at conquering the cloud services market, which brought the company about $18 billion in the third quarter of 2021.
Hosting Tribunal states that more than 94% of companies use the cloud already. Some of them combine local products with virtual ones, but the fact is that dependence on cloud computing and storage is increasing. Analysts predict that the global volume of virtual data hosted on servers will exceed 100 zettabytes in 2025.
Everything-As-A-Service: The #1 Business Trend
Regular cloud-based application services will hit $172 billion in 2022, according to Gartner forecasts. At the same time, the total value of the industry will exceed $482 billion. Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) is a fundamentally new kind of cloud service. It combines all popular solutions:
- PaaS (Platform as a Service);
- SaaS (Software as a Service);
- IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service);
- BPaas (Business Process as a Service);
- DaaS (Desktop as a Service);
- CaSS (Content as a Service).
Perhaps it is the next step in the development of the service sector. IMARC Group believes that the cost of XaaS is likely to exceed $388 billion in 2024. The original purpose of the technology is to combine all popular modern IT solutions. With cloud services, it will become possible in the next five years. Constant investments and community interest are pushing this area to rapid development, demonstrating the involvement and demand for this tool in the market.
The idea of XaaS suits small, medium, and large businesses. It combines the virtual infrastructure of companies into a single system, seamlessly integrating ERP, CRM, WMS, and other platforms with each other. The modern trend towards digitizing everything increases public interest in XaaS solutions. A wide audience is also positive about such innovations. Users appreciated the approach to digitization and rebranding of tech giants like Apple and Facebook: in 2021, the former relied on the popularization of virtual services, and the latter integrated all the company’s products into a digital metaverse. How effective will these innovations be for their financial well-being? Only time will tell.
Cryptocurrency and NFT
NFT is rapidly gaining popularity among artists: writers, musicians, photographers, designers, etc. If the concept of NFT was considered fantasy back in 2011, now we can find this trend even in video games. NonFungible reported on the total sales of tokens in more than $18 billion, which accounted for 1.5 million different commodity items. The average purchase check did not exceed $600, which is not so much in terms of Ethereum. Entrepreneurial software and game developers are now exploring a new type of monetization. Even the father of Fable, Peter Molyneux, has returned from obscurity with a new business simulator based on token trading. Although his statement was met with skepticism, he launched a hype wave. In addition to the huge revenues from the sale of digital goods, companies that plan to release projects with NFTs in 2022 risk losing consumer loyalty. The audience reacts negatively to such an aggressive digital entertainment monetization policy, which in recent years has often led to strikes against publishers such as Electronic Arts or Ubisoft and their projects.
As for cryptocurrency, the hype around it won’t stop. Miners are still buying top-end hardware that requires enormous energy consumption, leading to tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Manufacturers of video cards and processors are trying to deal with the mass hype, but so far with no success. If the mining trend does not stop in the coming years, the world will face a shortage of semiconductors. The first alarm bells sounded in 2021 when shipments of new Apple and Samsung smartphones had to be frozen due to the lack of components. In general, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and tokens may become new leading technologies in the financial sector, but only with a thoughtful approach to their development.
Distant Perspectives: WFH in 2022–2025
The COVID-19 pandemic has swept the world, locking people into their homes. Since the economy and the financial well-being of the workers were under pressure, companies were forced to digitize their business processes and adapt them to the new reality. Among the 2.6 thousand respondents of Global WorkPlace Analytics, 88% switched to a remote work format during the pandemic, and 31% practiced WFH even before COVID-19. The trend towards the digital transformation of business is still ongoing, and entrepreneurs who have changed their working formats report on the improved efficiency of their enterprises in 2020-2021. The initial negativity reduced gradually, and people understood the prospects and benefits of WFH. Of those surveyed, 68% said they were satisfied with their job success despite the remote work model.
The WFH trend will continue in the coming years and will be practiced by most companies with a modern business outlook. The requirements for vacancies regarding the place of residence are gradually disappearing, and recruiters willingly arrange video interviews for people with disabilities and hire them. The world is changing, boundaries are blurring, and prejudices are disappearing. IT products open up new capabilities for employers, candidates, managers, and workers. In 2022–2025, new work models will be developed. Local offices will gradually move to the cloud to ensure high-quality communication. For example, advanced app development companies have almost completely abandoned the regular workflow, transferring all organizational, communication, and operational processes to the cloud. WFH is the future, and modern digital technologies are its basis.
Cybersecurity 2022: Fear or Paranoia of Users?
According to Better Cloud, on average, companies use 110 SaaS apps to organize their workflows. Of the 500 respondents, more than half believe that the main problem of cloud solutions is too accessible information. Simple manipulations allow anyone to gain access to corporate data. Although, only 28% of harmful actions are committed purposefully, and 72% of leaks occur through negligence or accident. These figures relate only to the business field. In the daily use of cloud services, regular users often “voluntarily” provide information about themselves to attackers. Contrary to common sense, most workers ignore even simple rules of online behavior. Guess why there are so many complaints about the theft of money from cards, account hacking, and so on?
Cybersecurity is a trend vector in IT for the next decade. Blockchain, two-factor authentication, and backup accounts are only part of the solution because data may be stolen even without logging into the system. Ideal models for protecting corporate systems, castle-and-moat and zero trust, are not always applied in IT products, increasing the risk of information theft. Blockchain-based security complexes will eventually create a secure network of connections where parsing, tracking, etc. won’t work.
Let’s Summarize
The modern IT world is very fast-changing. Yesterday’s trends lose relevance in a matter of weeks, and tomorrow’s seem like a pipe dream of a science fiction writer. One thing is for sure: Rocketech experts are always on the lookout for innovations and use the best of them in development. Do you want to stay trendy? Order C&C solutions for your business by contacting our manager and entrusting your tasks to professionals.