The Softcat News Team
This year we surveyed over 1,500 organisations across 21 different industries to find out their biggest technology priorities for 2021. In a year that has seen severe and ongoing disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the findings give a snapshot of the current technology landscape and we can see some clear similarities in priorities for the year ahead.
Here are the key findings this year from organisations across the UK and Ireland:
Cyber security is ranked as the number one business technology priority for the fourth year running. 86 percent of industries say their focus is on keeping users, data and infrastructure secure in the face of a rapidly evolving threat landscape. The switch to home-working in March saw cyber security become the fastest growing UK start-up sector as organisations sought out new tools to improve their security posture.
In at number two, end user computing (EUC) holds its spot for the fourth year running. Enabling employees to work at their most productive is a primary goal for organisations, and EUC brings the full digital workspace to life, consolidating all systems required for the daily workload, wherever the worker is.
Investment in the data centre and cloud capabilities sits at number three, as we see the pandemic usher in the dawn of a new era for cloud adoption across both public and private organisations. Movement towards multi-cloud environments has gathered pace with organisations bravely reaching for new technologies with a more strategic emphasis.
Communication and collaboration tools climb to the fifth spot from 2019’s number seven position. As a result of the massive increase in remote working and the need to maintain performance, the internal communication landscape appears to be changing, with a greater reliance on efficiently communicating and collaborating remotely.
The focus on these top five priorities means that organisations are not investing in emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and AI. These are ranked second to last for the fourth year running. It appears that in the current climate, focussing on efficiently executing the day-to-day work and achieving business objectives is the priority, rather than exploring new ways of working.
