FeatureEnterprises are undertaking initiatives to modernise infrastructure, productivity, energy, sustainability, protect people, physical assets, data.
Technology was the business enabler of 2020, be it e-commerce, remote working, or solutions such as cloud-based technologies. We are going to see increased spending on hardware, software and services that help organisations manage and optimise performance. Spending will grow the fastest in the software and services space, in areas such as remote monitoring and analysis, as we see a shift to the fourth industrial revolution. And let us not forget cybersecurity.
Digital transformation is impacting every industry; organisations are using technology to drive new innovation, improve business agility, and streamline their operations, to reduce costs and become more agile. New business opportunities and capabilities are being unlocked as organisations digitise their operational models.
Enterprises are striving to undertake the critical initiatives required to modernise their facilities and infrastructure: specifically, improving productivity, reducing waste, improving energy resiliency, achieving sustainability goals, and, most importantly, protecting people, physical assets, and data.
From Dubai’s Smart City initiatives to smart airports and trains regionally, Middle East countries and organisations are accelerating investment in IoT to drive sustainable performance, optimise costs and operations, and enhance safety and security. Middle East and Africa IoT spend is set to grow by 80% from $7 billion in 2018 to $12.6 billion by 2021, according to IDC.
Another area of growth is data centers, which should see additional investments in 2021 as organisations focus on areas such as e-commerce. And Edge Computing will prove to be an up-and-coming area, as enterprises leverage 5G speeds for faster data processing.
By 2025 there will be over 80 billion connected devices, generating 180 trillion of data Gigabytes. Over the coming decade, companies will spend 232 billion dollars on artificial intelligence to manage and use this data.
We are seeing budgets shift to emerging technologies such as AI that will help them make the best of these increasing data sets, and a key part of that is Edge Computing. We expect more enterprises will be using technologies such as machine learning and robotic process automation over the coming five years, thanks to the roll-out of enabler technologies such as 5G.
Our focus is on helping our customers with their digital transformations and their sustainability goals. Digital transformation has the capacity to accelerate global, regional and national economic growth, promote job creation, and lead to the creation of new industries and technologies that will promote efficiency, agility and sustainability.
We are bringing our global know-how and our on-the-ground expertise to bear to help customers in the region effectively transform their infrastructure through EcoStruxure, our IoT-enabled, plug-and-play, open, interoperable architecture and platform. Open standards and interoperability are key for future-proofing any organisations’ enterprise technology.
