“In the next ten years, we will experience more digitization than in the last 40 years together,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the start of the Ignite 2021 developer conference. […]
“The digital transformation has never been as present as it is today,” Nadella emphasized in his opening keynote. The way companies sell products and services, the way they serve customers, market themselves, produce and deal with their employees – all this is in upheaval. Nadella named four key trends that he believes will fundamentally change every company in the coming years.
“We are experiencing a change in the way, when and where we work,” the Microsoft CEO noted. In addition, more and more people are asking themselves why they work. This leads to two challenges, which Nadella called the “hybrid paradox”.
Seventy percent of employees wanted more flexibility when it comes to home office and remote work. However, just as many employees would also like more personal contacts. If you want to spend a lot or little time in the office, you basically pursue the same goal: to work as concentrated as possible. Every company needs a new digital structure for collaboration, advises Nadella.
Digital and physical spaces need to be brought together. The aim was to strengthen the connections between employees, regardless of where they worked, while keeping a firm eye on the company’s mission. At the same time, communication between managers and employees must be optimized – especially in times of remote work.
It is also important that employees find a balance between their own well-being and effectiveness and do not have to do without their further development. “Productivity and flexibility are not mutually exclusive,” Nadella noted. Companies would have to respond to the wishes of their workforce, also in order to keep the so important specialists. It was noticeable that at the end of the pandemic, more people than ever before wanted to change their jobs.
Nadella observes that many business processes in the companies are currently being put to the test and rebuilt – in sales, customer service and production. “A comprehensive transformation of business processes is underway.“ New requirements are coming to the companies. For example, the reliability of the supply chain will be the key to keeping business operations running. In customer contact, omnichannel ranges and services would become more important. The manager also expects that sales and marketing processes will be more proactive than reactive by 2025. “In the future, every business process will be collaborative, supported by data and AI, connecting the digital and physical worlds.“
Nadella talks about the “next level of real-time hyperconnectivity” to overcome these challenges. This applies to the connection between individual companies as well as between consumers and providers. “Data and information must be able to flow unhindered,” demands the Microsoft CEO.
“Every company becomes a digital company,” Nadella predicts. The development of digital skills must be a top priority. For this, the companies needed the appropriate technical basis. At this point, the Microsoft CEO talks about a multi-cloud / multi-edge infrastructure and the corresponding tools with which everyone in the company could work on new solutions.
According to the Microsoft CEO, data processing in companies will be increasingly decentralized and increasingly embedded in the real world. For this, companies needed a distributed, intelligent and autonomous data processing structure that could be used to quickly create, manage and deploy applications anywhere. New tools could help to bring professional developers and subject matter experts closer together.
Nadella also assumes that the application models will change rapidly. Moving away from a centralized approach to distributed applications that run on the edge with new intelligent environment functions. “The share of industrial control systems that include analytics and AI capabilities will increase six-fold over the next four years,” predicts the Microsoft CEO.
Nadella sees end-to-end security as another central trend that will determine future digitization. “Cyber threats are the biggest threat to digital transformation and the No. 1 risk for every company,” warns the manager. With the increasing decentralization and the associated growing complexity of IT operations during the pandemic, the dangers would have increased further.
Cybercrime costs the global economy more than six trillion dollars every year. By 2025, the annual damage will increase to ten trillion dollars. “Every company needs effective tools for identity, security, compliance, data protection and administration,” Nadella recommends. “And they need a multi-platform, multi-cloud, zero-trust architecture.“
*Martin Bayer: Special field of business software: Business Intelligence, Big Data, CRM, ECM and ERP; supervision of news and title sections in the print edition of COMPUTERWOCHE.
