Data to become increasingly important in 2020

Data is only becoming increasingly important for business success, while also getting more challenging to manage. For large, established organisations with massive legacy databases and siloed systems, this could be a very dangerous combination.

Next year will be a milestone for many as 83 percent of enterprise workloads will have finally moved to the cloud and on-premises usage will drop by 10 percent. As these organisations migrate to the cloud, they’ll have both the opportunity and the need to get their house in order.

IT will run itself while data acquires its own DNA

Organisations are already drowning in data, but the flood gates are about to open even wider. IDC predicts that the world’s data will grow to 175 zettabytes over the next five years. With this explosive growth comes increased complexity, making data harder than ever to manage. For many organisations already struggling, the pressure is on.

Yet the market will adjust. Over the next few years, organisations will exploit machine learning and greater automation to tackle the data deluge.

Machine learning applications are constantly improving when it comes to making predictions and taking actions based on historical trends and patterns. With its number-crunching capabilities, machine learning is the perfect solution for data management.

Attention will turn to innovating and securing the edge of the network

5G is just the beginning, opening us up to a whole new wave of instant, rich and interactive on-demand services processed at the edge of the network, narrowing the gap between data and user, and powered by the Internet of Things (IoT). However, will the edge be able to keep up with the explosive growth of the IoT? Gartner predicts that by the end of next year there will be 5.8 billion connected devices on the market – a 21percent increase on 2019, which saw 21.5 percent growth from 2018. If this rate of growth continues, there will be more data on the edge of the network than at the heart of it. The microdata centres being built now to process all this data will soon become macro data processors.