Today, the Technology Industry, is an exciting place to be.

It’s constantly innovating and evolving rapidly to find solutions for complex business needs. Immense competition is impacting organizations from all directions and balancing the various pulls is a task by itself.

When we talked with the Technology Industry experts and leaders recently, we could notice a gradual shift in the way they saw major challenges from what they envisaged last year.

The Top 8 challenges that will have a deep impact in the 2020’s, are:

1. 1. Privacy, Data Governance, Ethics & Regulation
   2. Management of Big Data
   3. Finding Technology Talent & Realigning Jobs
   4. Digital Transformation of Enterprises
   5. Optimizing AI’s Potential & Risks
   6. Cloud Networks & Infrastructure
   7. Commercializing Technology Innovations
   8. Cyber Frauds & Deep Fakes

1. Privacy, Data Governance, Ethics & Regulation

Akin to precious metals, data is a hugely valuable resource. Many Tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter etc. gather data and employ it as a strategic business input to develop and monetize it for new revenue streams.

Further electronic monitoring of people at workplace or otherwise, interception of email and voice communications, merging of personal and professional databases, increasing hacking etc. are all raising ethical flags.

In the coming days, data-security (and breaches) will be a major challenge for every business. Even AI is perceived to be a facilitator of selective data-thefts, thus the solutions for protection will also need to be more intelligent.

The public perception of such applications is raising a lack of trust issue. Thus, data protection has become extremely critical inviting more government scrutiny, regulations and controls like GDPR etc., apart from penalties.

2. Management of Big Data

Enterprises are becoming highly dependent on big data and analytics to harness their business potential. The data capturing tools employed include many direct and hidden sources including browser & search history, shopping logs, mobile text and voice communications, subscription of apps, credit card payments, etc. Capturing such a huge volume of sensitive data and information, often infringing upon the user’s privacy, makes it a digital hazard of immense proportion, prone to accidental leakages and misuse.

It also has huge applications in manufacturing, research, marketing, financial analytics and banking, healthcare for optimising operations and process and predictive modelling and future planning.

Thus, securing the distributed and complex processing frameworks, which are primarily in the cloud, has also become very complicated.

3. Finding Technology Talent & Realigning Jobs

Great talent has always been rare; today its’ more so. Hidden and globally distributed, fiercely fought for retention by companies, the right talent can make a game-changing contribution to a technology company. Finding and hiring such talent is going to be a critical success factor for tech companies.

Remote and virtual teams are working in complex matrices, cultural integration and motivation are real issues for business continuity, particularly for start-ups. Virtually on-demand tech band-width, productivity, performance and key- skills are critical for innovation and implementation. Thus, there is no time to train and no real substitute for lateral hiring.

At another level, there is fear that automation, robotics and AI will reduce cost to take away lower level repetitive human jobs. While some believe otherwise hoping AI applications would generate strategic hiring, the fear is not going away. There could also be a movement to less stressful industries and role.

Obviously, the industry need to realign its structure and job matrices.

4. Digital Transformation of Enterprises

Most companies would be speeding up their digital transformation journey to become more agile and nimble-footed. There is a war out there for enhancement of process efficiencies, supply chains, customer experiences and lean systems for financial controls so that they can maintain their business edge with respect to their competitors. However, there is a steep learning curve for the legacy managed organization to successfully navigate this.

5. Optimizing AI’s Potential & Risks

Artificial intelligence, coupled with machine learning, has a huge business potential and is already being used widely. However, the AI is only as good as the development of its algorithms and the input of authentic structured data by the enterprises and users.

Further, there is a fundamental issue of bias inherent in its application. This is limiting its commercial usage to comparatively simpler applications and not the real high potential, high efficiency but riskier applications. AI applications also need tremendous caution and a balancing of risks and returns

6. Cloud & Infrastructure

With digital transformation of enterprises, greater usage of data-heavy applications, autonomous vehicles, interactive maps, smart city systems, AI, IoT, etc., coupled with rapid data-migration to private or hybrid clouds, there is an unusually high pressure on networks and telecommunication Infrastructure.

Almost all tech applications now need stable and ultra-fast internet infrastructure that’s lagging behind in various economies. The costs of enhancing these is huge and time-lines are long.

7. Commercializing Tech Innovations:

While the industry is coming out with numerous AI, AR, VR, blockchain and other technology innovations, the commercialization of these is not happening at the same pace. In view of the huge investment of time and money in their development, this is causing considerable stress and anxiety. The industry is struggling to find business models and solutions that can be rapidly developed, incubated and brought to the market.

Gauging market-demand and assessment of consumer perceptions for futuristic products and creating marketing strategies in a crowded and highly-competitive Technology market is critical.

8. Cyber Frauds & Deep Fakes

There is a strong perception that with the advent of technology, the possibilities of breach of cyber-security, hacking of personal information, on-line financial frauds would increase dramatically. Further, the introduction of deep-fakes has raised major ethical issues as it has the potential to destroy our old deep-rooted belief that “seeing is believing”. Now, it would be impossible to believe even after seeing an act on-line. This would greatly infringe on individual’s ability for decision making and is viewed as highly disturbing.

So, what can the Technology Industry do to survive the numerous challenges, stay relevant and grow as dramatically as it has been doing for the past many years?

Are there many choices except to continuously innovate, be agile and maintain a dynamic balance while grappling with the critical perceptions, shifting realities and unexpected disruptions in the global economy.