Go DACS this fiscal

April 1 – The D day for India’s corporate world is serious business amidst the usual April Fools’ Day jokes.

It is the day when business blueprint, technology roadmap and IT budgets are discussed by key stakeholders. And it is the month where the annual AGM have company’s priorities, 12-month agenda and employee KRAs cast in stone. 

The fiscal year of April 1, of 2019 to March 31, 2020 will be much different as IT budgets get earmarked for the next twelve months. As technology change marches ahead, it has an uncanny habit of walking or galloping a step too fast for CIOs and IT leaders to catch pace with in the moment. 

In the tech world, the age old jargon – SMAC (seems it’s been there for eons) will continue its fangs across the globe for analysts, vendors and all marketing collaterals. 

Social, mobility, analytics and cloud (SMAC) have been been and will be quite pertinent today and tomorrow.

However, let me introduce a new buzzword that might just be more imperative for tech OEMs, researchers, enterprise channel partners, CIOs, LOBs and everyone involved with technology sales and/or buy-in. 

Let’s call it DACS – Data, AI, Cloud and Security that will reign across this fiscal year of 2020 and many more years to come in India and across the globe.

Data: Data is all over the place for consumers and business users. The colossal numbers across on premise, datacentres, cloud environments, devices, apps, platforms, physical layers, virtual layers, and IoT seem to have a ‘no stop’ button. 

While structured/unstructured data is still a crucial talk point, data that is collected, optimized, analyzed, refined, secured and monetized with digital technologies will be gold for businesses. Else, it is difficult to find meaningful gold nuggets in the giant data mountain. Data-centric, data-savvy, data-first, data –x will be new jargons. And rightly so.

AI: It’s the new poster boy all seem to be experimenting with for real time customer experience and business benefits. Currently, whether AI is assisted intelligence or attempted intelligence is debatable. But, artificial intelligence is powerful to give real intelligence (real benefits) across industry types and use cases.

Will the AI bubble burst, people lose jobs and machines dominate IT infra? Time will tell. One trend is clear – Businesses that make smart and agile use of deep learning and machine learning under the AI umbrella will evolve faster and better than competition in their digital transformation journey.

Cloud: Multi cloud is the new form factor as businesses deal with one or multiple public cloud providers and different private clouds. Integration in a multi cloud world isn’t an easy job for tech OEMs and their implementation partners, but someone has to bell the multi cloud cat. 

Most technology vendors and cloud providers have a pitch ready about their interoperable solutions for organizations’ multi cloud journey. Hybrid cloud and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) will continue to reign for most organizations, but multi cloud will be multi loud in 2020 and beyond. 

Security: More data, more machines and more cloud calls for more sophisticated security technologies. The attack surface for hackers just got a bigger canvas to paint their notorious acts. Research shows a dedicated security officer (CISO or CSO) as a mandate for many businesses as they are expected to increase their security budgets and security headcounts in 2019. 

UEBA, cloud security, encryption, SIEM, and GRC will be on a CISO’s mind over plain vanilla firewalls and IPS of the past – though each bit of the security posture will be crucial as ever. 

Therefore, the time is right to stretch the overly used data-centric statement a little more.

Data is the new oil AI is the new soil Cloud is the new toil Security is the new foil 

So, DACS will be a great companion on your company’s digital transformation journey. Make seat for it. 

Wishing you and your organization a super profitable fiscal 2020!

Yogesh Gupta is Executive Editor at IDG Media