In recent developments, IDC has released its highly-anticipated FutureScape report, which documents insights into the future of the IT industry. In this article, we will delve into the key takeaways from IDC’s 2024 predictions, highlighting the profound influence that AI is poised to exert on the technology landscape and the way businesses conduct their operations.
Generative AI’s Renaissance: Sparking a Surge in Investments
The heart of this year’s predictions revolves around the emergence of AI as a groundbreaking inflection point in the technology domain. As a result, IDC anticipates that global spending on AI solutions will soar beyond the $500 billion mark by 2027. This substantial investment will lead to a remarkable shift in the allocation of technology investments, steering them toward AI implementation and the adoption of AI-enhanced products and service.
External factors shaping the global business ecosystem
IDC’s FutureScape 2024 research focuses on the external factors that will reshape the global business ecosystem over the next 12 to 24 months. These include:
- AI everywhere — Generative AI takes the spotlight
- The drive to automate — Maximizing efficiency and new opportunities
- Shifting tech regulatory landscape — Navigating risk and opportunity
- The digital business imperative — Competitiveness and outcomes
- Dynamic work and skills requirements — New work mode era
- Everything as a service intensifies — Transforming models to drive change
- Cybersecurity and risk — Building resilience against multiplying threats
- Geopolitical turbulence — Sovereignty under emerging fragmentation
- Economic uncertainty — IT malaise and market volatility
- Operationalization of ESG — Measuring and implementing sustainability
- Global supply chain resiliency — Push for diversification
The report also delves into the challenges that IT teams will face as they strive to define, build, and govern the technologies required to excel in a digital-first world. To gain a more detailed understanding of these predictions, let’s explore IDC’s top ten worldwide IT industry forecasts:
Prediction 1: Core IT Shift
IDC anticipates a rapid and dramatic shift in IT spending toward AI, impacting nearly every industry and application. By 2025, Global 2000 (G2000) organizations are expected to allocate over 40% of their core IT spending to AI-related initiatives, resulting in a double-digit increase in the rate of product and process innovations.
Prediction 2: IT Industry AI Pivot
The IT industry is poised to feel the impact of the AI watershed more than any other sector. Every company is racing to introduce AI-enhanced products and services and to assist their customers in AI implementations. For most, AI will replace cloud computing as the primary driver of innovation.
Prediction 3: Infrastructure Turbulence
The rate of AI spending for many enterprises will face constraints through 2025 due to significant workload and resource shifts in corporate and cloud data centers. Uncertainties surrounding silicon supply will be compounded by challenges in networking, facilities, model confidence, and AI skills.
Prediction 4: Great Data Grab
In an “AI Everywhere” world, data becomes a crucial asset that fuels AI models and applications. Technology suppliers and service providers have recognized this and will accelerate investments in additional data assets that they believe will enhance their competitive positioning.
Prediction 5: IT Skills Mismatch
Inadequate training in AI, cloud computing, data management, security, and emerging tech fields will directly and negatively impact enterprise efforts reliant on such technologies. Through 2026, underfunded skilling initiatives are expected to prevent 65% of enterprises from realizing the full potential of their tech investments.
Prediction 6: Services Industry Transformation
The emergence of “GenAI” will trigger a shift in human-delivered services related to strategy, change management, and training. By 2025, it is projected that 40% of services engagements will include GenAI-enabled delivery, impacting everything from contract negotiations to IT operations and risk assessment.
Prediction 7: Unified Control
One of the most formidable challenges for IT teams in the coming years will be navigating the maturation of control platforms. These platforms will evolve from addressing a few basic systems to becoming a standard platform that orchestrates operations across infrastructure, data, AI services, and business applications/processes.
Prediction 8: Converged AI
The current fascination with “GenAI” should not deter organizations from their existing AI investments. Organizations must contemplate, experiment with, and bring to production fully converged AI solutions that enable them to address new use cases and customer personas at significantly lower price points.
Prediction 9: Locational Experience
The accelerated adoption of “GenAI” will empower organizations to enhance their edge computing use cases with contextual experiences that better align business outcomes with customer expectations.
Prediction 10: Digital High Frontier
Satellite-based Internet connectivity will bring broadband access to every corner of the globe, bridging the digital divide and opening the door to a range of new capabilities and business models. By 2028, it is expected that 80% of enterprises will integrate LEO satellite connectivity, creating a unified digital service fabric that ensures resilient ubiquitous access and guarantees data fluidity.
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