IT trends 2021: Security as a central concern

As part of an annual study, Capgemini surveyed 144 executives across the DACH region in September and October last year. Most participants were from the automotive and public sectors. The companies surveyed were those with revenues generally in excess of €1 billion per year. Questions around IT budgeting, use of smart technologies and cloud, and key technology trends were examined. The survey also focused on the impact of the Corona pandemic on IT.

Few budget cuts

The question asked was how the Corona pandemic had affected investments in IT, for example. In view of the pandemic, major cuts in IT budgets would actually have been expected. In fact, however, only just under 15 percent of participants in Germany, Austria and Switzerland are reducing IT spending overall, which is roughly the same as the previous year. A larger proportion of respondents (around 27 percent) are freezing IT budgets. That is a good 5 percentage points more than 12 months ago. By contrast, the proportion of those increasing their budgets is still 48.4 percent, compared with 63.1 percent last year. Looking only at Switzerland, the situation is similar, but slightly more companies will have to cut their IT budgets this year than in neighboring countries. Investments were made in particular in the digitization of processes - for example, in ordering processes, service offerings, but also in production.

Non-European cloud services

When asked about the use of cloud services, it became apparent that non-European cloud providers currently have a head start on the market: They provide around 28 percent of the cloud-based IT services used by companies and public authorities in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. In contrast, only a good 23 percent are purchased from European providers. Almost 45 percent of the study participants who use cloud services from non-European providers want to increase their capacities with European providers in the coming years. They justify the shift primarily with data protection compliance and the desire to increase data sovereignty.

24 percent of large companies use smart technologies intensively

The use of smart technologies has increased slightly in the last 12 months, but is slightly below the previous year's level among large companies. It is mainly users from medium-sized companies with sales of up to one billion euros who have expanded their activities in the past year. A good 8 percent of them now use smart technologies intensively or very intensively. However, this rate is still low compared with the top 50 and top 100 companies, at around 24 percent.

Success balances of specialist and IT areas converge

CIOs prioritize the areas of application for intelligent technologies similarly to the previous year. Predicting the behavior of machines, customers or markets tops the list. They also appear to be rated more positively by users than complex solutions such as recommendation systems or predicting the behavior of machines, customers or markets. As in the previous year, CIOs consider the use of intelligent technologies in their company to be less successful than their business colleagues. Since their euphoria has waned somewhat, their assessments are now closer together.

Approval of regulation and external control increases in some areas

Last year, study participants overwhelmingly rejected government or external control in connection with smart technologies, preferring voluntary commitments. This has now changed slightly: For example, approval of government regulation of smart technology application scenarios, while still low, is slightly higher than last year. External verification of measures to protect learning systems against manipulation also now finds more supporters. At the same time, the development of a company's own ethical framework for the use of smart technologies has lost support.

Technology trends: IT trends 2021 focus on security

According to the study, the most important topic in IT trends 2021 is Production Safety and Production Security. Due to the increasing digitization of production processes and a number of high-consequence cyberattacks on industrial companies last year, risk awareness in this area has apparently risen sharply. In second to fifth place are predictive analytics, protection against threats from the use of IoT-enabled devices, DevOps, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) without the support of
smart technologies.

Source and further information: Capgemini