Forrester’s analyst team has released technology predictions for 2021 in the Asia Pacific region, indicating that CIO will be enhancing spending on technology.
Forrester Predictions
Most companies will become platform businesses to survive in the digital era. Twenty-five percent of firms will shift from experimenting to pragmatically connecting the ecosystems essential to their customers.
Chief marketing officers will assert control over the full customer lifecycle. CMOs will put the customer at the centre of everything they do: leadership, strategy, and operations. As a result, spend on loyalty and retention marketing will increase by 30 percent.
COVID-19 will reduce workplace engagement. The challenges that employees faced during the pandemic will extend into 2021, causing business innovation to drop in 25 percent of firms in Asia Pacific.
Chief information officers (CIOs) will embrace cloud-first and platform strategies for speed and adaptiveness. In 2021, 30 percent of firms will accelerate their spend on cloud, security and risk, networks, and mobility — including struggling firms looking to leapfrog and gain advantage coming out of the pandemic.
Zero Trust adoption in Asia Pacific has lagged its global peers, but the acceleration of cloud adoption and an explosion in remote work, as well as changing regulations and consumer behaviours, make it ripe for change. At least one government in Asia Pacific will embrace a Zero Trust cybersecurity framework in 2021.
“The pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation,” said Ashutosh Sharma, VP and research director at Forrester. “The current economic climate has increased the urgency for every enterprise to embrace technology as a strategic asset.”
