IT Trends & Technology

First National Technology Solutions, leading IT services and cloud provider, unveiled a new brand identity, redesigned website and will operate under a new name, FNTS.

Persistent security breaches, new investments in hardware, and a growing demand for cloud services are the primary drivers behind ongoing increases in IT security spending, according to a recent industry forecast.

In 2019, expenditures for security products are expected to reach $124 billion, up almost 9 percent from the $114 billion allocated for 2018. Recent high-profile attacks like Equifax, WannaCry, and Yahoo, to name a few, have prompted businesses to take a good, hard look at their security vulnerabilities and their abilities to detect and respond to increasingly crafty cyberthreats.

Whether it is to meet shifting business objectives, pursue revenue growth, or achieve greater operational efficiency, there is a clarion call to enterprises prompting the move of many of their workloads over to multi-cloud providers.

A recent Forrester Consulting report indicated that 86 percent of survey respondents are planning to move or have already moved many of their mission-critical workloads over to multiple cloud providers. Much of the demand is being driven by our reliance on IoT devices and the need for big data analytics, in addition to enterprise revenue goals and demands.

The technology ecosystem is always changing, making it imperative for businesses to embrace new technologies available to them. However, many organizations rely on legacy technology to run their operations making it extremely difficult to make the transition to a more modern and innovative system.

Research indicates that cybercrime damages will total $6 trillion a year by 2021—more than double the cost of just a few years ago. Part of that total comes from the growing success of ransomware schemes, which cost about $5 billion a year, up from just $325 million in 2015. These chilling stats point to one reality: Effective IT security measures are growing more important with every passing year.

As IBM iSeries celebrates its 30th anniversary, it continues to be a system of record for critical applications and data in sectors such as healthcare and manufacturing. The forward momentum of the digital business often means the server lags behind in the business backup strategy. This poses a myriad of challenges for users when it comes to avoiding downtime with iSeries backup strategies.

As overall IT budgets grow tighter, it becomes more challenging to improve IT security. In a recent IBM security study polling more than 2,800 IT and security professionals, 69 percent reported that funding for cyber resiliency is insufficient.

While a recent study by SAP Center for Business Insight shows that digital transformation in healthcare is growing, the slow pace of that growth can be directly attributed how healthcare organizations are grappling with some of the most significant IT challenges. While the use and plethora of digital platforms have become standard, the resulting big data, the need for interoperability and real-time analytics, as well as the need for greater mobility and security, are all setting the stage for more challenges moving forward.

In the digital age, a comprehensive multi-cloud strategy is necessary in order to remain agile and innovative as you scale. In fact, IDC research indicates that over 90 percent of enterprise-scale organizations will be using multiple clouds over the next several years.

As cloud and IoT revolutionize business, they continue to garner much attention, along with AI, as the biggest and most obvious trends in IT manufacturing. That makes it easy to overlook the ways that other emerging technologies are impacting the manufacturing landscape. Some of these, such as blockchain, are seen to have limited use in manufacturing, while others, such as digital twins and embedded technology, are conceptually difficult to grasp.

As the scope and pace of digital adoption continues to evolve and expand, business stakeholders now see it as imperative to survival and growth. Although total cost of ownership (TCO), operating expenditure (OPEX), and capital expenditure (CAPEX) are clear issues influencing digital adoption, it is the people sitting at the center of processes and technology that are the nexus of change.

For every business today, digital transformation is imperative for surviving and thriving in the digital age. However, support for legacy technology will continue to be a factor because transformations are gradual, and become a mix of the old and the new. We see this specifically around the management of multi-cloud strategies. In a recent VMware and MIT Technology Review report that surveyed 1,300 IT leaders, 62 percent of respondents cited the integration of legacy systems as their biggest challenge in multi-cloud.

This time of year always reminds me we have hit the mid-year mark to 2018. The first half of the year was very productive and we made a lot of progress toward our strategic initiatives. 

For the foreseeable future, the mainframe will continue to be a critical part of the business and operational growth of thousands of organizations that rely on mainframes with increasing workloads. That fact is borne out in the BMC Mainframe Research Report, showing that 91 percent of survey respondents predict that their mainframe workloads will continue to grow.

The central role of the iSeries for businesses, as well as the need to optimize its management, is constantly shown by numerous sources. According to the most recent IBM i Strategy and Roadmap, there are more than 150,000 companies worldwide utilizing the iSeries platform.