Data is key. Organizations collect and analyze vast amounts of data to gain as much insight into the market and processes as possible. To keep up with these trends, organizations must ensure that the underlying IT and business infrastructures can process and analyze all that data, regardless of where it is stored.
Oscar Wijnants, Country Director of NetApp Netherlands said, "In 2024, we see a number of trends when it comes to data. One of them is AI. Where AI was the word of 2023, we will certainly start to see even more AI applications in 2024, especially when it comes to processing and analyzing data. Organizations that make data work for them through AI applications will be more efficient and able to create more business value. In addition, cybersecurity is and will continue to be a trend. Organizations need to start focusing more on recovery in addition to preventing a cyber attack."
AI takes over with data instead of models
Organizations are increasingly adopting generative AI (GenAI) and adapting their business processes accordingly. The possibilities are endless. More and more organizations will focus on creating data pipelines to feed AI applications with information rather than using existing models of data. This allows the application to continue to learn from the latest information available, which in turn allows for automation and a more agile process.
Breaking through data silos
Organizations will begin to break silos between different data types with unified data storage, which combines all of a company's data types in on-premises and cloud environments. Companies now tend to work with separate streams for different types of data. These include customer, product, supplier and employee data. Outdated analytics platforms, computational models and storage systems create the possibility that maximum insights cannot be extracted from data. Unified data storage will help make enterprise data more accessible and find hidden connections between different types of data. Organizations will thus use their data better and be able to respond flexibly to changes in business environments and develop new insights.
Focus on IT that "just works"
Cloud is not the panacea that will solve all IT infrastructure challenges in 2024, either. As companies find that their cloud migrations stretch both time and budget, they will increasingly look for ways to optimize IT operations in hybrid and multicloud IT architectures. Achieving innovation goals requires a strong IT infrastructure to gain insights and automate more mundane tasks. Therefore, organizations will look for an underlying intelligent data infrastructure. This infrastructure combines unified data storage with integrated management capabilities for security and accountability within a single platform. This ensures that data can be more easily stored, managed and used regardless of which cloud services, applications and databases are in use.
Assume your data has already been hacked
Cybersecurity is and will be increasingly important. Ensuring that critical assets such as customer data and intellectual property remain secure remains an ongoing challenge. Organizations must therefore also start focusing on recovering from cyber attacks rather than just preventing them. After all, attacks will only intensify. Experts predict that by 2031 there will be a ransomware attack every 2 seconds, costing victims $265 billion annually. The biggest threat to a business after a cyber attack is not the theft of data, but the time and resources spent repairing systems and restoring data to resume normal business operations. To protect the most critical assets and ensure business continuity, we will see more investment in IT security for securely designed IT systems and investment in mitigating the effects of a cyber attack.
