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Welcome to the Trends Report 2024, which draws on the experiences and market intelligence gathered by our experts during the course of a year that has seen increasingly rapid technological change. We have drilled down into their collective knowledge and identified the five most significant trends we think will dominate strategic C-suite discussions around information management, data capture, the role of AI and the IT infrastructures that will enable businesses to capitalise on the power of new technologies in 2024.
Did you know 25% of people wish they had more knowledge of AI.
Contents
/00 Welcome
Phil Hawkshaw, EMEA Director of Technology & CTO Office
Humanising the Digital Experience
/02 Everything AI:
Generative AI will help businesses unlock data and maximise organisational intelligence
/03 The Green Dawn:
Shining a spotlight on sustainable working practices in IT and technology
/04 Smart Connectivity:
The Rise of IoT is Changing the World
/05 Reshaping the Workplace:
Employees Demand More From Decentralised Work
/06 Conclusion
Trends Report 2024
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Increasingly, emerging technologies are becoming mainstream in solving the business challenges that this empowered workforce is bringing to the table. AI embedded in IoT devices, AR used to enhance interactions and collaboration, and cloud-based applications and virtual desktops, are all seen as key to enabling an employee in a seamlessly connected, decentralised workplace. Some Insight clients are already using them in advanced ways to provide their people with tools that transform workplace interactions. For example, the following case study explains how Insight has helped Devon Training Hub – part of the NHS in South West England – to use AR to enhance and streamline care services delivered by its staff. However, our experts suggest that even if the first deployments have seen the light of day among early adopters, widespread deployment of these technologies is still some way off. And it does depend on agile infrastructures, capable of storing and analysing IoT data, and of providing data and services to AI and immersive technologies – all of which makes the cloud an ideal candidate to meet these challenges.
Open up the door and see what's on the other side.
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TAKE THE LEAP & NEVER LOOK BACK
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In some respects, there is an ongoing compromise for businesses in the tension between security and usability. The point of maximum security is always going to be the point of maximum un-usability. The best approach is to try and achieve strong security through a highly aware workforce, the layering of multiple detection and mitigation mechanisms, and adopting the principles of least privileged access – all while maintaining as much usability as is required for people to work unhindered in a hybrid space. Insight’s preferred approach is to engage early in the process of adopting these new technologies and help the client understand the actual problem they are trying to solve before considering the best solution. The focus should always be on employee experience and user-centricity. Ultimately, technology only makes sense if it serves relevant and specific purposes for the people who are going to use it. The entire experience must be thought through, combining a multi-device-first approach, and designing applications and services to be lightweight and stateless. Technology should serve inter-employee relations and support managers and leaders, enabling them to create group dynamics – such a key element in today’s drive for greater corporate efficiency.
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Moving services to the cloud is one way to achieve a device-agnostic virtual infrastructure – essential in a decentralised landscape of multiplying and diverse devices. Another is to place less importance on device standardisation and focus instead on deploying device-independent applications – reflecting the consumer experience and expectations of applications in daily life. But this trend also creates layers of complexity for companies, who must continue to prioritise data security and ensure network availability as devices proliferate and access becomes less dependent on location than ever. Our experts caution that a heightened level of expectation in terms of security can also be a brake on open, all-encompassing collaboration. However, technical solutions are emerging to facilitate auditing and apply automatic security rules according to content. In addition, authentication and identity verification are moving towards a new generation of secure ‘password-less’ solutions. This type of data security means that businesses can meet the new challenges of generative AI, for example, which can only be effective in an environment hosting large amounts of data, with the right level of security. Despite the speed with which it is happening, this transformation of the workplace into a hybrid, highly connected environment is also an opportunity for companies to deliver a more flexible employee experience overall. Historically, remote working schemes have tended to focus on how to connect users with central office in order to access resources. The move to hybrid working allows organisations to focus instead on building a more decentralised ‘work anywhere’ infrastructure, that gives their staff more flexibility and allows them to build a secure and consistent one-policy environment.
/01 Two Worlds Collide:
Welcome
More and more, societal shifts are driving the adoption of these emerging technologies. 2023 may go down as the year that AI entered mainstream business. However, 2024 will be seen as the year we focused on unlocking the value of one of an organisation’s most valuable assets: its data. The implications are being felt at all levels of business, from the CIO and their colleagues to the customer and end-user interface. Customer expectations of streamlined experiences are higher than ever – and employees share those expectations of the systems and technology-enabled efficiencies that will help them to be more creative and productive in their work. Across these five trends we consider the impact on society, businesses, employees and customers, whose wants and needs heavily influence their direction. From the rise in ‘phygital’ consumers, IoT and AI, to how organisations balance sustainable working practices with an ever-growing decentralised workforce, our focus is on advising, guiding and steering you through these complexities. Whether it’s identifying where changes need to be made or how to maintain these technologies and ways of working, we aim to help every step of the way. In anticipation of a year of innovation, in which technology will play a central role in the modernisation and digitalisation of every area of the business, we look forward to continuing the transformation journey with all our clients throughout 2024 and beyond.
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Phil Hawkshaw
EMEA Director of Technology & CTO
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/07 Meet Our Experts
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Adrian Gregory, Insight EMEA President.
EMEA Director of Technology & CTO Office
As EMEA CTO, Phil and his team of experts are responsible for the technology and business solutions strategy for Insight's clients in EMEA. Having being in the industry for 30 years in a mixture of operational, engineering and client-facing roles, and with a passion for learning and problem-solving using the latest technologies available, Phil understands the challenges clients face, selecting and building solutions with the best tools, processes and capabilities around technology, ensuring businesses succeed.
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Businesses are under intense pressure to speed up their digital transformation. This pressure is being applied at every level. Delivering a great digital customer experience has become a strategic imperative rather than an abstract concept, driven at a cultural level by customer expectations of a seamless hybrid world which straddles the virtual and the physical.
Two Worlds Collide:
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Explore this topic
These technologies can only achieve a positive societal impact if they are designed with goals of equity and inclusion in mind. Users and stakeholders from all backgrounds must be involved in the design process, while ensuring that ethical and social issues such as privacy, security and consent are addressed. If this happens, AR and VR can help to humanise the digital customer experience – and create a more inclusive and fair society. If the overwhelming trend is the acceleration of digital transformation, applying new technologies at speed could also lead to customer experiences that are homogenised rather than natural and flexible. Businesses must continue to keep focused on the human being in the equation rather than the technology. Digital customer solutions that meet this primary requirement will have to be secure, compliant with regulations, and safeguard user privacy. In addition, cultural adaptation with buy-in from all stakeholders will be as important as technological advance.
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But what if the risk is that customers who are not, for a variety of different reasons, able to keep up with the speed of digital transformation, and access the new hybrid world? Businesses must find digital customer experience solutions which will bring them into the fold too, rather than leave them stranded and disenfranchised. This is where we expect emerging technologies, such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), will play an increasingly important role in digital customer management. They can be implemented to break down barriers such as location, income and education, rather than reinforcing them – such as making cultural and educational experiences accessible that might otherwise be unaffordable or opening up remote work opportunities in areas with limited job prospects. Immersive technologies can build empathy through simulation, for example, allowing users to understand the different perspectives and experiences of customers and colleagues, reducing bias and prejudice and promoting diversity and inclusion. They can improve access to education, healthcare, employment and entertainment. And they can create new communication channels which will have a profound societal impact, connecting people via routes and interactions that, while digital, are also more natural and engaging than traditional online platforms.
There is also a political pressure on businesses to transform digitally. As part of its Digital Compass, for example, the EU has set a target for 90% of SMEs to achieve at least a basic level of digital intensity by 2030. This means that the way they apply IT to supporting their business will suggest an ability to operate efficiently and handle more processes in evolving environments. By then, the EU believes 75% of businesses should be using cloud services and AI and be exploiting the value of big data. Our experts at Insight have seen how, in their efforts to maintain the right balance, businesses can be tempted to move from a qualitative, experiential customer relationship mode in which the focus is on the quality of the relationship, to a quantitative, purpose-driven one motivated by transactional outcomes. While digitalisation can accelerate the process of interactions, it should never compromise an organisation’s ability to imagine, innovate and manage events that standardised and digitised processes fail to anticipate. This balancing act is well illustrated by Insight client ACCA, the global body for professional accountants – an organisation which embodies the need for a 24/7 unified experience which allows members to engage with the organisation and work, regardless of where they are in the world. Here, Insight modernised ACCA’s IT infrastructure and introduced Microsoft’s Azure to create a managed desktop environment, giving members and end-users across the globe a consistent, interactive experience.
A pulse survey carried out by Global Consumer Insights found that 50% of customers expect to continue shopping in the physical world. And recent research from Zendesk suggested 60% of customers think experiences should flow naturally between physical and digital spaces. Today, for example, most of us take online banking for granted, and are comfortable with managing tasks such as money transfers or credit card applications seamlessly via an app. At the same time, we expect to be able to take a complex transaction into a branch when we require human interaction or advice. All hail the ‘phygital’ consumer, equally comfortable in a virtual and physical environment, and a huge influence on the evolution of an increasingly merged landscape.
The EU has set a target for 90% of SMEs to achieve at least a basic level of digital intensity by 2030.
The EU believes 75% of businesses should be using cloud services and AI.
This transformation is also driven by organisations shifting their customer-facing businesses from the physical to the virtual world. But it is also a response to a wider societal shift in favour of the digitally aware customer. While this shift creates almost limitless opportunities for businesses to get closer to their customers thanks to the constant collection and analysis of data at every touchpoint, it also carries risk. How can interactions with customers and employees remain empathetic and emotionally intelligent, while digitalisation drives automation ever deeper into the relationship itself?
The mission to unlock the value of corporate data and turn it into organisational intelligence has long been a strategic imperative for businesses, even if the tools to enable it have been slow to emerge. In that context, the arrival of generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI) – AI that can create new content based on the data it learns from – at the heart of information management is a game changer.
Everything AI:
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Our experts anticipate that maximising organisational intelligence with generative AI technology will be one of the most significant trends for clients throughout 2024. This is partly because AI has become a mainstream topic of conversation at every level of the business – rare enough for a piece of IT terminology. Awareness of what it can enable, and how far it is already embedded in operational processes, is high. But a more strategic force is also driving this trend: how to scope a streamlined arc from raw data to the creation of AI, which drives apps that deliver corporate intelligence. The impact of this trend will be felt in all corners of the business. Increased automation and efficiency, improved decision making, the development of new products and services, and enhanced experiences for customers will be among the most visible benefits.
Gen AI Will Help Businesses Unlock Data and Maximise Organisational Intelligence
But it will also allow us to look at ROI in a new way, not just by reducing costs and speeding up the realisation of value, but also by enabling the discovery of new value through new products and features. The focus on automation will remain, but gen AI takes us beyond workload replacement to a point where we can re-evaluate the nature and scope of the work. And it can enhance our capacity to solve known problems – and extend that into the discovery and resolution of challenges we did not know existed, but which unseen, might have been restricting the flexibility and evolution of the business.
With AI so ubiquitous, its value to business is growing. But businesses must be able to trust their data and stabilise its use in AI-enabled environments – and this is where organisational intelligence based on gen AI will change the game completely. Organisational intelligence – a company’s capacity to harness all its available knowledge, regardless of the nature of the data, and use it to make decisions about known and unknown situations – will be essential in sustaining competitive edge. Momentum will switch from a dependence on ‘normal’ AI-based applications, which use traditional AI to perform standardised tasks, to gen AI-based intelligent applications, which use a Large Language Model (LLM) to generate new content from data patterns they have learned. Insight’s expertise in the emergence of gen AI comes from first-hand experience. As a business with more than 13,000 teammates worldwide, we have built a strategy that enables all our employees to benefit from this new technology. This project had three main goals: to eliminate the toil from employee workdays, explore what gen AI could do for other organisations, and serve our clients better with their own gen AI solutions. We aimed to see a gain in employee productivity, with more time available for higher-value work, and to complete a project that would showcase Insight’s capabilities in all aspects of gen AI deployment, based on lived experience. Throughout the project our priority was to ensure the protection of private company data without compromising the potential benefits of the technology. By choosing Microsoft Azure OpenAI as our enterprise platform and establishing an internal policy based on constraints around the use of our company data, we were able to deploy a private instance that would not feed prompts or data back into the public gen AI model.
There is also an issue around ethical AI, which has to be addressed at both government and business levels. The misuse of AI and data can have unwanted repercussions. According to the United Nations Development Programme, some 50 countries around the world have adopted national AI strategies. While regulation is nascent, these strategies reflect concerns around the economic, social and ethical implications of advancements in AI. Businesses should also establish clear policies and protocols to govern how they use AI in their organisations, ensuring that it aligns with ethical standards and societal values. The real value of AI lies in data and how it's leveraged in a particular context. As AI learns and evolves from the data it processes, safeguarding this data becomes paramount. There are four ways in which Insight can help clients to streamline their adoption of gen AI technologies, minimising risk and ensuring that they truly enable the business to capitalise on the value of its data:
Envisioning AI: helping businesses to understand the correct AI use cases and appropriate AI solutions for their unique needs and circumstances. Accelerating AI: assisting clients with the creation of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for an AI application that can quickly demonstrate the potential value of AI technology on a specific use case, reducing the technical debt by ensuring scalability. Operationalising AI: making sure that solutions are properly integrated into the existing workflow, handling the planning, deployment, and monitoring of AI systems so that they deliver the desired business outcomes without disrupting existing processes. Continuous Adoption of AI: helping clients with the correct adoption of AI applications, taking into consideration all risks and necessary cultural shifts, and steering the business through a seamless transition with minimal disruption..
/02
Our solution – InsightGPT – was rolled out to teammates in just eight weeks. With feedback, we were able to fine-tune it and identify use cases. For example, the HR team have been able to save between one and two weeks of time by analysing and aggregating data in new ways. Our sales team saved more than 100 hours by using the new tool to categorise and sort a large data set. Future projects lined up for InsightGPT include chatbots, contract writing and other roles. Using our experience, and our constant acquisition of new learning, we can assess a business’s current AI landscape, modernise its existing solutions and most importantly help identify high-value opportunities for using gen AI in the organisation. In addition, Amdaris, an Insight company, can extend in-house teams to help plan and implement the gen AI projects which will maximise the value of an organisation’s data. As our delivery centre, Amdaris brings to the partnership all the benefits of skilled expertise in software development, data solutions, strategy and consulting, managed services and full product development. There is, of course, a wider but essential discussion to be had around the ethical challenges and problems which AI can prompt, and the security risks it can create. While AI is clearly at the bleeding edge of technology, this does not have to mean more complex cybersecurity models. Insight applies the simple principles of the CIA triad – confidentiality, integrity and availability – to every project. Confidentiality looks at how to ensure private data stays private, integrity is about making sure data is correct and accurate, and availability focuses on data being available to users when they need it. Ultimately, the AI revolution isn't just about implementing new tools. It also involves comprehensively rethinking and updating cybersecurity policies and protocols. Our experts have seen instances where businesses have effectively used AI tools but haven't thoroughly assessed or updated their security measures to accommodate the introduction of these new technologies. This could expose them to novel security risks, such as prompt injection, where malicious instructions can be embedded into a gen AI model's input, causing harmful outputs.
The adoption of gen AI doesn't have to mean job losses or a negative impact on workers. When properly implemented, it can automate mundane tasks, freeing up employees to focus on more strategic, creative and value-adding tasks, enabled by intelligent applications. We believe this transition should happen smoothly, equipping workers with the necessary skills and understanding to thrive in a gen AI-powered workspace.
/01 /02 /03 /04
With more than 13,000 teammates worldwide, we have built a strategy that enables all our employees to benefit from this new technology.
Sustainable working practices are now a strategic focus for business. Where they might once have been a slightly distracting box to be ticked, they are now at the heart of the modern corporate Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) vision.
The Green Dawn:
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Aware that increasingly, partners and customers will judge vendors and suppliers by how closely they reflect their own sustainability values, companies are rising to a challenge that impacts at every touchpoint in the supply chain. If they don’t do this well, the penalties could be severe: reputational damage and financial risks are hardly desirable outcomes. Insight constantly looks at its own processes for improvement, as well as the evolution of best practice in the market. It also works closely with its supply chain partners in a bid to do more around sustainability. The ultimate beneficiary of this ongoing assimilation of influence, experience and collaboration is the client, who faces similar challenges.
Sustainable Working Practices in IT and Technology
Doing it well requires a holistic sustainability plan which considers all areas of a client’s business, from end-user devices and usage to on-premises data centres, networks and edge locations, and public and hybrid cloud usage models. The cumulative effect of considering sustainability across all areas is greater than just considering the usual suspects of data centres, power and cooling initiatives. Not surprisingly, according to Gartner, 86% of business leaders now see sustainability as an investment that protects their organisation from disruption, while 83% say their sustainability programmes create short- and long-term value. 80% identify sustainability as a vehicle for cost optimisation and reduction. Of course, sustainable business practices are about much more than reducing waste. Today, the emphasis is on creating and implementing circular processes which encourage recycling and re-use. No area of the business is untouched by the need to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, design more eco-friendly offices, reduce travel, and realise the benefits of sustainability for the balance sheet and the environment. As the data centre has moved to the cloud, end-user devices have become one of businesses’ biggest IT power consumers. Clients need to know how their device portfolio impacts power consumption and capture that data to drive the proactive, intelligent use of individual devices. This data can also inform device-type purchasing decisions.
Insight has long been committed to sustainability and works with its partners to drive improvements in every aspect of technology consultancy and deployment. In this, public cloud environments are very much to the fore as a model for change and the implementation of green IT for sustainable business practice. Typically, they are more efficient and offer net zero environments for a client’s infrastructure, compared with traditional on-premises environments. Customers who have migrated to the public cloud have realised significant sustainability improvements. Sustainability is also embedded in Insight’s supply chain. Infrastructure device, server, storage and networking partners are all working to reduce power consumption and to provide innovation in power and cooling usage within their products and technology – helping to reduce usage and drive sustainability improvements for clients. We believe that clients should look at all areas of their digital estates to ensure that end-user compute, data centre, networking and cloud are being used with modern sustainable solutions to meet their overall sustainability targets. By addressing multiple areas of consumption, they will see a combined improvement when it comes to sustainability planning and improvements. What can organisations do for themselves to ensure a smooth sustainability journey? The first step might be to perform a hybrid cloud assessment to understand the business applications and workloads that are suitable for their goals, and drive sustainability and operational/cost benefits from migrating to cloud environments. As part of a cloud transformation, there should be an assessment and consideration of the entire IT estate – including the infrastructure – as well as the business’s unstructured data, and the large volume of data which is stored in physical locations. Cloud environments do not need to be overprovisioned in the same way as legacy on-premises environments were. The right sizing of workloads and actual required usage can drive significant sustainability improvements. For example, a monthly reporting engine might be a leaner approach, turned on only when needed rather than being on all the time. This will help to ensure that the technical debt is not all moved to public cloud, and that usage is reduced, data is archived, and storage is retired as needed – all of which will contribute to a more sustainable vision for the future.
/03
As customers and end-users become more aware of their own environmental impact, IT leaders are under pressure to strike a balance between productivity, hardware costs, emotion and disruption. By organising modular replacement such as new batteries or increased memory, they can extend the useful life of devices, helping to reducing electronic equipment waste. More and more, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and vendors are now building technology with second life plastics and more reusable, recyclable materials. Alongside this, smart building design, sensor-based lighting and Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) can help optimise cost around a building. Insight recommends standardising and modernising where possible. For example, new monitors can be big enough to replace a dual screen setup and also have an integrated dock, replacing the need for a separate one, reducing energy and incidental costs such as electrical device testing. Insight client, North West Ambulance Service, provides an example of how this is happening in practice. It has adopted a ‘Smart Station’ concept, which has transformed user experience, achieved a 70% reduction in energy consumption through smart occupancy and light level controls, and saved £2,000 in landfill and facility management costs over six months. Much of the sustainability spotlight’s glare is trained on IT infrastructure – traditionally a greedy consumer of energy. Even as devices become ever more compact and require less room, the overheads of data storage and connectivity continue to grow. Gartner has identified sustainable technology as one of its top ten strategic technology trends for 2024. By 2027, it estimates that 80% of CIOs will have performance metrics tied to the sustainability of the IT organisation, while 27% of them will have their personal compensation tied to their impact on sustainable technology.
According to Gartner, 86% of business leaders now see sustainability as an investment that protects their organisation from disruption, while 83% say their sustainability programmes create short- and long-term value.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is now so pervasive in our lives and workplaces that we take its presence for granted. Smart Everything has long since stopped being a futuristic concept and is pretty much expected, regardless of the type or scale of the organisation.
Smart Connectivity:
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According to IoT Analytics, there will be 16.7 billion connected IoT devices globally by the end of 2023 – an annual increase of 16% – with growth on this scale expected to continue for the foreseeable future, much of it driven by the spread of 5G-enabled connectivity. IDC estimates that worldwide in 2023, we have spent $805.7 billion on these devices and supporting technologies and anticipates that the market will pass $1 trillion in 2026. This explosion can also be seen in the context of the rise in Smart Everything – most notably, smart buildings and cities – supported by Operational Technology (OT) which manages and monitors the networks, devices and processes that keep them functioning. Grand View Research estimated that the global OT market was worth $173.54 billion in 2022 and will grow by more than 9% annually for the next seven years.
The power of all this data has to be harnessed selectively and appropriately to enhance user and customer experience, as well as meet business goals for improved efficiency and productivity. To meet this requirement, our experts expect to see a rise in demand for smart IoT solutions which use AI and Edge computing to help distribute the load of collected data and so much more analysis, on locally significant datasets. It is hardly practical to store and analyse all the data produced by IoT devices, but it is essential to find ways to evaluate, notify and store the key metrics which drive business value. Intelligent edge is the key in this challenge, with AI tools analysing relevant data before it is stored for further use – either physically or virtually, in the cloud. This is a constant, evolutionary process as the monitoring and evaluation metrics are refined to reflect business goals and user experience needs, and business value is assured.
This is essentially an IT security matter. Security and zero trust principles must be adhered to in designing device management and security policies. And multi-layered approaches are needed to segment and secure corporate networks, Wi-Fi access, and IoT and mobile devices, and create separate virtual environments where they can be managed securely. This level of complexity is a challenge and requires a holistic approach to security – which also makes it a cultural and societal matter. There is a common misconception that cloud technology implicitly increases cybersecurity risk, but if the fundamental elements of security – layered detection, mitigation measures and the principle of least privileged access – are applied, that risk can be well managed. The most important factor is that businesses and organisations deploying smart IoT solutions invest in cybersecurity from the start rather than waiting until a disruptive event has already occurred. Exploiting the benefits of IoT demands more than the assumption that smart technology will automatically add value to a project. The user experience – the human element in the equation – must be at the heart of any framework for a smart ecosystem. AI and Machine Learning enable IoT devices in smart buildings and cities to learn from us and improve our lives by responding to the way we use them – creating countless potential efficiencies. But how robotic do we want the infrastructure of our world to become? Our experience suggests that one of the other major challenges in this trend – but one which also represents a great opportunity - is understanding how to retain the human element in such an automated environment. That is a fine balancing act, which requires a human-centric approach to smart systems building.
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Intelligent edge will be an increasingly important aspect of system and network design. Regardless of the size of a business’s network, footprint, infrastructure – virtual and physical – or the size and complexity of its computing requirements, building a reliable and sustainable connectivity environment to support it will require the expertise of a partner which understands how to scale a modern infrastructure to fit. Another important consequence of IoT’s ubiquity is the cybersecurity challenge it represents. Every device offers a potential entry point for any malicious actor intent on stealing data from an organisation, mounting a denial-of-service attack or disrupting civil life in multiple possible ways. In this respect, IoT is a great leveller. As our dependence on these technologies to make our lives easier and to automate mundane tasks grows, so does the accompanying cybersecurity risk, whether you are an SME owner with a single-office network, an organisation operating a smart building, or the resident of a flood-prone smart city dependent on an IoT solution to monitor water levels.
If that sounds like a lot of devices, consider the amount of data they are collectively capable of connecting – 79.4 zettabytes (ZB) by 2025, according to IDC’s most recent forecast.
Accelerated workplace transformation is surely the most visible trend to have emerged in recent years. Its impact on business has been seismic. Initially driven by necessity, a shift that had previously been the preserve of more progressive organisations and tech-savvy startups became an operational imperative practically overnight. Today, the scope and scale of that evolution appears to be irreversible.
Reshaping the Workplace
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Its momentum continues unchecked, reinforced by changing attitudes among employees towards the role of work in their lives and the relentless pull of globalisation. The pressure on businesses to provide an increasingly decentralised workforce with secure access to centralised systems, seamless communications and virtual workspaces, all offering the tools and collaborative applications they would expect in a traditional office, is immense. As the Incentive Research Foundation observed in its 2022 report on drivers and engagement in the new workplace, ‘Flexible and remote work can no longer be considered rewards in themselves. Rather, for many workers, they are an expectation – conditions of work that influence whether they join a firm or stay.’
Increasingly, emerging technologies are becoming mainstream in solving the business challenges that this empowered workforce is bringing to the table. AI embedded in IoT devices, AR used to enhance interactions and collaboration, and cloud-based applications and virtual desktops, are all seen as key to enabling an employee in a seamlessly connected, decentralised workplace. Some Insight clients are already using them in advanced ways to provide their people with tools that transform workplace interactions. For example, the Dutch pension insurers Athora enlisted Insight’s help with the design of new meeting rooms when their head office moved to Amsterdam at the end of 2020. Athora was looking for a partner that would go beyond just facilitating hybrid working resources and collaborate proactively on the physical and technological specifications of the new rooms. Insight was given full control of the office move, from inventory to installation, implementation and adoption of new technologies, including the design of the rooms. The solution includes large screens to ensure that remote attendees can be seen by everyone in the room, and cameras which track speakers so that they are seen by their remote colleagues.
Our experts caution that a heightened level of expectation in terms of security can also be a brake on open, all-encompassing collaboration. However, technical solutions are emerging to facilitate auditing and apply automatic security rules according to content. In addition, authentication and identity verification are moving towards a new generation of secure ‘password-less’ solutions. This type of data security means that businesses can meet the new challenges of generative AI, for example, which can only be effective in an environment hosting large amounts of data, with the right level of security. Despite the speed with which it is happening, this transformation of the workplace into a hybrid, highly connected environment is also an opportunity for companies to deliver a more flexible employee experience overall. Historically, remote working schemes have tended to focus on how to connect users with central office in order to access resources. The move to hybrid working allows organisations to focus instead on building a more decentralised ‘work anywhere’ infrastructure, that gives their staff more flexibility and allows them to build a secure and consistent one-policy environment. In some respects, there is an ongoing compromise for businesses in the tension between security and usability. The point of maximum security is always going to be the point of maximum un-usability. The best approach is to try and achieve strong security through a highly aware workforce, the layering of multiple detection and mitigation mechanisms, and adopting the principles of least privileged access – all while maintaining as much usability as is required for people to work unhindered in a hybrid space. The focus should always be on employee experience and user-centricity. Ultimately, technology only makes sense if it serves relevant and specific purposes for the people who are going to use it. The entire experience must be thought through, combining a multi-device-first approach, and designing applications and services to be lightweight and stateless. Technology should serve inter-employee relations and support managers and leaders, enabling them to create group dynamics – such a key element in today’s drive for greater corporate efficiency.
/05
In Germany, when engineering and technology specialist pinta elements GMbH decided to modernise its IT infrastructure in order to create a future-proof workplace, Insight stepped up to the plate by proposing a unified, cloud-based platform that would enable collaboration between the company’s offices around the world. The resulting state-of-the-art solution is helping employees to collaborate securely and more efficiently – and will be scalable as the workplace continues to evolve. However, our experts suggest that even if deployments such as the examples highlighted here have seen the light of day among early adopters, widespread deployment of these technologies is still some way off. And it does depend on agile infrastructures, capable of storing and analysing IoT data, and of providing data and services to AI and immersive technologies – all of which makes the cloud an ideal candidate to meet these challenges. Moving services to the cloud is one way to achieve a device-agnostic virtual infrastructure – essential in a decentralised landscape of multiplying and diverse devices. Another is to place less importance on device standardisation and focus instead on deploying device-independent applications – reflecting the consumer experience and expectations of applications in daily life. But this trend also creates layers of complexity for companies, who must continue to prioritise data security and ensure network availability as devices proliferate and access becomes less dependent on location than ever.
49% of Gen Zs and 62% of millennials say work is central to their identity, work/life balance is something they are striving for.
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Crucially for employers, it is also their top consideration when they are job hunting.
This expectation was also a key theme to emerge from Deloitte’s 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, according to which:
The five trends which we have identified as the most significant influences on the market for 2024 suggest that the pace of digital transformation and the race to capitalise on the value of corporate data is only going to speed up. There will be pressure on businesses to adapt and flex more quickly, but our experts suggest that this is an opportunity to tap into the wealth of experience that systems integrators, service providers and consultants can bring to the partnership table.
Conclusion
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Here are the key take-aways from our report:
Our experts’ overview of these trends connects with every aspect of partnership and collaboration that businesses will need to call upon to meet the demands of a transformed and transforming organisation and workplace. Organisations will need consulting services to help keep their digital vision aligned with their business objectives and outcomes. Change management services can help them identify the impacts of digital disruption and ensure that their projects meet their planned objectives. Managed services will guide them through the implementation, operation and optimisation of their new digital solutions. And IT infrastructure services will help them to bring their IT environment into the brave new hybrid world, where digital and physical customer and employee experiences can blend seamlessly. We do not underestimate the demands of the technology transformations and realignments that our five trends will make on clients. Insight’s consulting and change management services, as well as our managed and IT infrastructure services, will continue to provide the stability and robust frameworks that will help clients to embrace the opportunities presented by this increasingly digitalised world.
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Delivering a great customer and employee experience will be a priority as organisations seek innovative ways to bridge the digital and physical worlds. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality will all have a role to play in breaking down the barriers and building seamless environments that meet the demands of this emerging hybrid model. Artificial intelligence, already embedded in many business strategies as a tool for automating repetitive and mundane tasks, will become an enabler of organisational intelligence. Generative AI will help businesses to realise the value of their data by transforming it into knowledge that will drive competitive edge, improve productivity and enable greater efficiency. But there will also be a need for ethical assurances and cybersecurity measures around the deployment of AI tools. Sustainability will become an even more significant business imperative, with organisations demanding more sustainable IT products from vendors, and CIOs finding that ensuring the sustainability of information systems and infrastructures is increasingly part of their role. Sustainability will also be a prominent factor in the choice of supply chain partners and the expectations of both customers and end-users. Devices will continue to proliferate, and the Internet of Things will embed itself further – not just in businesses and organisations, but at a societal level, where intelligent devices increasingly automate important aspects of daily life. The ability of AI-enabled devices to capture data in real time will change working practices for those who use them and open up a new horizon for organisations to realise the value of that data in streamlining processes and interactions. The decentralisation of the 21st-century workplace shows no sign of slowing down. As it enters the world of work, a new generation of employee has grown up immersed in the concepts of remote and flexible working – and will expect access to systems and collaborative tools regardless of their physical location. Meeting the cybersecurity challenges posed by a distributed workforce will be an ongoing necessity for all businesses.
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Meet Our Experts
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Santo Orlando
EMEA Strategy Lead, CTO Office, Modern App and Data & AI
As part of the Office of the CTO, Santo leads the Modern App and Data & AI go-to-market strategy. He is responsible for developing and implementing new Insight offerings for all EMEA regions across these two domains. Santo is a consulting and technology leader with more than 23 years of experience in IT, encompassing various leadership and technical roles. He possesses extensive expertise in strategy, business development, as well as building and shaping complex IT solutions and digital transformation programs.
Lee Wilkinson
EMEA Strategy Lead, CTO Office, Cloud & On Prem
Lee is responsible for the Cloud, On-Prem & Intelligent Edge practice areas as part of the Insight’s EMEA solutions business. This includes defining the Hybrid Cloud technology strategy EMEA wide, evaluating and helping the business adopt Hybrid Cloud Technology from Insights Alliance and Partner Managed vendors. Lee is an Enterprise Architect and Strategist with over 30 years’ experience in Complex Cloud and Hybrid On Prem solutions, IT Transformation and Managed services.
Howard Daws
EMEA Strategy Lead, CTO Office, Optimisation & Governance
Howard is responsible for Insight’s solutions that help clients manage existing and future investments in technology and supply chain partnerships. Over the past 20 years, Howard has designed and led a range of programmes and solutions for intellectual property owners and end-user client organisations to obtain value from spending and licensing with third parties. This work has spanned many industries and geographies. He has helped to improve commercial positions, achieve efficient operations and maintain third-party relationships with particular focus on software, licensing, service performance and cloud.
Jack Barnes
Senior Manager Adoption & Change at Insight
Jack is responsible for Insight's business change and adoption offerings, strategy, practice development and delivery of Adoption and Change Management offerings to our clients. Jack is an experienced consultant with a background in Digital Transformation and knows how hard it is to ensure that Business and IT work hand in hand to deliver the best experience to their end users. Jack and his adoption and change management team support organisations to ensure that projects meet their deliverables, they finish on time and on budget, and that their return on investment is realised: whilst always thinking about the end users first.
Jacqui Greenland
EMEA Strategy Lead, CTO Office, Networking & Connectivity
Jacqui is an experienced Enterprise Solutions Architect, Technology Strategist, and Chartered Engineer. She holds expert accreditations across multiple networking vendors and has been involved in almost every aspect of the industry over her 29-year career. In that time she has designed and delivered networking environments used by 10’s of millions of people annually, and has contributed to the development of networking standards. Jacqui uses that experience to help guide and shape the Insight strategy around networking solutions and services.
Rob O’Connor
EMEA Strategy Lead, CTO Office, Security & Compliance
Responsible for Insight’s solutions that help clients to keep their data and assets secure and compliant with regulatory requirements and legislation. He has been working in IT since 2003 across several delivery, pre-sales, management and strategic roles. Rob keenly champions ‘security pragmatism’ – time and budget is always limited, so it’s important to focus on the right things and do them properly. Rob holds an MBA with distinction in Technology Management.
Antony Taylor
EMEA Strategy Lead, CTO Office, Workplace & Collaboration
Accountable for solutions that support workplace and end user experiences, Antony is passionate about supporting clients to drive improved technology standards and collaboration whilst reducing costs and improving employee experiences. As Strategy Lead, Antony drives Thought Leadership and Portfolio evolution within his domain, relying on more than a decade of experience in the technology industry supporting strategic clients, developing practice strategy, and driving growth. Throughout his career, Antony has built a wide range of skillsets in positions such as Cloud Solution Architect, Account Technology Strategist, Functional and Technical Architect, Engineer, Project Manager, Trainer and Adoption consultant.
Pierre Vivier-Merle
EMEA Strategy Lead, CTO Office, Digital & Business Consulting
As EMEA Services Director, Pierre has extensive knowledge on digital transformation, change management and bringing new solutions to our clients. He is a graduate of the ECAM engineering school, and he held the position of team manager at Exakis (an IT services company). Pierre then served as Information Worker Manager at Logica Business Consulting. In 2010, he co-founded vNext, an IT consulting and services company, where he managed Business & Digital Consulting offerings. After 10 years of growth, vNext joined Insight in March 2020.
