by Xavier Surentherathas
‘UNPRECEDENTED’ may have been the winning word of 2020, as a winded world came to terms with the pandemic. Nevertheless, many businesses continued to grow.
From the home office, the drumbeat of innovation kept the markets alive and customers happy. But it wasn’t without its challenges.
Shockwaves filtered through businesses as they adapted to a “new normal,” solving unique issues overnight. Business leaders had to manage potential threats to business continuity. They identified the production, distribution and supply chain networks within areas potentially impacted, while implementing mobilisation, isolation and education strategies for workers.
Resilience was put to the test, while agility raised the stakes for success. And there were successes, despite the fog of unprecedented events.
Digital transformation in the spotlight
The reality is that there has never been a more compelling argument for digital transformation, as the world works and plays online while pondering a more hybrid future.
Businesses continue their digital transformation journeys, depending on data that resides on-premises, in public and private clouds, devices at the edge and within networks and operation centres. Our new remote working realities have added further complexity to digital environments – and managing them has cost and labour repercussions.
In a market where data centre and network maintenance is expected to exceed US$185 bil annually, it’s time for the industry to address servicing digital IT infrastructure servicing in harmony with third party maintenance.
With the evolution of the new market category, Discovery, Monitor, Support and Optimise (DMSO) is set to be worth US$228 bil annually by 2023. This is truer now than ever before.
This new offering is certainly promising for the region, where the data centre market is witnessing robust growth. In Southeast Asia, the data centre market is expected to reach US$3.5 bil by 2024, growing at 12.9% per annum.
Zooming in on Malaysia, the data centre industry revenue is expected to reach roughly US$870 mil by 2025. To build enabling digital infrastructure is one of the six thrusts under the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint framework introduced by the Government this year.
Under the third thrust of the blueprint is where the Government has identified the need for high-end data centres as part of enhancing the development of digital infrastructure.
In the digital age, it is imperative that companies invest in predictive maintenance and strategies – in our always-on society, downtime is sacrilege. Identifying and addressing problems before they happen is key to maintaining the competitive edge.
Gaining insights through automation and analytics saves time and money, streamlining operations and ultimately enabling businesses to shift precious capital towards innovation, putting them on the cutting edge of their industry. This makes IT infrastructure a strategic business asset. The pandemic adds a fresh urgency to this awareness.
It is clear: Businesses can no longer ignore the opportunity to maximise uptime, create cost efficiencies, enable greater infrastructure control and visibility, and enhance asset performance through support. It’s sink, or swim – and the ripple effect is being felt at the top level in the markets.
Growth through uncertainty
While many businesses treaded water in 2020, simply trying to stay afloat, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) were expected to take a back seat. There was initial uncertainty around how the procedures would fair in a remote world, from handling negotiations via communications platforms to due diligence, reviewing a target company’s books and assets.
But it was a matter of months before businesses found their feet and large-scale deals were being struck once more, at a frantic pace. Park Place Technologies opted to swim through the crisis, acquiring Curvature in November 2020.
It was a bold move not only as its largest acquisition but as it made it the world’s largest third-party data maintenance company – doubling the number of employees and revenue. Navigating the move virtually meant managing communications through all touchpoints so to keep the remote workforce aligned and onboard.
There are many lessons to take away from the experience, but most importantly that digital markets are ripe and acquisitions are manageable even in these strange times as businesses are taking advantage of the momentum.
For example, we expect to see an acceleration in the emergence of augmented reality technologies due to the unprecedented circumstances of 2020/21. It’s expected to grow by 46.6% between 2019 to 2024, reaching a market value of US$72.7 bil. This is supported by the shift to remote working and the need to compensate the digital enterprise experience with more human interactions.
Meanwhile, data is more distributed, with 50% of enterprise data being created and processed outside the data center or cloud – up from less than 10% in 2019 – according to Gartner.
The need for simplification is very clear. As IT managers and CIOs look for simpler ways to manage their infrastructure including, SD-WAN, virtual networking and DMSO, we will continue to see market shifts.
Customer service and experience, always a business priority, are under intense scrutiny. Portals that track real-time interactions, mobile apps, performance guarantees and direct client input are a few of the strategies that ensure the highest level of customer experience.
Last year, humanity’s reliance on technology to connect, sustain business and social lives was abundantly clear. This year, the pressure is on to sustain and evolve the products and services we have come to rely on.
IT departments will continue to feel the heat as business’ IT infrastructure are put to the test. They will continue to need smooth and cost-effective data strategies that meet the demands for higher quality customer service, more reliable partners and cutting edge innovation.
Creating steady momentum through the rockiest of business environments is no easy task, but it should be a responsibility to all of us to ensure that we try. – June 23, 2021
Xavier Surentherathas is the Regional Sales Director, APAC for Park Place Technologies.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
