When It Comes To Technology Predictions, There’s No Fool Like An Old Fool

Wendy is the CIO of Nutanix, where she leads the global Information Technology team and functions.

It’s hard to predict exactly what will happen in the coming year when unknown issues—for example, the drastic changes to social media platforms and the global fuel crisis—cause large ripple effects across industries. Though we are faced with an ever-changing reality, it’s still important to reflect on why predictions have poor track records.

We all know the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” but as we step into the new year, we have an opportunity to learn from the outcome of last year’s predictions, while using this information to refine our plans for 2023.

Let’s first look at two predictions that came true last year:

1. Remote Work: As expected, the persistence and expansion of remote and hybrid work continued in 2022, even as offices opened back up. After a year of hybrid working, it’s no surprise employees became accustomed to working from home and wanted to continue the physical and mental benefits that a hybrid work schedule provided—a sentiment that was echoed and confirmed in a recent survey released by Ergotron. Flexibility and alternate working arrangements have become a priority for employers.

2. Supply-Chain Struggles: We saw continued supply-chain weakness, partially because of the predicted slow path of recovery from the pandemic, but also because of the unexpected socio-political crises putting pressure on fuel availability throughout Europe and the developing world.

Now let’s move to predictions that didn’t quite hit the mark. There were two of note:

1. The Rush To Public Cloud: Many predicted supply-chain issues would create a race to the cloud. It was believed that companies would deploy public cloud, as the shortages would limit their ability to obtain hardware for on-premises data centers. In reality, with the SEC’s proposed ESG requirements and the macroeconomic challenges, publicly traded companies were becoming increasingly conscious of their carbon footprint and searching for energy-efficient operating modes for high-volume services. For some companies, according to my company's research, the most energy-efficient consumption model was running an on-premises virtualized private cloud utilizing hyper-converged infrastructure and enabling fractionalized consumption. While cloud is an important asset to companies, the rush to public cloud may have been overpromised.

2. Metaverse Workforces: Many predicted unprecedented growth of mass personalized virtual experiences intersecting with business—a metaverse of specialization. The reality is pressures of a looming recession and inflation, combined with worker shortages may have forced an acceleration in simplification, automation and tool consolidation. At Nutanix, we previously used several collaboration tools, but we soon realized we needed to enable asynchronous work while reducing context-switching. We’ve since standardized on Zoom and augmented with fully-integrated third-party applications, such as LucidSpark and Huddl.ai, which improved employee productivity, reduced license fees and eliminated support complexity.

All of this brings us to right now and what we can expect to see in 2023.

Looking ahead, the seismic shifts in social media platforms will have larger implications beyond the platforms themselves. Social media companies are among the largest users of cloud and the biggest generators of data through ads which companies then purchase to inform their own algorithms. However, due to inflationary and recessionary pressures coupled with a shrinking workforce, companies may have less ad revenue, and these large-scale data sets aren’t maintained or analyzed, lowering machine learning functionality that depends on the data sets to be constantly updated.

Today’s social media giants collect massive volumes of behavioral data from the historical and live interactions of users. This data is correlated with user demographics, and even specific user profiles, to more effectively target advertising and content. However, collection and use of this personal data is increasingly highly regulated. Global privacy regulators are trending toward requiring users to specifically opt in to this usage.

Enter the burgeoning neuromining industry. Neruomining uses AI and ML algorithms to analyze data and predict likely human behavior or interest. Like cryptomining operations, neuromining operations (NROs) are already set up and running on a global basis, with probabilistic data sets available for purchase. However, since NROs are not yet monetizing at scale, they remain under the radar and unregulated. I predict that in 2023, some well-known social media companies will begin purchasing output from unregulated neuromining operations to enhance or supplant their own regulated behavioral models. Companies dependent on expensive-to-generate and expensive-to-regulate behavioral data to fuel their transactions and interaction designs will likely explore ways to purchase and monetize instructions from these models rather than using real behavioral data that may be subject to data privacy regulations.

As the pandemic has receded, hybrid work has emerged as the norm. A recent study by McKinsey noted that 58% of American workers now keep a flexible, hybrid schedule, and that trend is expected to continue. And a 2022 Pew Research study indicates that 59% of workers are now working fully remotely, with a significant geographic disbursement as well.

Hybrid work, though, presents complex challenges for technologists with context-switching and time-zone spread. Because team members are continuously moving from mode to mode, whole teams are no longer able to all be in the same place at the same time in order to organize and execute work.

To date, companies have invested in technologies like audio-video systems that only enable multi-location synchronous collaboration. I predict that companies will instead invest in technologies such as AI/ML that support ecosystems of collaboration around a time-zone radius (a term coined by Nutanix’s Head of Global Design, Satish Ramachandran). For any organization faced with sustaining productivity in a hybrid world, I've come up with five principles to enable hybrid work: managing change, enabling asynchronous work, reducing context-switching, offloading multi-mode complexity to AI/ML and bringing consumer technologies into the enterprise. All of these challenges will need to be managed.

As we enter the new year, there’s no way to predict how the industry will change. But based on what we’re seeing now, these are just some ways I believe the IT industry will adjust. No matter how these predictions pan out in the coming year, just remember we’re in it together. As the saying goes, “Fool me three times, shame on us.”

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