Human capital will be the secret weapon for businesses to survive and thrive in today’s dynamic digital business environment, says global consulting firm Accenture.
Accenture surveyed 3,100 IT executives globally and found that technological advances accelerate strategic change in the competitive landscape for business.
“People with a range of digital skills are essential to business success in the digital economy,” said Nontawat Poomchusri, country managing director of Accenture.
Workforce readiness is considered critical to transformation into an innovative business.
Mr Nontawat said the arrival of fourth-generation (4G) technology would also boost the number of online customers.
Half of the Thai workforce in 2020 will be Millennials under age 30. They will be more comfortable with the digital workplace, and this will influence customers and fellow employees.
Mr Nontawat said customers aged 22-30 would be digital-savvy and mainly use smartphones for communication.
The “Accenture Technology Vision 2016” survey listed five trends behind a people-first approach: intelligent automation such as robotics and big analytic systems; the liquid workforce in which employees with core competency have the ability to learn new things; the platform economy; predictable disruption; and digital trust.
The banking, telecommunications and retail sectors in Thailand are keen to find new partnerships in the digital ecosystem, Mr Nontawat said.
NetApp, a data management and storage company, has also revealed technology trends for 2016 in a report entitled “A Year of Simplicity in IT”.
2015 was a year of immense transformation in the IT sector. The Internet of Things, cybersecurity and big data analytics set the agenda for the digital transformation of businesses and cities.
Weera Areeratanasak, NetApp’s managing director for Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, named the seven key technology trends in 2016 as converged infrastructure to break down data centre barriers;
DevOps (a clipped compound of “development” and “operations”), which will drive growth in converged infrastructure;
the all-flash data centre; flash deployment that will expand far beyond performance applications; data management; storage administration; and data management innovation.
According to global research firm IDC, the worldwide flash-based array market grew to US$11.3 billion in 2014. IDC reported that flash grew by 101% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2015 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
In 2016, flash capacity will be greater than that of disk drives and lower pricing will make flash viable for mainstream applications, IDC said.