Asked about their feelings in relation to 2020 and the new decade, the vast majority are positive about the technology landscape (over 80%) with less than 10% ‘concerned’ or ‘very depressed’.
34% of the respondents were ‘extremely positive’ while 47% were feeling ‘good’ about the new decade. Less than 1% were ‘very depressed’ about what lay ahead.
- In terms of the strength of feeling, significantly more from the private sector felt extremely positive (40%), with the public and third sector at 30% and 27% respectively.
- It’s also worth noting that the largest IT departments (of more than 5,001 staff) were between two and three times more likely to express a negative sentiment and 10% less likely to be feeling positive.
Alex Tatham, Managing Director of IT Distributor Westcoast and a respondent to the survey commented: “It is no surprise that these results show IT companies are optimistic about 2020 as there is so much opportunity created by businesses of all sizes transforming or establishing their businesses with a ‘Digital First’ priority. Change is a constant but seems to accelerate ensuring everyone is upgrading just to keep up. The winners will come from those organisations that can think ahead.”
Digital Transformation set to continue and grow:
When asked how they believe the trend for the following themes would change in the next ten years, across their sector, the largest increase (‘increase significantly’ plus ‘increase’) was predicted for Digital Transformation (83%) compared to 67% for Agile, 60% for the use of third parties and 59% for legacy challenges.
Future adoption of emerging technologies
Across eight technologies, for 53% of the respondents AI in relation to augmenting existing software was the technology most likely to experience ‘a lot more’ adoption. This was closely followed by IoT, edge computing (48%) and Voice including real-time translation (47%).
However, for the technologies expecting less rapid growth, Blockchain (19% ‘A lot more’ adoption) and No code development (24%) also ranked most highly for ‘Don’t know / NA’ at 16% and 18% respectively. This may mean that future growth will occur but respondents are generally less confident predicting it due to less familiarity with those technologies and their applications at this time.
Robin Knowles, CEO, Digital Leaders, a network with over 100,000 leaders across all sectors involved in digital transformation, shared the survey with their members, and commented: “2020 is such an exciting time for new technologies, but AI in particular is an area with enormous potential but where the hype and reality are still some way apart. However, that will change rapidly in the next decade and there is no doubt that AI’s impact on software development will be huge and cannot be ignored by business and government”.
Technology budgets in 2020 and the new decade
Most respondents believe that they will face ‘very high’ (32%) or ‘some’ (38%) budgetary pressure in 2020.
- 17% believed it would remain ‘neutral’ and 10% claiming they ‘don’t know’ yet.
Generally speaking, the larger your IT department, the higher the budgetary pressure is perceived.
- For departments with more than 501 staff, 81% reported that budget cuts were expected. Whereas, those with less than 500, expected budgetary pressure was only 68%.
Adrian Leer, Managing Director, Triad Group Plc added; “It’s fantastic that, despite the budgetary pressure that technologists are expecting in 2020, they remain so positive. I think that the next decade will be one of more realistic expectations and more mature decision making when it comes to new technologies.”
Please note that these are just the initial findings from Triad’s 2020 tech trends research and further details on attitudes towards, Agile, Blockchain and the Digital skills shortage will follow shortly.
Triad 2020 tech trends respondent demographics:
- The 2020 tech trends survey ran from the 10/10/19 until 3/11/19 and there were 293 responses
- 53% of respondents came from the private sector and 35% from the public sector, the remainder were from the third or multiple sectors
- 57% had technology teams that were 50 people or greater in size
Triad defines, designs and delivers digital solutions for companies by quickly delivering specialist teams ranging from one to a hundred consultants (from DevOps to Agile trainers).
Drawing on 30 years’ experience in the toughest of environments to identify the right solutions, Triad has a track record of success that spans the public, private and third sectors.
Our consultative style produces a partnership and teamwork approach that ensures clients’ needs are met and projects are a success. While our skills, commitment and people achieve digital transformation to budget and within timescales.
Our reputation for expertise, flexibility and getting the job done comes from having stable teams with a history of collaboration and an unbroken track record of successful delivery across Agile and waterfall projects. Triad puts customers’ needs at the heart of a proven approach, designing solutions to complex problems with a focus on unlocking ROI from technology spend combined with an agnostic approach to products and solutions.
Triad has long held approved supplier status on a range of UK Government procurement frameworks with the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) including the Data and Application (DAS) and the G-Cloud 11 frameworks. As a digital application development specialist, Triad also holds five Gold Microsoft competencies and is a Google Cloud Partner.
Triad Group Plc (TRD) has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 1996.
