Are you ready for the Black Swan event?

In 2022, to stay competitive, businesses will be looking at the cloud for its benefits beyond enabling collaboration. This includes automation, security, and disaster recovery. Businesses that are familiar with using different cloud applications will make possible quick adaptation to these new technologies. Early adopters will give companies a good understanding of the business problems that can be addressed using the technologies, providing a competitive edge.

According to the latest forecast by Gartner, the IT spending in MENA will return to pre-pandemic levels and even surpass the costs by 2022. It’s either adapt and transform to a fast-moving digital world or get left behind. CIOs and CTOs need to not only ensure they have the leadership’s buy-in, but also communicate the benefits of technology implementations across the organisation to enable an efficient roll-out.

Career progression and contribution to the community on a larger scale is an ongoing conversation in the IT industry. In the ICT sector, organisations compete for the best talent that brings innovation, new ideas and helps companies to achieve a competitive advantage. Industry professionals need to lead when it comes to companies’ strategic transformation initiatives, be more agile and disruptive to be ready for Black Swan events to emerge more often in this fast-moving sector.

A Black Swan event is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.

Additionally, the remote work trend will continue encouraging end-users to seek new ways in which digitalisation can ease their lives. In this new era, network providers will have to keep pace by getting closer to the end-users and swiftly delivering an exceptional customer experience.

There is also a need for synced efforts between network providers. A majority of the networks are ahead of the curve and providers are displaying increased efforts to prepare their domain to adapt and meet demand, such as boosting Internet speed and transferring traffic from wired to wireless networks where data is utilised extensively.

Principal challenges for decision makers

• One of the main challenges faced by IT decision-makers in the region is the ability to meet consumer demands by investing in new infrastructure while maintaining similar or lower costs of service. The number of unique mobile subscribers in MENA reached 400 million during 2020, representing around 65% of the population according to GSMA The Mobile Economy report.

Key Takeaways 

• CIOs and CTOs need to communicate the benefits of technology implementations across the organisation.
• Career progression and contribution to the community on a larger scale is an ongoing conversation in the IT industry.
• Organisations compete for the best talent that helps companies to achieve a competitive advantage.
• Network providers will have to keep pace by getting closer to the end-users and delivering exceptional customer experience.
• There is a need for synced efforts between network providers.
• Majority of the networks are ahead of the curve and providers are displaying increased efforts to prepare their domain.

Industry professionals need to lead the companies’ strategic transformation initiatives, be more disruptive and ready for Black Swan events to emerge.