Ever heard of concept drift in AI? Or cloudspend democratization? Read on to see the progressive trends expected in 2020.

Thanks to the emergence of new technologies and the continued evolution of established ones, the way people work will change in 2020. IT departments will see privacy, security and cost management strategies, along with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), play pivotal roles.

This is the world according to Rajesh Ganesan, vice president of  India’s ManageEngine. His firm, the IT management division of Zoho Corp, has collated a list of six significant trends in the IT management industry in 2020. 

1. Enterprises will realize the importance of securing their AI systems

As more organizations implement AI in their business functions, the need to secure the AI systems will be recognized.  

• Enterprises will see value in investing in explainable AI technologies, which involve the AI system giving the reasons for its actions and decisions so IT teams can review and correct the AI system in real-time. 

• AI training data and ML models will need to be protected by techniques like homomorphic encryption, which performs complex mathematical operations on encrypted information without decrypting it first.

• Organizations will need to protect their AI models against concept drift, as it can make an AI model irrelevant and cause the system to lose control.

2. The year will witness the rise of hyper-automation

Hyper automation will take tech growth in India a notch higher in 2020, as companies begin investing in intelligence-driven by AI and ML, along with autonomous engineering powered by robotic and cognitive process automation. Hyper automation will primarily be utilized to make dynamic, complex business processes, such as insurance claims, loan processing, and warehouse dispatch, faster and more precise without driving up costs.

3. Employees will shoulder responsibility for adherence to privacy laws 

As vital stakeholders in business operations, employees will have to bear some of the responsibility of complying with the law. Organizations are likely to take concrete steps to educate and train their employees on new privacy concerns. 

4. Businesses will turn to personalization to deliver tailored customer experiences 

Organizations will use their vast data sets to create clear, complete pictures of their customers and thereby deliver tailored customer experiences. Personalization will help companies respond to each customer’s unique needs so that for each interaction the right product, service or support is offered, and the right people in the company are involved.

5. Endpoint protection will be a top priority 

With the number and type of endpoint devices ever-increasing and devices becoming ‘smarter’ endpoints have become critical targets and even more vulnerable to external attacks. Mobile applications may well be the source of the next large-scale enterprise security breach, especially as the influx of non-traditional workers and their remote devices continues. Considering the security threats hovering around endpoints, organisations will have to better manage them and pay closer attention to protection techniques such as data loss prevention (DLP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR). 

6. Companies to rein in cloud spending 

This year, companies will work to optimize their costs. While the cloud, especially software-as-a-service, has enabled the democratization of technology across all business functions, it has also resulted in organizations spending more than needed. However, solutions to give business leaders better control and visibility are emerging.