Kyndryl (NYSE:KD), the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, reveals the most influential trends that will impact IT decision-making in 2023 and beyond. As technology evolves and complex business problems continue to emerge, IT professionals will face new challenges in the coming year. Some changes will fuel innovation, while others will spur debate around AI ethics. And others, such as cyber threats, will force companies to mitigate and meet these risks head-on.

Kyndryl works with companies in ASEAN and around the world to help them tackle their most pressing business objectives in modern ways. Here, Wilson Go, Managing Director, Kyndryl Philippines shares the eight technology trends that every business leaders should know about.

1. Cyber resilience will overtake cybersecurity as top security concern

With 88% of company boards now seeing cybersecurity more as a business risk than a technology risk, according to a Gartner survey, cyber resilience will no longer just be a problem for Chief Information Security Officers in 2023. More likely, every level of an organization’s executive suite will be part of the conversation and equation.

It’s not just an IT discussion. Companies must understand that they’re more likely to endure a cyber event than a physical disaster, and they must protect all areas of their business. That could lead to the hottest security job of the year: Cyber Resilience Officer.

2. AI ethics will become imperative

Responsible AI solutions — areas that address trust, risk, ethics, security and transparency — will become more mainstream. We’ll see solutions that target personalized insights — whether it is related to aspects such as credit risk, underwriting or simply recommendation engines for dynamic pricing or influencing buying decisions.

Similarly, data observability will become crucial and the key to scaling AI for business. Without a robust, secure data foundation and DataOps, it will be hard to scale and democratize data consumption.

3. The cloud will drive innovation

Companies that had embraced cloud adoption prior to the COVID-19 pandemic fared better than those that hadn’t in terms of their ability to pivot their business models and capitalize on new opportunities and revenue streams. Experts said the same will hold true in the event of an economic downturn. Cloud adoption provides the quickest path to innovation and gives companies much more flexibility to run their businesses in hard times.

4. Companies will embrace distributed cloud

We expect companies to increasingly take a distributed cloud path as they embrace a federated model between cloud and edge. There are many advantages of a distributed model, including the ability to better visualize and harness data across an organization to drive value and enable new Web3 capabilities. In a distributed cloud environment, workloads are aligned with specific resource locations in order to meet compliance needs and performance requirements or support edge computing, while being centrally managed from a public cloud provider.

5. Cloud networking will grow

As more enterprises shift workloads and business to the cloud, they are using different means of connectivity to the cloud than what was traditionally built in the past. We have seen an increase in service providers that are virtualizing network infrastructure and providing it as a service to enterprises. However, a lot of these companies do not have a good direct-to-enterprise channel. There will be an increasing demand to integrate the connectivity with managed services, and help enterprises manage the multi-networks.

6. 5G private wireless to move beyond industry 4.0

While the manufacturing, petrochemical, gas and energy industries have successfully deployed private wireless and edge solutions to drive business efficiencies and cost savings, other segments like retail have lagged.

Without question, 2023 will be the year 5G private wireless use cases and testing take hold across other industries, with retail leading the pack. From enabling cashier-less payment, real-time analytics, personalized promotions, asset tracking and supply chain optimization, private wireless and edge will be key to unlocking the next generation of the shopping and CX experience.

7. Personalized digital employee experiences are must-haves for hybrid work

The digital workplace has transformed into an environment where employees choose what channels they want to use to engage across organizations. The challenge many organizations face is ensuring that this new environment is seamless, delivers a great experience for employees and at the same time, enhances collaboration and organizational culture. In 2023, digital experiences will take a top spot on the recruiting checklist and will also impact retention.

8. Mainframe will solidify its role in hybrid cloud strategies

Enterprises will accelerate mainframe modernization for fuller integration into a hybrid cloud environment.

Faced with reduced IT budgets and skills challenges, companies will take an end-to-end approach to get the most out of their platforms through modernizing on, integrating with hyperscalers, or moving workloads off the mainframe — versus only a singular approach to move off. They´ll also leverage the expanding integration capabilities of the cloud platform to access mainframe data and apps to address new business requirements with faster time to value.