Tech trends 2024: Optimisation over transformation

IT leaders are taking a pragmatic approach to the wave of new innovations on offer

In our latest tranche of industry research, Computing surveyed 173 UK IT leaders about some of the top trends in IT.

These, of course, included generative AI, but we also asked about ESG, cybers resilience, application and platform consolidation as well as some more niche topics such as quantum computing, machine customers and the augmented connected workforce.

Contents

• Generative AI
• ESG
• Consolidation
• Cyber resilience
• Quantum computing
• Augmented connected workforce
• Machine customers
• Organisational change

Generative AI

From all the noise, you'd be forgiven for thinking that UK organisations are falling over themselves to adopt generative AI; but as with many hyped new technologies, the reality on the ground is far less frenzied.

Asked about their opinion of genAI, the vast majority (68%) of 173 senior UK IT professionals surveyed by Computing in January said it is promising but immature. Nine percent believe it to be the most important innovation since the smartphone, but that number was almost equalled by those dismissing genAI as the biggest bubble since the dotcom boom.

Ten percent said they are currently using AI operationally, with a further 17% rolling out proofs of concept (PoCs). The largest number, though, were at the dabbling stage, or planning to review it in the future. Five percent ruled it out altogether.

Among those who said they are using genAI in an organisational capacity, or implementing PoCs, ChatGPT (76%) was the comfortable frontrunner, followed by Microsoft/GitHub Copilots (45%) and Google Bard (since renamed Gemini, 14%). Microsoft led in the cloud stakes too, with 76% saying they were using its Azure AI cloud services, compared to Google Cloud's 15% and AWS's 12%.

The wait-and-sees said they simply have no current use cases (39%), are waiting for the legal/ regulatory landscape to stabilise (35%), or lack expertise (31%).

A frothy market

The genAI market is the epitome of frothy.

"Myriad tools have emerged and it's too early to jump, to train staff on one tool," said a CPO in the health sector.

Others feared it is a solution looking for a problem.

"We are not convinced of the need or effectiveness of AI in our business at this point," offered a business systems analyst in hospitality.

An IT manager in manufacturing spoke for many, saying there is just not enough information to go on at the moment. "AI is not seen as mature enough and it is difficult to allocate the resources to investigate this. We need to see better usage cases, e.g. real-world examples in manufacturing businesses."

Even those who view genAI as the "most important innovation since the smartphone", voiced concerns over its use to spread disinformation. Three-quarters said they were concerned or considerably concerned about this, the same proportion as the cohort as a whole.

The early adopters were, however, far more likely to be looking to restructure their CTO and/or CIO roles to make AI adoption easier, demonstrating they are serious about making the most of the opportunities on offer.

Some were raring to go, but felt constrained by their operating environment, like this IT manager in a further education college:

"GenAI has the potential to considerably improve the FE offering to our students, however limited government insight, especially at Ofsted, will hold back advanced use for some time to come."

Those who said they are already using genAI were found in sectors including education, manufacturing, technology and finance. Unsurprisingly, these IT leaders were much more likely to describe it as a golden opportunity or highly significant innovation.

But for most generative AI remains too risky, too immature and not a practical proposition at the current time.

There were worries that AI will centralise even more power in the hands of the tech giants (54% thought this); that legislation and regulation will be unable to keep up (41%), and that genAI services will be too expensive once they are no longer offered at below cost price (16%).

That said, the genAI wave has a lot of momentum. Asked whether, given the massive AI hype, businesses might start to lose interest in 2024, 83% answered No. However, 6% felt the bubble could burst before the end of 2024.

What's coming?

Asked what they expect to see more of this year, most, understandably, pointed to areas that are already showing a lot of movement, such as AI assistants integrated into office suites and data, analytics, and development tools. Educational tools came below that - one in a line of applications that will make use of the individual's or organisation's own data to provide a personalised service, another being individualised healthcare.

Rather fewer thought we are entering the era of large action models, with LLMs able to use other tools in an agentic way, or small language models that can be run on a laptop, although both of these are starting to emerge.

The impact on jobs

Generative AI will undoubtedly bring several changes to the workplace. Exactly what those will be and what impact they will have in the long term is the subject of a great deal of speculation.

In terms of use cases being considered by respondents' organisations, the top five were in employee/customer self-service; cyber security and incident management; business processes automation; AI/ML model development/deployment/experimentation; and back office processes/customer support (RPA).

We also asked about the jobs that might be at risk from AI, and about positions that might be created in the next 12 months or so.

First, more IT leaders that think that AI will create jobs (15%) than believe it will replace them (10%) this year, although the vast majority were non-committal. For most it's still too early to tell.

The 2% who said AI has already created jobs in their organisation worked in organisations ranging from building maintenance to law to telecoms. They mentioned new roles for security, data science and AI/ML specialists.

For most though, it was a case of current jobs being augmented rather than new ones created.

"It will change the responsibilities of existing roles rather than creating new ones," said a data scientist at a university.

Others pointed to AI-driven changes in the services they can offer.

"The information storage system, security and all of our clients' data will be saved automatically," said an IT manager at an MSP. This will alter, but not replace, the activities of those administering these services, that person added.

"There will be more data science and analyst jobs," predicted an enterprise architect at an IT services company, one of several to mention data scientists as probable beneficiaries, while a CIO at a business services company predicted boomtime for RPA consultants, as companies look to automate where they feel it will drive efficiencies.

Several respondents said they were starting to see ads for new AI-related jobs, such as prompt engineers, customer experience managers, AI compliance officials and AI programmers.

Writing on the wall for customer facing jobs?

Asked what roles might be under threat from AI in 2024, the majority answered "none" - or at least "none at the moment". As well as being bad for morale, replacing people with unproven technology is too much of a risk.

"Very few [roles will be replaced] until the technology reaches a point where the information presented can be relied on," said an IT manager in engineering.

However, almost half of our respondents did mention roles or areas of work that are already diminishing in importance and could ultimately face the chop, the most frequent being help desk, service desk and customer support.

After customer-facing support roles and admin jobs were likely to be the next in line to be squeezed out by automation, followed by junior-level coding and engineering positions.

"Over time we'll see less programmers, less second-line support staff especially in systems and hardware administration. Eventually there'll probably be less help desk staff as well," said an IT project manager in the wholesale sector.

A similar number felt that marketing people and those involved in clerical tasks and creative writing could see reductions this year or soon afterwards. Writing boilerplate text and messaging is certainly something that LLM-based applications can already do proficiently with little hand holding, and sifting through columns of data is another obvious candidate for mechanisation.

"Routine task-based roles which could be replaced by RPA: accountancy roles, matching supplier invoices with POs, etcetera," offered a CIO in education.

Analyst roles were in an interesting position with equal numbers thinking they are under threat and in line for a hiring surge.

In summary, while AI is moving extremely quickly in terms of capabilities and product releases, this has yet to translate to real impact in terms of the way people do their jobs, an exception perhaps being software development. In a year's time, that picture could look rather different, though. We will continue to carefully monitor this space.

Environmental, social and governance

Despite having been dragged into the culture wars, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards remain an important consideration for businesses, if for no other reason that they remain an important consideration for investors.

However, our research suggests there are other reasons that tech decision makers are making buying decisions with sustainability, if not at the top of their priority list, certainly in the top three criteria.

When asked what was driving ESG within their businesses, more than half - 56% - of IT leaders cited a simple motivation to do the right thing. Admittedly, 32% had an eye on cost savings (which certainly ties in with a strategy of reducing waste), while matching up to industry best practice was the third most popular driver.

This suggests that industry standards matter, and are an effective way of encouraging individual organisations to raise the bar.

More interesting is how far down the list of responses both legislation and industry specific regulations are, suggesting that individual organisations, and individuals, are well ahead of legislators and regulators in the sustainability standards they set.

Sustainability matters - but cost matters more

It's also clear that organisations are taking plenty of measures to reduce their environmental impact. More than a third - 36% - are assessing all new suppliers and contracts against sustainability criteria, and 32% are reviewing and analysing processes to see how they can be made more sustainable. A small but significant 22% were in the market for new tech to enable them to reduce their operational footprint.

However, by far the most popular measure was waste reduction - the obvious reason being that reducing waste also reduces costs. It's the one environmental measure that can be taken that doesn't cost anything.

The leaders we surveyed told us that, whilst ethics matter, cost matters more. When choosing partners and suppliers, only five per cent said sustainability mattered more than cost. For 29% the two imperatives carried equal weight, but for the remainder, cost was the most important consideration.

What do decision makers want?

The answer to this question is in two parts, the first of which concerns the solutions and technologies organisation are looking at to help them become more sustainable.

As we can see, companies are looking closely at datacentres. Computing publishes annual research on cloud sustainability, which this year will be expanded to consider solutions such as Lenovo's Truesdale Infrastructure-as-a-Service, which compete with the big three hyperscale public cloud giants.

Other popular solutions included reductions in water and energy use, and a shift to renewable energy - again, both measures that could be money saving. The sheer range of solutions reflects the variety in the types of organisations represented in our research, with shifts to electric and hydrogen powered vehicles, battery tech and supply chain optimisation all making an appearance.

The potential for AI to have a positive impact was also apparent here, with AI-powered tools, intelligent tech and analytics for optimising operations, and the use of AI to build digital twins all cited. Computing has published several articles over the last year around AI being used for just this sort of purpose.

AI technologies are already demonstrating immense potential to reduce the impact of the foundational industries, and consequently to reduce built carbon emissions and find smarter, less damaging ways of either cooling or heating those buildings.

What do buyers, looking for these solutions, want from partners and suppliers? In summary, concise data and transparency. A selection of suggestions follows:

• "Clear, transparent reporting. Advising on the impact of available options," Assistant director of IT, Education
• "Evidence their claims," Voice services manager, Education
• "Much more honesty and real meaningful information rather than something provided by marketing," IT director, Manufacturing

Some answers suggested a standard or trust mark like B Corp and plenty of others suggested the need for data in a form that was comparable to that of competitors, and some sort of industry standardisation. The need for this is why Computing started researching this area in the first place; often, when data is provided, it's provided in such a way as to make meaningful comparison nigh on impossible.

For the providers of more physical products there was also a need for better product repairability, lifecycle data, disposal cost data etc. For example:

• "Right to repair," CIO, Distribution and transport
• "Provide full details of product cycle including clear end of life costings e.g. Disposal costs for hardware," Head of technology, Charity/third sector
• "Having a clear trade-in or take-back programme for old equipment would be good, so that maintenance/disposal becomes part of the purchase process of the next item," Consultant, Business services

Consolidation

Platforms and enterprise applications have a habit of spreading over time, sprouting new outposts and accreting new modules. And the longer an organisation has been around the more likely it is to contain multiple solutions that do more or less the same thing, as well as legacy infrastructure that's still there "just in case", or (more likely) because no-one quite knows what to do with it.

The systemic shocks of recent times led have businesses to add new platforms, for example, to get through remote working challenges, but subsequent price rises have led some to rue the size and complexity of their IT estate. Unsurprisingly, consolidating platforms and applications has become a priority.

Thirty-eight percent of the 173 UK IT leaders we polled said that reducing the number of applications was "something they'd be doing more of in 2024". Thirty-five percent said the same of their platforms.

The main driver for consolidation was cost reduction. Many platform and enterprise application vendors have raised price rises at above-inflationary rates in the last couple of years, at a time when all costs were rising sharply; under those conditions no-one want to pay for the same thing twice (or more).

The second biggest reason was operational efficiency. Consolidation of platforms and applications reduces the need to manage multiple standalone systems, saving time and resources. It can also help to eliminate functional silos, purge out-of-date and duplicated data, and, by simplifying the technology stack, make it easier for teams to collaborate and share information.

Streamlining the estate also makes for easier integration and a better user experience, which were third and fourth on the list, respectively.

Another important driver is enhanced security. Each new application or platform represents another attack surface, with the added complexity of running multiple tools acting as a force multiplier. Tool sprawl is a problem within security too, with data from the Ponemon Institute showing 30% of organisations using more than 50 unique cybersecurity products.

So, consolidating platforms and applications makes a lot of sense. The trouble is, it is difficult, requires long-term planning and leadership, and can cause disruption. The need for investment (costs, 55%), a shortage of necessary skills (52%) and security concerns (42%) were the main impediments to consolidation efforts.

With other barriers including tech debt, change management and plain old inertia, it will be interesting to see how these consolidation plans have progressed when we get back at the end of the year.

Cyber resilience

Cyber resilience, a combination of business continuity, IT security and organisational resilience, goes beyond cyber security. It is designed to bolster an organisation's defences so damage from a cyberattack - which, these days, is a case of when rather than if - disruption can be minimised.

As such, a cyber resilience strategy includes disaster recovery and continuity measures. These might include disaster recovery locations, remote working to ensure businesses can function when staff can't get to central locations, and other frameworks that go beyond cyber.

Since time is of the essence, cyber resilience strategies contain a strong element of automation through machine learning, integrated frameworks that combine security measures with continuity protocols, PR and training.

A cyber resilience strategy needs to be flexible, so that new types of risks are accommodated.

In terms of non-cyber risks, the top three mentioned were skills shortages; inflationary pressures; global political instability; funding cuts; and regulatory changes.

Cyber threats

Asked about the types of novel cyber threats they were most concerned about, respondents understandably mentioned a worsening of existing dangers. Top of these were an escalation of ransomware attacks (51%). This could mean new threat actors, new malware strains or new tactics by the cybergangs, such as a widening of the affiliation model.

Second was AI-enabled misinformation and disinformation, which was mentioned by 31%. All organisations find it hard to operate when basic information and facts cannot be trusted; furthermore, some executives now fear their voice or image being used to create deepfakes. There was also concern about AI-enabled malinformation (information based on reality but which is weaponised to inflict harm on a person, organisation or country).

Third were supply chain attacks (26%) which are extremely hard to defend against as they come through an organisation's partners or the software it uses. Related to this, 20% said they were concerned about IoT attacks launched via the ever increasing number of connected devices.

A focus on cyber resilience was the main defensive strategy chosen, closely followed by an emphasis on communicating risk to employees and mandating multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Zero-trust network access (ZTNA) was the most widely mentioned technical solution. ZTNA assumes the threat actor is already within the walls.

At the other end of the concern scale, few were sufficiently worried about quantum computers as to be considering replacing vulnerable cryptosystems such as RSA and elliptic curve.

Quantum computing

Which is interesting, as Gartner has added crypto-agility, post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution to its data security hype cycle last year.

If it were to arrive tomorrow, a computer that could crack commonly used public key encryption would have an almost unimaginable impact, but protecting against that eventuality is not yet a priority. For most it seems too far in the future.

The wind has gone out of quantum computing's sails somewhat over the past year. Nineteen percent of respondents predicted mergers or failures of the numerous startups operating in this space.

And as well as adding post-quantum cryptography to its data security hype cycle, Gartner removed quantum computing from its 2024 Top 10 Strategic Technologies report, an indication that timescales to develop practical devices are proving longer than previously thought.

Twenty-eight percent believe useful applications are at least a decade away, while a further 48% said useful applications will arrive later than we were led to believe.

Quantum computers already exist, of course; the machines used by the likes of IBM and Google to offer quantum-computing as-a-service offerings via the cloud, and the quantum annealing devices by DWave that can be applied to certain optimisation problems, are examples. But the present day capabilities are too narrow and the software stack far too limited for these to be considered general purpose or even highly specialised machines.

The current state of the art devices operate with around 1,000 stable qubits, while most experts believe 5,000 will be required for useful programmability. That will require a whole new software paradigm, as the way quantum computers work is very different from their classical counterparts.

But a lot of money is being pumped into R&D by tech companies and governments alike. And computers are not the only game in town. Quantum sensing is advancing steadily as is the unhackable quantum internet.

Keep the faith, said 9%. When it arrives, quantum computing will be a true game changer.

The augmented connected workforce

The augmented connected workforce combines technologies including augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), computer vision, IoT, AI, digital twins and robotics to increase workplace productivity. Its proponents say it will enhance the capabilities of employees, improve collaboration, enhance training and improve safety and accessibility, by blending human and digital skills.

The augmented connected workforce has recently had a boost by the high-profile release of VR devices such as Apple's Vision Pro headset.

As a concept, the augmented connected workforce is not particularly well-defined. Nevertheless, 5% of our respondents said they already have use cases in play, with a further 13% investigating.

The main use cases mentioned were connecting remote work environments; training and skill development; and creating a more efficient, collaborative and adaptable workplace.

A sample of the specific use cases mentioned by our respondents are detailed below.

What are you doing / looking to do with augmented connected workforce solutions?

• "Automated processes using robotics outside of normal processing hours," IT manager, Public sector
• "Virtual meetings," CPO, Health
• "Improve training, reduce costs," BI administrator, Health
• "VR headset, desktop," IT manager, Charity/third sector
• "Support remote workers," Director of technology, Technology
• "Run scenarios," IT manager, Professional services
• "Various use cases, from engineering and logistics to front line combatants or medics," Strategist, Public sector
• "Topics already funded for research, e.g., energy control," BRM, Education
• "Virtual workspaces," CISO, Business services
• "Research into augmented workforce solutions in various industries, e.g. automotive," Director of research, Education
• "Save time and money, providing an easier work environment and safer results to our partners," IT manager, Manufacturing
• "Integrating VR maps and plans with IoT coordinate data," CTO, Manufacturing
• "Provide solutions for work anywhere," Architect, Technology
• "Visibility for clients to interoperate data in real time," IT director, Manufacturing

Machine customers

A machine customer is a non-human economic actor empowered to buy goods or services autonomously. Unlike traditional automated systems, machine customers do not follow predefined rules. Instead they use machine learning to adapt their behaviour according to prevailing conditions, and modify their actions over time.

The market is growing fast, and according to Gartner 30% of large companies will have a "dedicated business unit or sales channels to access machine customer markets" by the end of 2026.

That's as may be, but among the Computing readership it's a concept that has yet to gain much traction. Just 7% said they are catering for machine customers; the same number didn't know.

A sample of those use cases is given below. Almost all referenced printers of multi-functional devices (MFDs).

• "Printer levels to the supplier under contact to supply toner," IT manager, Education
• "Automated ordering of consumables for printers," Enterprise architect, Public sector
• "Our MFD fleet already cater for ordering their own supplies via a central management system," Head of infrastructure & operations, Education
• "MFD management, password resets," IT director, Business services

The augmented connected workforce and machine customers fall under the automation category, which is underpinned by massive amounts of data, machine learning and sensor networks. In this category, prevenatiative maintenance and the industrial IoT were most likely to be pursued by respondents this year.

Organisational changes

Navigating the waves of societal, political and technological change, organisations are mainly doing more of the same in 2024. There will be an increased focus on DEI and ESG, there will be new regulations to negotiate, some of which could impose costs in 2024. Most IT leaders believe AI will create more jobs than it destroys, and few predict employee activism in the shape of unionisation this year.

Perhaps the biggest change will be preparing for AI, with 20% saying a member of the board will be given specific responsibility for managing the technology.

About the research

Computing polled 173 senior UK IT leaders across all sizes and sectors in January 2024 about current tech trends including AI, sustainability, application and platform consolidation, cyber resilience and quantum computing.

Penny Horwood is the author of the ESG section.

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