#118 What's ahead in 2023

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on Wed Jan 18 2023 16:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

In this episode Darren talks about what's in store for 2023 where he reviews his predictions on the critical elements of digital transformation in the year ahead.

Keywords

#cybersecurity #compute #technology #edge #automation #web30 #data #cloud

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2023 appears to be a year of uncertainty as we begin this year with continued issues in the supply chain, cybersecurity, economic slowdown, and a reengineering of globalization. Even with all this uncertainty, there appear to be six technological trends that will continue to drive organizations’ digital transformation—namely, cyber security, automation, edge computing, cloud computing, web 3.0, and data management.

Cybersecurity

In 2022 there was a major increase in cyber security threats and infiltrations, which will continue in 2023. Specifically, critical infrastructure appears to be in the crosshairs of many Nation States and bad cyber actors. There is a high likelihood of continued ransomware attacks, specifically on critical infrastructure, in 2023. However, not all is lost. Improved cyber threat detection, remediation, and prevention technology will continue to give cyber professionals the tools needed to thwart cyber-attacks. Adopting zero-trust architecture and principles should continue to increase as cyber tools and technologies leverage zero-trust designs. Additionally, hardware cybersecurity technology will be more readily available in 2023, including encryption, key management, confidential computing, and hardware route of trust.

Automation

Automation will be essential in 2023 as organizations need help finding knowledgeable workers. Those who adopt automation will see improved performance, efficiency, and reliability in their back and front office processes. No-code and low-code technologies will be adopted in conjunction with a new breed of artificial intelligence. The best example of AI moving forward is chatGPT, which is already improving the productivity of solution architects, developers, and high school students writing senior papers. Organizations will look at reengineering processes geared towards automation and optimization, shedding off historically bureaucratic processes. The proliferation of neuromorphic computing and hardware-enabled AI will make AI more readily available to organizations through cloud service providers.

Edge Computing

Edge computing will continue to grow as private 5G networks begin to be adopted and a new generation of edge sensors starts to be deployed. With more data being generated at the edge, the edge needs to become more capable of performing inference and data analytics at the edge. Additionally, the edge increases the cybersecurity attacks surface, leaving organizations more vulnerable. New cybersecurity architectures, tools, and processes must be developed and deployed to protect the convergence of OT/IT infrastructure. Organizations will see the edge as a competitive advantage offering more services to their customers and constituents than previously imagined.

Web 3.0

All the hype around web 3.0 technologies will begin to be democratized and used in commercial settings. The fusion of AR VR and decentralized distributed applications will continue to evolve, and organizations will find ways of using these technologies to improve worker and customer experiences. Sharing information securely across multiple organizations will drive the use of distributed secure ledgers and the underlying blockchain technology. The learnings from the crypto meltdown will be leveraged to moderate the technological advances of decentralized smart contracts and currencies.

Cloud

The major cloud service providers had a rough 2022 as an increase in customers taxed the infrastructure of the cloud service providers with several significant outages across multiple regions and clouds. Additionally, many organizations that move to the cloud in 2022 were surprised by the exorbitant cost of using the cloud, especially in egress costs. Cost and reliability drive organizations to the on-prem and regional cloud service providers. This change drives organizations to adopt an intelligent cloud approach to leverage multi-hybrid cloud architectures.

Data Management

With the improvement in edge technology and the proliferation of cloud technology, data is being spread all over this heterogenous ecosystem. The maturity of data mesh technology is providing a framework to help organizations manage the proliferation of data everywhere. Critical aspects of data need to be considered when deploying global data management strategies: Locality, classification, governance, and spoilage. Data spoilage can be measured as the value of data over some time.

Conclusion

With time we will find out what 2023 has in store for us; for now, we can plan to continue to drive digital transformation.

Podcast Transcript

Hello, this is Darren

Pulsipher, chief solution,architect of public sector at Intel.

And welcome to Embracing

Digital Transformation,where we investigate effective change,leveraging people processand technology.

On today's episode, what's ahead for 2023with special guest me, Darren Pulsipher,your host.

Hey, on today's episode it's just me againbecause we're going to talk aboutwhat's ahead in 2023,not just for the podcast,but also where we're seeing digitaltransformationtrends moving forward in 2023.

Most definitely 2023is a year of uncertaintywith a lot of the economic changethat we're seeing,a lot of supply chain shortagesthat we're still dealing with.

There's a lot of uncertaintyin the markets, but I found six trendsthat I thinkwe're going to see big in 2023and some of hey, some of my fellowtravelers believe the same thing.

I looked at some of their blogs,some of their reports, too,and they kind of line upwith what I was thinking as well.

So let's go through them.

There are six anchors.

I love the number six for four,these sorts of things.

The first one and probablythe one we'll see the most of this year,unfortunately, is cybersecurity.

I think it's going to be big this year.

I think we're going to havesome major breachesas the war continues to go on in

Russia and Ukraine.

I think that's going to spill overinto other countriesas far as cyber warfare goes.

And so we're going to see a lot in that.

I'll talk about that edge computing,

I think will continue to growand we'll see more of that.

I also think because of the shortage in inin supply ofhuman resources, of of people,we're going to see an uptick in automationthis year, a big uptick.

I think we're also going to seesome changes in cloud technology,not in the offerings that are given,but we're going to see a risein some of the regional cloudservice providers and we're going to seea big risein the multi hybrid cloud concept.

And I also think and here are twobig ones, somewhat controversial ones,but I think data management is going to bea forefront this year as ouras our workloads are scatteredall over the placeand our data is scatteredall over, I think we're going to see moreimportance put on data managementand data governance.

And then last, most controversial will be

I think we're going to see somethingbig in Web 3.0, which includesa whole bunch of different things,which we'll talk about.

So, hey, let's dive right into the firstone, which is cybersecurity.

This was huge last year, but I thinkit's going to be huge again this year.

And I think the reason why is becausewe're going to see a increasein the number of threats.

I think the sophistication of the attackshave increased dramaticallyand I think nation statesare going to come as a bigger playerin cybersecurity,both offensive and defensive.

And I think some of those toolsthat they use are going to get outinto the public more.

We're going to start seeing scriptkiddies out there causing problems.

I also think we're goingto see more awareness of ransomwareand more techniques to combat ransomwareand to deal with ransomware effectively.

And probably one of my biggest concernsthat I have this year,and I voice this a couple of timesto some of my colleaguesas I think critical infrastructureis going to be under attack this year,which is really kind of scary for meas I look at critical infrastructure,as very vulnerablestill as they're still usinga traditional model of isolation,which has worked in the past.

But with some of the new cybertech techniques they are overcomingisolation,overcoming that traditional Purdue modelthat of professionalsand managers of critical infrastructurehave been leveraging for decades now.

It's starting to fall apart a little bit,so I'm a little concerned about that.

We'll have to see how that goes.

Now, it'snot all doom and gloom on cybersecurity.

There are some really great new toolsand techniques and technology that havethat are being deployednow as we speak, some new standardsthat are coming out in this area.

For example, zero trust.

We're seeing a lot of cybersecurityaround zero trust architecture,they call it.

A lot of it is more realm philosophy.

I haven't seen one product yetthat offers end to end zero trustarchitecture from endpoint managementall the way into the data centerand access across multiple cloudsand in data center and edge.

And no one has something like thatquite yet.

I see a lot of pieces and partsfitting together for that,but I see most organizationsstarting to really adopt Zero

Trust philosophy in the waythat they do their cybersecurity.

And and frankly,a lot of the tools that they havetoday can be used in that same philosophy.

It requiresprocess change and process improvement,which is the second thing I really seea big improvement in in this year.

There's a lot of really good cybersecurityhygiene, best practicesthat are out there.

I am hoping.

I am really hoping that OT professionalsstart adopting some of these cybersecurity things that we've been doingin the IT space for some time.

In fact, I'm hoping so much about it.

I'm actually doing researchfor a PhD dissertation on the subjectand my dissertation goessomething like finding the keycritical factorsthat are impeding OT from adopting i.t.

Cyber security best practices are some bigtitles like that, but it's importantand we need to find out what thoseimpediments are so we can overcome them.

I think part of the reason why we seethat is the otprofessionalshave been isolated from cyber attacksbecause of the Purdue modelthat they've been using where they isolatetheir network from the internet,from ot from I.T in their own companies.

But we're starting to see that break down.

So there are some thingsthat we got to do around that.

And last and probably the mostthe most valuable thingmoving forward is hardwareroot of trust and other hardwareenabled security techniqueslike hardware enabled encryption,hardware, secureenclaves and confidential computing.

These are all built into the hardware,much harder to overcome with cyber attacksthan software that we're doingsome of these things before.

So I think this is going to bea really good year for cybersecurityas far as new techanalogies, new techniques, new processes,

But we're going to needsome cultural change to make that happen,especially around critical infrastructure,like I've mentioned,and you're going to hear metalk a lot about itthis year on the podcast because to meit's so important that we educateand that we helpwith cyber hygiene, some basicthings that we can do across the industry.

Okay, all of thatcybersecurity is really important,but as everyone knows, no one likes to payfor cyber security up front.

They like to pay for it

When something's happenedand all your CISOs are out there, you'reyou're like, Yeah, I,

I hear that all the time, right?

Believe me, we're going to get some moneyfor cybersecurity this year,but I think we're goingto get even more money in automation,and I think we're going to get more moneyand investment in automationbecause it is still a tight jobmarket out there.

It is still hardto find people to do things.

So we're starting to see organizationsspend money on automation toolsto automate some of the workthat was done, some of themore repetitivework that is done by employeesthat they can't hire anymorebecause they can't find them.

And I think the cost benefit is there now.

I think automating with eitherno code or low codeor or even sometimes codingautomation,

I think all three of those are goingto grow more this year and there'ssome great platforms out there.

AI We're going to we're going to heara lot about these platforms this yearwe have

I went back and looked at all the podcasts

I've done, all 119 of themso far, 120 somewhere in that range,and we have quite a few on automation.

So go back and take a look at embracingdigital dot org.

You can type in automationand it will tell you all the podcastswe did aboutautomation, both RPA automationand also the beginnings.

And we're starting to see this of

A.I., and I think A.I.is going to be a huge thing this year.

I think the thing it kind of blossomeda little bit last year with Chat. GPT.

I've been playing around with this.

Oh my goodness, it is pretty cool.

I have to admit,and I can see people starting to use it.

I've even talked to some of my fellowsolution architects.

They're using chatto help them with some of their solutionarchitect work,which I think is fascinating.

Like which design pattern is bestused for this situation?

And they get a list of them where beforethey would have to be hunting and peckingthrough books or through articles.

So I'm starting to see these, let'scall them assistantsbeing a big tool that we're going to seepeople use more and more of this year.

And that's all in that air space.

I also see peoplelooking at process improvementand not just doing evolutionary processimprovement,but complete re architecting processesin their organizationsto start throwing out some of thatbureaucratic steps that were therebecause they've been there for decadesand we've always done it this way.

We're going to see some re-engineeringof some of those processes in a big waythis next year to simplifyand to automate those processesas much as possible.

And on top of all this automation,we have already seen a big, huge uptickin a hardware enabled A.I.that's going to make automationmuch easier to handlebecause some of the parts in automationthat are difficult is handlingall the variabilityand handling fuzzy inputs.

That's a that's a big problem, right?

I can look for patterns and things likethat that can help in that automation.

We're seeing a huge opportunityin hardware enabled a

I in both the cloud service providerswhich are offering itand of course in the chipsthat you can buyof both CPU's cheaperand other acceleratorslike neuromorphic computingand things like that,

You're going to see more of thatthis year and I think this is goingto be a big year for A.I.to kind of break out a little bit.

And I think you can look at Openaias one of those organizationsthat are really going to providereally valuable

AI tools for people to use inhelping them get their jobs donefaster and more effectively.

And that's part of all that automationaspect of machine.

Yeah.

Okay.

Next on the docket, it is edge computing.

Now, this isthis has been a darling of mine.

I really love the concept of edgecomputing.

As CPU's become lower wattageand more capable up the edge of the edgewith all the crazy sensors we have outthere are generatingjust tons of data, right?

We're talking zettabytes of data. Now,

I think we're going to see a big changethis yearwhere we can truly manage the edge.

There's lots of great tools out thereand we can start doing more inferenceat the edge.

We've got low wattageinference tools like neuromorphicchips out there,even low wattage CPUs out on the edgethat can actually do some work for us,which is really valuable.

Instead of moving 4Kstreams of data back to data centerto be analyzed for object detection,

I can now do that right at the edge.

And instead of sending gigabytesof streaming video data,

I can send kilobytes of object datathat I found instead.

Big, huge.

We're talking several factors,so I can actually manage more edge devicesand get the data offof those devices that I needand do it more effectively.

And that's not for every case.

But there's a lot of casesthat I can start looking at that.

So we're going to see more of thatstarting to come.

Also additionally,we're seeing a new emphasisin sensors and different kinds of sensors.

I've talked to a couple companiesand they are going to come on the showthis year that are doing custom sensorsthat do chemicaldetection, virus detection, smellchips, odor detection.

It's crazy.

The types of sensors that are coming out,we'll see increased use in light

AR and video together and meshing,having some sensor fusionto help with that.

And then I also thinkwe're going to see a rise in 5Gand private 5Gso that organizations can take morea better approachto connecting all these sensorswith a more reliablewhich I think will bea very interesting move forward.

As we put more devices on the edge,we're going to need security.

And it goes back to that cybersecurity thing.

We're going to need trusted Iot devices.

I know I deployed that device.

I know that device.

The data I'm getting fromthat device is trusted.

I can tell it hasn't been tampered with.

We're going to see more of thatto prevent spoofing

Iot devices out there.

We're going to have to dothese sorts of things to really make Iotand Edge edge computing really valuable.

We're going to see in thein the key areas, I think edge computing,we're going to see a lot ofa lot of changes this year is criticalinfrastructure managementas we're starting to see more attackson critical infrastructure,cyber attacks, we're going to have to putsmarter devices out on the edgeto do more detection of cyber eventsand more trusted Iot devices out there.

So I know when I'm updating thatis coming from a trusted devicethat we're going to we're going to see.

I'm hoping I'm just hoping the beginningsof an overhaulof the way we think about OT and criticalinfrastructure are some other big areas.

I think we're going to see edge computingmake some progress in is buildingmanufacturing for sure and health care.

We're already seeing an uptickin health care making are edge devices.

Unlike hospital beds, morereliable?

We're going to see them be more autonomouswhere they can move around the hospital,especially enabled by 5G.

We don't have cables everywhereand a bed can move around with a patientmore reliably and keep vital informationabout that patient in a protected way.

So I think there's lots of really cooluse cases around edgethat we're going to see blossom this year.

Okay.

The most controversial one,

LGM here right in the middle Web three Oh,now, all right.

I know you guys are like going Darren,

Darren is talking crypto again, right?

He's just trying totalk up his crypto. You know,whatever coin you have out there.

Well, all right.

I do have some crypto, I'll admit to it.

It's in the tank.

I don't ever seegetting that money back out,but I do see an uptick in the technologiesaround Web three datalike distributed secure ledgers.

I think as we look at waysthat we can secure our supply chainmore effectively,especially around software bombs,software building materials, we're goingto start looking at distributedsecure ledgers as a to make surethat there aren't changes to software.

That's where a lot of the attackshave happened recently in the DevOpspipeline, wherewe weren't even keeping a ledger,but people were having access to bombsand changing bombs and adding libraries.

I think we're going to seea mesh of distributed secure ledgerswith software build systemsto provide a more secure software bomb.

I also think the metaverseor the metaversekeeps going up and down.

We may see some uptick in that this year.

I'm kind of hoping we do because there'sa lot of promise around the conceptof the Metaverseand Air and VR combined together.

I see something there.

I also see asthe bankingis happening today, rightwhere we've got central banksthat are trying to control inflationand and pumping up economies.

I think we're going to see cryptokind of creep back in againas a decentralized alternative.

But that's just me thinkingand we most definitelyare going to see new useuse models for blockchain.

Even as much as I've interviewed a companyrecently to have them on the showthat are talking about a reliable storageof critical data in a blockchain,instead of just having normal backups,

I'm now backing it up into a blockchainwhere it's high.

I need it's very important I keep thisdata around as highly critical data,so we're going to see some interest dyinguses of Web 3.0 this year.

I'll keep my pulse on it for youand we'll talk about iton the show for sure.

All right.

Let's get into things that arethey sound a little mundane.

We've been talking cloud for years.

We've talked it cloud for years.

Last year was a banner yearfor the cloud service providersas their their revenues went up.

I think it was like 20.8% last year.

That's huge.

I thinkwe're going to see some changes this year.

And I think that's because the big boys,the big cloud serviceproviders had some reliability problemsthis last year.

Everyone knows about it.

No one really wants to talk about ittoo much.

But they had some reliability problemsand a lot of organizationsthat require four ninesor even three nines weren'teven getting nine to nines last year.

It's pretty patheticunless they had a multicloud or multiregion architecturewhere they really relied onmultiple locations and multiple cloudsto handle their reliability,then they were able to do that.

So I think those lessons learned,we're going to see more of that Multicloud

I also think we're going to seesome repatriation of workloadsback into the data centeras the cost of operating data centershas come down a little bitas the capabilities of the CPUhave gone up dramatically,processing per watthas decreaseddramatically in the data center.

So I think we're going to see somerepatriation this year to control costs.

I think a lot of the costs in the cloudwere a little out of whack for some peoplebecause they didn't truly understandthe cloud operating model.

So they're going to start lookingat changing the way theythey do cloud to a cloud,smart way of doing thingswhere my workloads can be more portableacross multiple cloudsand with managingmy data more effectivelybecause the biggest cost surprise,

I should say the biggest cost surprisethat people are seeing,frankly, is the egress costsof moving your data out of the cloud.

So we're going to seesome really interesting dataarchitectures come outof thisthat are almost like diode data, diodetype of architectures where I put data in,but it never comes back out.

And I may have multiple copiesof the same data going out,but that data never comes out.

Only inference from that data comes out,smaller data sets come out,which I think is going to be true, thatwe may see something like that.

So I think we're goingto see some shifts in cloud this year.

The cloud service providers are mostcertainly going to compete on services.

I think they need to step upto the security problems that we have,which is that shared security,the shared responsibility security model.

I think they're going to do more educationfor their customerson how to do that effectively,because it's a very difficult thing to doif you're not used to it.

And I think a lot of cloud serviceprovidersknow that's a problembecause their customers maybe say, well,

I don't even need a security team becausethe cloud is handling security for me.

And they're shouting,

No, no, you still need to manage your it'sstill your staff.

We don't manage all of your securitybecause there are things that you can doto actuallythwart the security measures thatthe cloud service providers have put in.

So we're goingto see more education in that space.

I think the cloud service providersknow thatand they want to do the bestfor their customers in this case.

So there you go.

All right.

The last but not least,and this is a big one for me, I love whatwe're seeing in data managementand we're seeing most of it comingbecause of low quality of data.

I've got data spread all over the place,especially when I startlooking at the edge.

As the edge has become more capable,

I'm collecting more data at the edge.

What do I do with that data?

How long do I keep it?

Who has access to it?

If I'm doing inference at the edge, wheredoes that data, the inferred data go?

We also see somethingvery fascinating with COVID, and we have

I haven't seen anyone really come upwith a good solution to this yet.

It is my laptop,

It is an edge device.

Now I've got critical informationon that edgeand you're thinking,

Damn, we've done that.

We know how to do that, right?

We just sinking into the cloudand it's managed in ourin a cloud security model that we have.

But my question to a lot of youis video conferencing.

Where are those videos landing?

Are they secure?

What's the governance model around that?

These are a lot of questionspeople aren't really think about or I'mstarting to see the rise of

AI where there's an A.I.guest on my on my web conference,and it is transcribing everythingthat's said.

Who's doing that transcription?

Which SAS model my using?

Is that data protected?

Who's doingthe security audits on all that?

There's a lot where is that data reside?

Is it there temporarilyor do they keep copies?

This all fits into this data management,which includesfour key areas that

I like to call locality classificationgovernance of the data, and a new termthat was taught to meby my Macromedia, which you're goingto see a podcast by Macromediathis this year on data spoilage.

What Darren youwhat are you talking about data spoilagedata hasdifferent value based off ofhow old it is.

Instant real timedata could be very valuable,especially in critical infrastructure,right?

Or it could be very valuable later on once

I've collected itand I'm doing training,but it might spoil over time.

It depends on the data.

Not all data is created equal.

Okay, We're starting to seesome really big new dataarchitectures that are out there,including the maturity of datamesh architectures,which I think are going to be greatas we start looking at datadifferently, as instead of

I need to bring all my data to one placeto do analytics, I now need to takethe analytics to where the data is.

I need to look at dataas a commodity that I can use.

I can monetize where it's at,

I can monetize it together.

So we're going to start seeinga lot more intelligent data movementacross this vast ecosystemin the data center, in the cloud,on the edge, And we're going to startseeing the emergence of data brokerages,global data networks that are sharedin coopetition type scenarios.

We're going to startseeing more of that stuff,and we're going to need a ways of doingthese types of analytics on shared datain a confidential way.

So I'm going to see confidential computingis going to be big this year,especially around data managementand new data business modelsthat we're going to see wherepeople are not sharing the data,but they're sharing analyticsfrom the data togetherand they're they're joining analyticsfrom their own private data sets togetherto improve the industryor the community as a whole.

So there's a lot of really cool thingsaround data managementthat I truly believe we'll see this year.

So I'm really interested in your feedbackon this.

Please put comments on the blogor on the podcast postor on the YouTube channel.

I check all of themand give me some of your ideas or go aheadand send me an email at Darren Dot Wdot Pulsifer at Intel AECOM.

I read the emails.

I enjoy feedback from you guys.

Tell me maybe what did I miss thatmaybe I missed something or somethingyou want to hear on the podcast this year?

I'm all ears.

I want to hear your feedback.

Thank you for listeningto Embracing Digital Transformation today.

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