Top 5 Technology Trends of 2021 for Tech Marketers
As the physicist Niels Bohr once said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
That said, once you sift through a mass of research reports, CIO interviews and IT professional polls, the top technology trends of 2021 are startlingly clear. Here are five high-level trends that every tech marketer should know:
1. Technology spending will increase
Let’s start with the good news: Businesses understand the value of investing in technology and plan to lay out the big bucks in 2021. Global IT spending is expected to reach nearly $3.7 trillion this year, an increase of 4.3% from 2020, according to Gartner.
2. Increasingly, CIOs will play an operational role
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread lockdowns, causing millions of consumers to rely heavily on digital channels for their shopping. This shift in consumer spending led to many CIOs being tasked with leading their company’s digital business operations. That will hold true for 2021: CIOs will not only be responsible for IT as a support function but will also be held accountable for the success of their business operations. In a financial services company, this means the CIO will also be responsible for the performance of its customer-facing website and client services portal.
This trend of CIOs acting more like chief operating officers will be especially pronounced in industries that traditionally don’t have a COO, such as retail, manufacturing and energy. Tech marketers could benefit from focusing on operational CIOs in these industries and helping them improve their business systems.
3. Work from home is here to stay
The pandemic forced countless companies to adopt a distributed workforce model as their employees started working from home in early 2020. It’s likely this state of affairs will continue this year until the coronavirus is brought under control.
Of course, many employees wanted to work from home at least several days a week before the pandemic. And a recent poll found that seven in 10 employees want a hybrid remote-work/office-work model. Moreover, many businesses have learned that their at-home employees can be productive.
Given these facts, working from home, at least part of the time, seems likely to endure after the coronavirus fades. That means CIOs and other IT leaders will continue to invest in technologies that empower their at-home employees to work securely and productively—namely, single sign-on services, SD-WAN at scale and SaaS solutions that improve collaboration for a distributed workforce.
4. Cloud-based IT infrastructure investments will surge
The pandemic highlighted the business value of having a highly agile and adaptable cloud infrastructure. Not surprisingly, Gartner expects investments in cloud-based IT infrastructure to surge by 27%, to $64.3 billion, in 2021. That means CIOs will be clamoring for SaaS solutions that improve their internal processes—like a project management office system that enables remote employees in the finance department to easily access accounting data. They will also seek out SaaS solutions for external processes—like a hybrid cloud that plays well with their growing number of customer-facing apps, data and systems.
5. Cybersecurity solutions are here to stay
Even without the coronavirus, cybersecurity was poised to qualify as a trend in 2021 because the number of cyberattacks keeps increasing each year. Last year, for instance, 80% of businesses experienced an increase in cyberattacks. However, the pandemic has substantially increased a company’s attack surface as more of its employees are working remotely. Never ones to miss an opportunity, cybercriminals have responded in kind. The coronavirus is blamed for a 238% increase in cyberattacks in the banking sector, according to FinTech News.
As a result, IT buyers will continue to harden their security operations this year with tools like security identity and event management solutions, zero trust architectures, and endpoint and mobile security products.
Let Us Fill Your Pipeline
The pandemic upended tech marketers’ engagement strategies in 2020. They were no longer operating in a face-to-face environment as offices were closed, travel was scaled back and live events were cancelled. This situation will likely remain true for much of 2021.
With in-person events no longer a viable option last year, tech marketers went digital. They relied on demand gen to identify the right tech buyer audience, engage with them, and qualify those with a genuine need and interest.
Overall, 2020 was a strong year for tech marketers who quickly adapted to their changed circumstances.
At Activate, we’ll keep working with tech marketers in 2021, as we did in 2020, so your pipeline is filled with tech buyers who are engaged, qualified and primed for conversations with your sales team that will lead to successful conversions.
