Information technology (IT) is not only an investment for the success of a modern enterprise, but a strategic tool for survival as well, according to VST ECS president and CEO Jimmy Go during his keynote speech at the recently concluded CXO Innovation Summit held in Boracay island, Aklan.
The three-day annual event was hosted by local ICT distributor VST ECS and gathered more than 400 participants from both enterprise vendors and users to discuss and exchange insights on where technology is heading, emerging trends and best practices, and how business can adapt to the evolving business landscape.
“VST ECS, as the leading ICT distributor, is here to help all of you in the modernization of your IT infrastructure and digital transformation. We have brought to Boracay, in this year’s CXO summit, all the top experts in the ICT industry, both from the vendors and from the users,” said Go.
The last physical CXO Innovation Summit hosted by VST ECs was held in October 2019, followed by two years of virtual conferences due to the mobility restrictions imposed during the pandemic. Since September this year, the distributor has onboarded big data and artificial intelligence firm Advance.AI, video device manufacturer Neat, and digital drawing solutions provider Xencelabs and Ugee.
“Our discussions centered towards data-driven organizations. The impact of the pandemic brought rapid upheaval in the way we work, how we work, shop, connect, and how businesses operate. These unexpected changes demand modernized IT infrastructure,” Go recalled.
This year’s iteration of the CXO Innovation Summit bore the theme “Modernization in the era of digital economy” and highlighted the role of IT modernization in keeping businesses agile, supporting new working setups, and enabling operations and communications amid the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond.
Go says IT is taking the centerstage now that both digital channels and physical platforms are co-existing in the realms of communication, collaboration and transactions. He called for enterprises to prepare for the unpredictable future by putting technology at the center of their innovation efforts.
“We have seen a massive shift in IT prioritization requiring organizations to recalibrate technology spend and speed up IT investments. As digital adoption takes a quantum leap, new opportunities emerge, but it is also sad that we are also exposed to lots of vulnerabilities,” he explained.
According to Go, the new norm of the modernized tech-driven world will center around artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, financial technology, digital-based transactions, virtual and augmented reality, smart cities, and the existence of a circular economy.
“For 2023 and beyond, we are faced with a global recession, high interest rates, forex (foreign exchange) uncertainty, higher power costs, global stuck tumbles, job cuts, supply chain disruptions, and a lot of risks. We need to plan for the uncertainty in the next years,” he warned.
A recent study conducted by Polaris Market research shows that growing investment in the IT sector is one of the crucial market trends boosting the growth of digital transformation, with the healthcare industry as the biggest earner in 2021 in terms end-use driven by a significant demand for extendable technology.
Go believes that IT will no longer be considered as an operational expense (OpEx) for enterprises in times of budget cuts, instead, it will be regarded as a strategic investment for the survival and success of each enterprise.
“The path to IT modernization may vary per company, per organization, depending on business priorities. There’s no one size fits all. Every enterprise and every company is different, but ultimately, IT modernization initiatives should result to business transformation,” he explained.
“In the post-pandemic era, agility is imperative to business survival. This means IT modernization is crucial to allow organizations to reinvent, rapidly scale the business, harness the cloud technology, support the dispersed workforce, optimize an abundance of data, reach new markets, and understand customers better,” Go continued.
“Those that rely on legacy applications and systems may have difficulty adjusting to the transformed business environment, that’s why modernization is crucial and extremely important. Modernization can create efficiencies, lower costs, and help build a flexible and agile IT environment,” added Maurice Altar, VP for marketing and communications at VST ECS.
The keynote sessions were led by representatives from Oracle, Huawei, Trend Micro, Adobe, Cisco, VMware, Fortinet, Dell Technologies, Lenovo, Yugabyte, IBM, Aruba, HPE, APC, and Microsoft. Meanwhile, the various partner brand and exhibitors also hosted breakout sessions to showcase their latest solutions and services for the ICT industry.
“It all rests on having the right infrastructure to allow us to optimize the promise of this technological revolution. As we move forward, let us work together in harnessing the power of technology so that no one will be left behind,” Go concluded.
