As Asia Pacific companies brace for macroeconomic slowdown and disruptive events increase in 2023, US tech giant Dell Technologies advised business organizations to prepare for the year ahead.
In a press briefing held last Dec. 7, Dell diverted from its usual year-end report that announces upcoming technology trends and focused instead on the actions that companies should take to improve their cost effectiveness and security.
Dell Technologies global chief technology officer John Roese explained the reasons behind the shift: “This year, one of the things that became clear is we are now at an industry-level understanding that technology is rapidly evolving. But the biggest question CIOs have and we believe is an important question to answer is ‘what do you do about it?’”
He added that these commitments can help CIOs take action to get ahead of and properly utilize the technology
Increase efficiency through cloud and edge
The first recommendations revolve around companies’ cloud architecture. Dell suggested companies to consider a multi-cloud approach for next year. In this strategy, companies utilize two or more cloud computing platforms to carry out their operations.
While multi-cloud approaches seem daunting, Roese clarified that a multi-cloud architecture allows businesses to have ultimate control over their data, applications, and workloads.
In other words, it enables a company’s data and operations to reside where it is most efficient and cost-effective.
Relatedly, he warned chief information officers (CIOs) and chief technology officers (CTOs) against choosing a cloud platform without understanding its long-term costs.
He cited experiences where clients are unpleasantly surprised by the cost of their cloud subscriptions because they did not understand the capabilities of their cloud deployments.
Roese then enjoined companies to streamline their edge architecture. Edge computing refers to the architecture that locates data as close as physically possible to where it is produced and consumed to lessen Internet dependencies and lower latency.
Since edge computing happens on edge devices outside a centralized datacenter, the proliferation of edges that occur as a company grows may create security vulnerabilities and bandwidth overcrowding.
“If organizations do not make a decision about which edge architecture they want in the long-term, they may end up with multiple edges,” Roese said.
Addressing security through Zero Trust
As multi-cloud and edge computing become the norm, however, their accompanying security vulnerabilities must be countered.
Dell suggested that Asia Pacific companies with highly distributed multi-cloud or edge environments should define their organization’s Zero Trust control plane.
A Zero Trust control plane ensures that only known entities may access the company’s system and only enables expected actions rather than prohibiting explicitly identified malicious acts.
Consequently, by limiting who may enter and what may be accomplished within the system, it allows threats to be neutralized relatively quickly compared to traditional threat management systems.
Additionally, it helps companies attain consistent identity, policy and threat management throughout their distributed multi-cloud and edge deployments.
Prepare for quantum computing
Quantum computing has been highly anticipated as technology that can tackle problems too complex and data rich for classic computers to handle. Through the efforts of technology companies around the world, a working quantum computer may soon be accessible.
Even though quantum computing is currently unavailable, Dell points out that the risks posed by this powerful tech are already emerging.
Roese indicated that malicious actors will be able to utilize quantum computing to decrypt once securely encrypted data.
As such, companies have to determine where to deploy quantum safe cryptography, the first algorithms of which have already been invented in the United States.
Roese stressed that companies most focus on implementing these algorithms where their data moves through public infrastructure.
Besides shoring up their defenses, companies must also cultivate their people’s talent and begin developing knowledge on quantum computing to prevent falling behind when this technology is widely accessible.
He stated that good place to begin are the programming languages belonging to this technology and learning where it can best be applied in their companies.
Dell Technologies president of Asia Pacific & Japan Amit Midha, declared: “Despite the uncertain macroeconomic climate, our region is growing and will continue to invest in technology.”
“Technology remains at the forefront of transformation… This is the region that wants to leapfrog and digital technology is the technology that can help many countries, societies and individuals to leapfrog. We need to expand our core process and think about how we can harness technology,” Midha said.
