The year 2020 offers a new world of opportunities for IT firms.

The New Year does little to assuage the economic uncertainty that started in 2019. But the crisis presents both opportunities and threats for CIOs. As competition intensifies and margins become wafer-thin, CIOs seek to shape up, to prevent doom.

Here are a few predictions to help CIOs navigate the choppy waters of 2020, and drive their transformational agenda forward:

1. The Increasing Role of Intelligent Systems

Machine Learning, Artificial intelligence automation will dominate 2020. Smart enterprises leverage such intelligent systems to increase situational awareness. They deliver better outcomes for customers.

Michael Snell, service strategy manager, Airservices, bets on the Digital Twin of Operations (DTO). The proof of concept unveiled in the previous years is on the cusp of going mainstream. DTO brings together inputs from different, often disparate, systems to a common data and analytics platform. Ensuring Big Data analytics cover all “what-if scenarios.” Intuitive apps present relevant and actionable information to the right people, at the right time.

2. Artificial Intelligence Entrenches Itself

Artificial Intelligence is still a nascent and developing technology. Scott Hahn, technology lead, Accenture A/Z predicts AI to support human ingenuity in a bigger way, in 2020. Enterprises will design systems that blend people skills with AI. AI will graduate from being a tool to drive automation to a virtual resourceful co-worker.

Likewise, AI will find increasing application to power adaptable systems. The future belongs to boundaryless systems that recognize the blurring boundaries between humans and machines. These systems utilise the cloud, have a uniform approach to data and have strong security and governance. The application of AI makes these systems adaptable, capable of learning and improving itself. AI offers a robust path to drive innovation.

3. The Increasing Popularity of Data Lakes

Enterprises use only about 10% of data residing in their repositories, on average. The culprit is the unstructured and schema-less nature of storage.

Using more data requires a better catalogue of data, better data pipelines. managing the data environment better and capabilities to move data between environments seamlessly.

Guy Boyangu, chief technology officer and co-founder, Sisense bats for data lakes. Data lakes separate storage from computing and enable streaming analytics. It allows enterprises to store huge quantum of data at very low costs. In 2020, more and more enterprises will use data lakes to orchestrate streaming analytics. Reinforcing the data lakes with strong analytic engines, powerful BI applications, and advanced data science techniques allow for understanding data better.

With the infrastructure in place, enterprises may apply streaming analytics to enhance real-time insights. Real-time analytics become a matter of a simple point and click interface as opposed to the convoluted process and the full-time task of several data scientists now.

4. Progress of Voice-Based Interfaces

Andrew Todd, CTO, Iress predicts strong growth in voice-based interfaces. In 2020, Alexa and other such interfaces will support business software in a big way. Co-opting Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to the mix improves the quality of analysis and drives personalization better.

Most of the improvements will come through strategic JV partnerships and acquisitions. Ken Reddy, CEO, Reddy2Grow, points out to Amazon Eero strengthening its Ring acquisition in 2018. McDonald’s uses Dynamic Yield to apply AI and enhance the user experiences while ordering, Alooma strengthens Google’s hybrid cloud and migration capabilities.

5. Biometrics on the Rise

Biometrics and facial recognition make networks secure. Allan Waddell, founder and co-CEO, Kablamo opines businesses will apply facial recognition, speech-to-text, and OCR for data integrity.

Scott Hahn, technology lead, Accenture A/Z confirms the increasing popularity of facial and body recognition technology. New machines, capable of reading physical features better, drive such growth. Also, until now, only online tracking worked. IoT, GPS and other technology make people more trackable in the real world.

But Lavi Lazarovitz, group research manager at CyberArk Labs, while confirming biometric authentication as a good way to authenticate a user to a device, also warns of the false sense of security it creates. Effective biometrics requires encryption of data and network authentication. Securing the network remains a significant challenge for enterprises.

6. A New Sense of Customer Focus

Increasing competitive pressures force enterprises to relook the way they spend their budgets. CIOs increasingly align investments to focus on the impact of such investment on the customers.

Nick Lambrou, managing director A/NZ, Boomi predicts major investments in digital services, driven by the need to improve efficiency and predict customer expectations. The thrust will be on best-of-breed solutions and microservices, as opposed to large, all-encompassing software suites.

Jamie Humphrey, managing director A/NZ, Nutanix confirms the huge focus on and investment in innovation and digital services. CIOs have shifted their dollars towards technology that benefits during a downturn. Renting cloud infrastructure is the flavour of the season, as opposed to buying.

7. The Year of People Management

2020 will be the year of people management for CIOs.

The rise of open source has demolished technology as a source of competitive advantage. Talent is the key differentiator now, to leverage technology to drive innovation.

Johnny Serrano, global head of IT, Ground Probe holds skills shortages stifling the competitiveness of businesses. The skill crunch is especially rife in cybersecurity, AI, RPA and other emerging technologies.

Enterprises have understood the value of investing in their employees, and developing a positive, healthy workplace culture. A case in point Is Deloitte. The company’s strong learning culture makes employees 52% more productive and 92% more likely to develop more innovative products.

Enterprises known for a growth culture, professional training programs, and other investments in HR will attract new, talented personnel.

2020 will be the year of adaptability and flexibility. Success will depend on the ability of the enterprise to understand and anticipate market dynamics and adapt fast.