As the industry comes to grips with the highly disruptive implications of a once-in-a-generation pandemic event, executives are bracing themselves for continued volatility as incidences of unprecedented weather events rise, and bad actors target critical infrastructures with malware and ransomware attacks.

Malware and ransomware attacks have achieved an unprecedented level of ubiquity across organizations of all sizes and industries. A Spring of 2021 survey conducted by analysts at IDC revealed that 95.1% of organizations had suffered a malicious attack within the past 12 months, and 36.6% of respondents have suffered more than 25 attacks during that time.

Large organizations that have deployed SAP to underpin their most strategic operations are in the process of evaluating how this critical enterprise application will support accelerated technology modernization and business transformation initiatives. With the expiration date for support for ECC 6.0 now set for 2027, many executives have elected to pull the trigger on moving to S/4HANA, according to analysts at IDC.

According to IDC, over 40% of the global population turned to remote work models in 2020. With the ebb and flow of the global pandemic in 2021, hybrid work models are enabling some people to return to on-site work while others continue to work remotely or move between remote and on-site work.

As organizations accelerate the implementation of business transformation and technology modernization initiatives, business leaders are exploring the impact these changes will have on enterprise content management and its associated workflows. A growing number of organizations are exploring the role that collaboration platforms can play in streamlining content management.

As businesses explore their SAP modernization options, the best way forward for many organizations may lie in hybrid installations of SAP S/4HANA that allow IT teams to maintain their current infrastructure. Most established companies often have application estates that are inflexible, monolithic, and outdated. When it comes to SAP modernization, challenges and opportunities are in the eye of the beholder.

Halted production of new content, along with a dramatic increase of consumer demand for video entertainment throughout the COVID-19 crisis, has placed unprecedented demands on the content libraries of broadcasters and streaming providers. As content owners mine their inventory of episodic series and movies produced decades ago, they are exploring how to up-convert content to meet the elevated viewing standards of today’s consumers.

Businesses that leverage mainframe investments while developing a modernization roadmap have better outcomes than those that move off them. These were the conclusions of a 2021 IDC study that analyzed businesses across the globe to measure the efficacy of migrating to the cloud compared to modernizing existing mainframe systems. Replatforming, the researchers found, can be riskier and more costly than modernizing existing investments.

By the end of 2021, 80% of enterprises are expected to put mechanisms in place to shift to cloud-centric infrastructure and applications. By 2024, approximately 64% of infrastructure spending will revolve around investments in cloud and infrastructure technologies. Success will hinge on the architecture strategies that effectively guide the cloud migration process.

The majority of IT organizations in mid- to large-sized organizations are now using a complex combination of on-prem hardware and software and cloud-based enterprise services that are constantly evolving in response to the introduction of new technologies and changing business requirements.

The paths to success with SAP depend greatly on specific circumstances and market dynamics of an enterprise. This is causing organizations to develop agile, future-proof SAP strategies. A recent IDC survey revealed 96% of organizations that had already embarked on application modernization initiatives — or plan to do so in the next 18 months — expect their long-term IT strategy to be affected by the events of 2020, with cloud playing a more pivotal role in the future of their deployments.

Most large organizations that have been around for a while have come to the conclusion that they will continue to operate in an environment in which data centers with legacy systems coexist with private cloud and multiple public cloud resources. As leaders explore ways to automate the management of this hybrid environment, many are looking at SDN as a way to virtualize and integrate disparate assets in a scalable and manageable manner.

As government agency leaders and healthcare administrators execute their transformation initiatives to be more responsive to citizens and patients, IT staffs will be tasked with leveraging virtualization capabilities to integrate resources across heterogenous infrastructures.

If analysts' assessments of the past year are correct, the events of the past year have accelerated business transformation initiatives with most organizations focusing enterprise technology investments on two interrelated trends: cloud adoption and customer centricity. The lessons learned through the COVID 19 have prompted 80% of enterprises to embrace cloud-centric infrastructures and applications at twice the pace set prior to the pandemic.

According to analysts at IDC, cloud in all its permutations is having a major impact on the disposition of core enterprise applications. By the end of 2021, based on lessons learned in the pandemic, most enterprises will accelerate their shift to cloud-centric digital infrastructure and application services.

Change management has never been easy and will not get any easier as organizations embrace complex heterogeneous infrastructures that mix legacy and next-generation enterprise platforms. This was the central conclusion of a moderated CIO.com virtual roundtable co-hosted with Chuck Tsocanos of IBM.

As the complexity of enterprise infrastructures rise in response to accelerated technology modernization and business transformation, organizations across industries are exploring the role that AI will play in optimizing IT operations while introducing innovative business operations.

As the chief owners of the digital infrastructure that underpins all aspects of modern enterprises, IT leaders will play pivotal roles in the road to recovery, “seeking the next normal” while still performing their traditional roles. In a time of turbulence and uncertainty, CIOs and senior IT leaders must discern how IT will enable the future growth and success of their enterprise while ensuring its resilience.

VITEC, a worldwide leader in IP video streaming and video encoding for business, industrial and public-sector applications, today announced that Eric Deniau has joined the company as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). IP video streaming continues to grow across all markets as more and more enterprises harness the power of their networks.

The financial services sector is among the most mature users of enterprise systems in the economy. Established institutions often preside over generations of computing platforms that have evolved over the years to accommodate on-premises data centers, private-cloud and public-cloud infrastructures, according to executives at KPMG.