In its latest survey of CIOs and CTOs in the US, UK, China, India and Brazil, IEEE reveals the most important technologies for 2021, the impact of COVID-19 on the speed of their technology adoption and the industries expected to be most impacted by technology in the year ahead.

According to the survey, nearly two-third (23 percent) of the respondents said that AI and ML followed by 5G (20 percent) and IoT (14 percent) will be the most important technologies in 2021. The CIOs and CTOs surveyed points that industries like manufacturing (19 percent), healthcare (18 percent), financial services (15 percent) and education (13 percent) will be largely impacted by technology in the next year. While nearly half (52 percent) of the CIOs and CTOs feel that dealing with the aspects of the pandemic recovery in relation to business operations will be their biggest challenge in 2021. Permanent hybrid remote and office work structure (22 percent), office & facilities reopenings & return (17 percent) and managing permanent remote working (13 percent) are some such challenges they will encounter in 2021.

However, 11 percent of the respondents said that the agility to stop and start IT initiatives in these unprecedented times will continue to be their biggest challenge. Another 11 percent cited online security threats, including those related to remote workers, as the

The pandemic has pushed a majority of employees globally to work from home but cyberattack remains a major issue for every enterprise

biggest challenge they see in 2021.

Pandemic has indeed pushed the CIOs and CTOs surveyed to speed up and adopt new technologies, with nearly 55 percent of the respondents having accelerated adoption of cloud computing, 52 percent having accelerated 5G adoption and 51 percent having accelerated AI and ML adoption. Other technologies that saw faster adoption were IoT (42 percent), AR & VR (35 percent) and video conferencing (35 percent).

Compared to a year ago, 92 percent of CIOs and CTOs believe their company is better prepared to respond to a potentially catastrophic interruption such as data breach or natural disaster. And an overwhelmingly 58 percent respondents say that COVID-19 accelerated their preparedness.

Concerns that Remain
The pandemic has pushed a majority of employees globally to work from home but cyberattack remains a major issue for every enterprise. Hence the top two major concerns for CIOs and CTOs when it comes to cybersecurity are issues related to mobile workforce including employees bringing their own devices to work (37 percent) and ensuring the IoT is secure (35 percent).

Above 34 percent of CIO and CTO respondents said they can track and manage 26-50 percent of devices connected to their business, while only 20 percent of the surveyed personnel could track and manage 51-75 percent of connected devices.