By: Danny Allan, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Veeam

Acquisitions will stagnate as company valuations outstrip available assets

In 2021, global M&A activity reached new highs aided by low interest rates and high stock prices. In 2022, we will see that momentum shift. Larger acquisitions will be few and far between as company valuations continue to rise. Only well-established,cash-rich companies will have the money required to make new purchases.The higher purchase threshold will make it harder for medium- and small-sized companies to grow and evolve, giving the advantage to larger, established firms.

AI and automation will replace entry level jobs in the finance, healthcare, legal and software industries

The talent shortage will leave many jobs unfilled, making way for the advancement of artificial intelligence and automation to fill new roles. We have seen technology begin its takeover in the service industry with the introduction of robotic waiters during the pandemic. In 2022, we will see AI and automation capable of filling positions in other hard-hit sectors like the finance, healthcare, legal and software industries. These developments will mostly affect entry level positions, like interns, making it harder for recent graduates entering the workforce to gain job experience in the future.

CI/CDwill stabilize and standardize to become an IT team requirement

The Bill Gates memo in 2001 became the industry standard in how to design, develop and deliver complex software systems – and today it feels like there has been no standard since then. IT teams and developers fell into habits of adopting “known” technology systems, and not standardizing in new spaces, like continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). In 2022, we’re going to see a shift towards more stability and standardization for CI/CD. IT leaders have an opportunity to capitalize on this high-growth and high-valuation market to increase deployment activity and solve the “day two operations problem.”

Tech’s labor market willbe met withbig money and big challenges

The COVID-19 economy – and the subsequent great resignation – throughout the last two years certainly made its mark in the tech industry. As we continue to see turnover and lower employee retention, tech salaries will begin to grow in 2022 to incentivize talent to stay. I see this causing an interesting dynamic, presentingbigger challenges, especially to the folks in the startup and VC world. The bigger tech giants are the ones who can meet the high dollar demand and deliver benefits for a competitive workforce. It will be interesting to see in the years ahead what this does for innovation, which tends to come from the hungry startups where people work for very little for a long time. We could very well see a resurgence of tech talent returning to the “old guard” companies to meet their needs for stable (and large) salaries, forgoing the competitive, hard-knocks of startupsthat could cause a skills and talent gap that lasts for years to come.

New privacy-focused legislation will shift attention to data sovereignty clouds

With increased focus on General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulating data protection and privacy in the EU and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) enhancing privacy rights and consumer protection for Californians, other states and countries are facing pressure to enact comprehensive data privacy legislation. As this continues in 2022, I expect we’ll see much more focus on data sovereignty clouds to keep data within nations or within a certain physical location. This is a far more specified cloud model that we’re starting to see in EMEA with Gaia-X. Some will see this as an obstacle, but once implemented, this will be a good thing as it puts consumer privacy at the core of business strategy.

Containers will become mainstream to support the cloud explosion of 2021

Businesses wrongly predicted that employees would return to the office, as normal, in 2021. Instead, remote working continued, and companies were forced to develop long-term remote working strategies to ensure efficiency, sustainability and to retain employees seeking flexibility. This remote work strategy demanded cloud-based solutions, resulting in an explosion of cloud service adoption. To meet this moment, containers will become mainstream in 2022, making the generational shift to cloud much easier and more streamlined for organizations.

2022 Technology Predictions for the Middle East

By: Claude Schuck, Regional Director, Middle East at Veeam

Every enterprise in the Middle East looking to build a strategy around Modern Data Protection should keep the three important pillars in mind – Cloud, Security and Containers. Businesses need to have a good understanding of what cloud brings to an organization and why it is important. Secondly, before the pandemic, we had a centralized office where employees were all in one place. With decentralization now, the boundaries of the organization have become invisible. Data is all over the place, necessitating a need for a comprehensive security strategy to safeguard all entry points. And finally, we see an increased interest in Kubernetes as a critical piece of an enterprise’s cloud infrastructure. This has created a new area around container-native data protection that needs addressing.

Accelerated adoption of Cloud technologies

Although cloud is not yet mainstream in the region, adoption is expected to witness significant growth in the Middle East as enterprises begin to “trust” in-country offerings with the big public cloud players like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services having opened data centers in the Middle East. Gartner forecasts end user spending on public cloud services in the MENA region to grow 19% in 2022. Another big trend we see is that many governments across the Middle East are creating their own ‘Government Cloud’ in order to have control over their data and not letting it reside in the public realm. With this acceleration, Veeam is investing in more headcount in the region to be able to assist organizations as they transition to the cloud.

Security – cybercrime

In the Middle East, security will always be a top priority. Not only can cyberattacks affect day-to-day business, impact revenue, and create other problems, but above all, it affects the brand reputation and workforce. Enterprises will continue to invest and safeguard themselves against the ever-growing increase in cyberattacks, especially ransomware. Although organizations in the Middle East in general spend a lot on security technologies, there is a huge gap when it comes to planning and executing a security strategy. This mainly boils down to the complexity of the IT environment. There are still a lot of legacy systems. Protecting these complicated environments is a big challenge and becomes even more so in the transition phase of moving to the cloud. Regional CISOs need to have a stringent security program in place which includes important elements like stress testing of IT Systems, backups, a disaster recovery strategy and educating employees to become a first line of defense for improving organizational resilience

Security – data privacy and protection

In early September 2021, the UAE announced the introduction of a new federal data protection law. With this, data privacy and security are set to take centre stage as consumers demand transparency and their “right” to be forgotten. By having the option of opting out, consumers can ensure that their data is being handled in a correct way and they are not targeted by organizations. But more importantly international corporations that are based in the UAE and the Middle East can be assured that policies are being applied when it comes to data in-country – whether it be in terms of the way data is stored, IP is managed or how customer and consumer data is protected

Digital transformation powers ahead thanks to Containers

The rapid adoption of Containers in enterprises, the need for on-demand resources, and the flexibility of workloads will drive digital transformation. The Lack of skilled resources and understanding around the technology is a big challenge for enterprises in the Middle East. Veeam, through its acquisition of Kasten, is simplifying container strategy and delivering the industry’s leading Cloud Data Management platform that supports data protection for container-based applications built in Kubernetes environments.