5 Technology trends for Mid-Market Organisations

As Australian Mid-Market organisations consume ever increasing levels of data, operate 24 hours a day and adapt to new customer engagement requirements, their technology requirements are becoming just as sophisticated.

Whilst 2018 was focussed on the move to public cloud, 2019 has seen mid0market organisations increase their adoption of cloud to consume services once only for large enterprise.

PXA’s 5 technology trends for 2019 are:

Analytics for decision making

Business analytics and data visualisation tools such as Power BI, Tableau and Splunk allow mid-market organisations to quickly connect a wide range of data sources to actionable insights and decisions quickly and on any device.

PXA helps organisation with their analytics requirements by:

  • Transforming data in visuals and providing access to staff on any device
  • Visually explore and analyse data
  • Collaborate and share customised dashboards with interactive and scheduled reports
  • Providing the features of analytics securely

Increased focus on security using artificial intelligence

Signature-based detection software such as traditional anti-virus and anti-spam have limitations when detecting ransomware and exploits. As the sophistication of ransomware and exploit attacks increase, so does the prevention methods. Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence with behavioural analysis and exploit protection adds a layer of protection on existing end point protection software which is quickly becoming a normal requirement rather than a need for enterprise compliance.

Shift on-premise workloads to PaaS

Organisations are consuming public cloud Infrastructure as a Service through Microsoft Azure or AWS at ever increasing rates. As this new way of doing business becomes normal, organisations are increasing the sophistication of their public cloud consumption to take advantage of Platform as a Service. Some common use cases are:

  • Replacing mapped drives with Azure File Services
  • Decommissioning on-premise Active Directory domain controllers and using Azure AD Domain Services
  • Migrating SQL Server to the Azure SQL Database service

Transition from remote desktop to cloud native

As more software organisations transition from server / desktop installed software to Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings, organisations can take advantage of the cloud native access by increasing the mobility of their workforce and not requiring staff to be tethered to remote or hosted desktop to access company data. Previous arguments about security have been answered through the use of Single Sign On (SSO) , Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) and Mobile Device Management (MDM) policies which can lock down devices and access to organisational data as securely as a on-premise or remote desktop infrastructure.

Deployment of Multi Factor Authentication to all staff

Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) was the domain of early adopters or the ultra-security conscious. The rise of phishing attacks to gain Office 365 credentials was a common theme during 2018 is forcing CIO’s and IT Managers to roll out the functionality for all staff. MFA thwarts authentication theft by challenging users to use a second form of authentication, usually a SMS code or via an authenticator mobile app on top of their of password. This means that successful authentication theft requires both access to a user’s password and mobile device.