Cybersecurity considerations will become increasingly important as market pressures continue to drive business transformations

As well as cost pressures and shareholder desire for improved profitability, customer demands for increased levels of access and service will continue to shape business decision-making in 2024.

This may result in some market consolidation, but more universal will be the need to transform business processes and operations. This means more companies embracing technologies such as cloud hosting and AI, as well as generally upgrading their IT infrastructure and systems to support a high-speed access, multi-channel, digital environment.

Digital transformations rely heavily on the quality and availability of data and also the quality of business processes, so companies will need to urgently address these topics in order to realise the benefits from their investments.

Introducing new capability and increasing access to data brings with it additional risks. In a world of ever-growing cybersecurity threats, companies are also facing greater regulatory and compliance hurdles.

Within the EU for example, the NIS2 Directive is aimed at addressing the evolving threats by ensuring the resilience of services and digital infrastructure and applies to a broad range of industry sectors from energy, healthcare, finance and transportation to telecoms and digital service providers.

As well compelling companies to strengthen their defences and improve reporting and collaboration, compliance will have to be seen as a foundation for secure and sustainable business growth and potential competitive advantage.

To successfully navigate AI-enabled business transformation, companies need clarity on how they will understand, manage, exploit and protect their data.