Although it’s been around for a few years, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the new “killer app” that companies are concentrating on deploying -- and an area that IT staff is enamored with.

[ Related: 4 steps to RPA success ]

It’s touted as a way to take mundane, standard workflow-related tasks, fully automate them, and relieve workers of the tedium of manual processes (e.g., expense reports, invoice creations, HR related tasks, call center operations).

It’s essentially a way for computers to monitor a repetitive task, and then learn how to do it autonomously. Many have pointed to this technology as an AI process, but is it? And is it really worth the investment in time and expense, when true machine learning based AI capability is only a short time away? Finally, are you actually perpetuating a marginally productive or even inefficient process that should be drastically redesigned in the first place by installing at RPA solution?

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Most enterprise today are not the unified “all workers in the same space” environment that they were just a few years ago, when virtually everyone was in a corporate location and able to literally walk to the next office to communicate and/or collaborate with coworkers, or use email or simple internal messaging tools.

Employee communications, vital to the efficient operation of any organization, are far more complex today. Indeed, we estimate that a typical corporate entity has from 20 percent to 35 percent of its workforce as contingent labor – working independently and usually from remote locations. Keeping these independent contractors, consultants, third-party partners, and even customers connected is of critical importance to the productivity and the overall success of the organization.

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Security remains in the top three concerns of most enterprises, as a plethora of end point devices (especially smartphones and tablets) are deployed. We’re also seeing a move to a distribution of corporate apps to on-device, on-prem data center and hybrid cloud approaches that provide a major challenge to implementing a consolidated approach to security and authentication.

One of the primary ways bad actors get into corporate systems is though stolen identity credentials. The old way of doing security for authentication (i.e., user name and password) are still dominant and won’t disappear quickly, but their usefulness as a secure solution is coming to an end.  

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Most companies who use cloud services to deploy applications, websites, databases and related solutions have a problem.

While each cloud vendor may have a secure solution for their own cloud service and offer a rich set of security tools to its customers, how can companies ensure that they are protected across all the different boundaries of cloud implementations they employ? This is especially important if they don’t want to implement multiple independent security mechanisms, or have to deal with security logs and data flows that are incompatible?

Managing multiple cloud service (and your legacy data center products)

Why is this an issue? Because the average company has three-five different instances of cloud services deployed in their business– from public cloud to private cloud to hybrid cloud, to on-prem cloud -- in addition to legacy data center implementations. All of these have their own way of protecting the organization from malware, data exfiltration and more general attacks. And with increased emphasis on regulatory compliance requirements, the capability to manage all these disparate systems is crucial.

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The current crop of what are called “projects” – definitions and standardized ways of implementing the technology

We’ve barely rolled out 5G, and we’re already looking at what’s next! But as with all tech, the evolution of 5G service isn’t standing still for very long. Here’s a look at what is coming in the next two years as we see the next version of 5G (known as Release 17) rolled out, and what it means to users.

The current version of 5G is known in the standards bodies as Release 16, which is powering the current generation of 5G deployments. Release 17 was just ratified by the 3GPP – the international organization responsible for the standards definitions for 5G and previous versions of the cellular standards going all the way back to 3G (from where it got its name).

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Mobile edge computing has been talked about for a couple of years now as the way to bring cloud computing downstream to the local processing needs of a variety of compute intensive and privacy concerned workloads. But without 5G, is it just wishful thinking? And can network operators create a market for their implementation of edge computing as a service?

Bringing compute resources to the edge means reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent up to the cloud. Indeed, for many data-intensive applications like video surveillance/security, natural speech recognition, health/wellness related monitoring, etc. the need to process data as close to the source as possible is mission critical.

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IBM has been pushing hard on being a competitive threat in enterprise cloud, but is far behind the leaders like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. It’s latest strategy to become more relevant, in addition to buying RedHat for its cloud expertise, is to develop a series of “easy on-ramp” Cloud Paks that it claims can significantly reduce the amount of time necessary for enterprises to be cloud-enabled. But is this enough to change the capability of IBM to compete in a highly competitive modern cloud environment?

While much hype has been produced about the rapid pace of enterprise cloud deployments, in reality we estimate less than 25 percent of enterprise workloads are currently being run in the cloud. That doesn’t negate the importance of the growth of cloud computing – but it does set some parameters around just how prevalent it currently is, and how difficult it is to move enterprise workloads to a cloud architecture.

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People talk about cloud as the way to scale out infrastructure needs. And indeed, cloud and hybrid cloud infrastructure provides an attractive way for enterprises to deliver compute where and when needed at an attractive price. But with an ever-increasing amount of “things” being deployed, from sensors to mobile devices to intelligent assets of all types, the capability to process information locally and react quickly is becoming a necessity.

This movement of compute resources into proximity to the input/output, and which are often analog resources, is what’s driving the rapid rise of edge computing.

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While everyone is focused, and rightly so, on what 5G will mean to the billions of users of smartphones, there is a less visible but equally as important side to 5G that will have profound effects on consumers and enterprises.

5G will enable new business models that will bring new services to a vast number of people and companies. Further, it will provide a profitable adjunct to network operators that can add a significant contribution to their bottom line and may even be able to partially subsidize consumer services that will be highly price competitive longer term. And, finally, it will open up new competitive markets for internet services that have long been non competitive or marginally competitive.

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There is no question that mobile devices are mainstream access and productivity tools for most enterprise users. Indeed, in some organizations, smartphones surpass traditional PCs as the preferred way to access back-end corporate applications such as ERP. SFA and CRM. In fact, no major enterprise application vendor offers a PC-only-based solution anymore. Companies like IBM, Oracle, SAP, VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and Salesforce have ported most of their functionality for access with mobile clients. But as much as mobile has become a mainstream productivity tool, it also has a darker side – it’s now become a primary vector for security breaches.

How significant a security threat is mobile? The 2019 Verizon Mobile Security Index showed an increase from 27 percent in 2017 to 33 percent in 2019 in reported mobile incidents. However, it’s highly likely that the number of security incidents is even greater, given the lack of full visibility many organizations have when it comes to security breaches and how they infiltrated into company.

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Companies continue to struggle with ensuring their PCs are protected from malware attacks, data breaches and miscellaneous “bad actor” attacks (e.g. ransomware, identity theft, data exfiltration). A new revelation of a security breach every day seems to come every day.

While there are literally hundreds of add-on security solutions in the marketplace, it’s difficult to know if the PC end-point devices themselves are being maximally protected. Should enterprises expect their PC vendors to secure them? The answer is, yes, and enterprise-class device makers are doing a lot, which is not always apparent to organizations purchasing devices.

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Everyone seems fixated on the emerging 5G technology as the next great way to connect. And it’s true – 5G is an important technology not only for smartphones, but many other connected devices, particularly those that are mobile and/or remote (e.g., cars, meters, smart sensors, etc.). But as important as 5G is, often overlooked is an equally important next generation wireless technology for our increasingly connected world – Wi-Fi 6.

Most people are familiar with Wi-Fi as a way to connect their laptops to the internet while at home, in public places or in the office. But most current Wi-Fi access points (APs) are at least two generations behind on the technology. I estimate that at least 75 percent of existing installations of Wi-Fi are on 802.11n, a wireless standard approved in 2009.

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Most companies today allow their workforce to employ mobile devices to access corporate back office systems (e.g., email, sale force automation, ERP, HR, data collection, form filling, collaboration, etc.). And while these devices can be convenient, it’s important that organizations know how to maximize the security of these corporately connected devices – both devices furnished by the company and through Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).

In fact, many companies I speak with say that they believe (or are unaware of) any mobile data breaches within their organization. Research we’ve done at J.Gold Associates shows that IT believes about 65 percent of mobile devices have never had a breach or are unaware of one happening (e.g., lost, stolen, attacked by malware), while greater than 50 percent of end users admit to having a breach on their device, although not all exposed corporate data, and most never got reported to IT.

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One of the biggest areas of hype these days centers around how 5G will change the wireless world. Carriers are ramping up their rhetoric, which not always matched with actual deployment. End users are being bombarded with 5G news from carriers, device makers and app providers. But is 5G really ready for prime time? There is no doubt 5G will have a major impact, but should enterprises be making immediate plans to deploy 5G?

The reality is that there are lots of short-term issues around 5G, especially as it relates to enterprises, who in most cases have a variety of users scattered over wide areas with many differing needs. These issues primarily revolve around coverage, devices and apps.

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