Applications Container Revenue will Reach $4.3 Billion

The global market for server virtualization technologies has experienced relatively low growth as more CIOs and CTOs consider alternative approaches to support their developer's need for agile IT infrastructure deployment. While some early adopters are experimenting with 'serverless' solutions, the mainstream market is utilizing software applications container solutions.

According to the latest worldwide study by 451 Research, the emerging applications container market will continue to expand and be worth more than $2.1 billion in 2019 and more than $4.3 billion by 2022 – that's a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 percent.

Application Container Market Development

When 451 Research first published a forecast on the container market two years ago, there were 125 companies identified in their market analysis. Included in the most recent forecast is an examination of 184 vendors, which represents about a 50 percent increase from the number of vendors in late 2016.

While the revenue contribution from containers for the vast majority of participating vendors is still relatively small, the widespread interest in application container technology remains a defining feature of this emergent market.

Growth in the containers market and ecosystem is being driven by increasing enterprise interest to help application developers move faster, manage infrastructure more efficiently and meet digital transformation goals. That being said, serverless technologies have a similar goal with a cloud computing functions-as-a-service (FaaS) model.

According to the 451 Research analyst's market assessment, about half of enterprise organizations are either using application containers today or planning to use them in the next two years.

"The promise of container technologies to increase developer speed, efficiency and portability across hybrid IT infrastructures, as well as microservices, are all driving growth," said Jay Lyman, principal analyst at  451 Research. "Broader and deeper vendor participation along with increasing enterprise use indicate this market will continue to grow and as that growth continues, consolidation in the market is likely."

The market study also indicates that both startup vendors and established leaders within the enterprise software industry are addressing a variety of container use cases -- such as management and orchestration, monitoring, DevOps, IT security, networking and storage.

Outlook for Application Container Innovation

This is not only indicative of the broad applicability of container-based technologies but also highlights how revenue is spread across a diverse vendor landscape. Moreover, the openness of this market may encourage a variety of additional vendors to enter the container market and fuel further growth.

"The industry is already seeing these mergers and acquisitions that include IBM’s recent acquisition of Red Hat and VMware's purchase of Heptio. These recent deals demonstrate how the container market is ripe for more consolidation as well as growth," added Lyman.

Innovation Acceleration Technologies Drive IT Spending

Successful vendors enable business and IT decision makers to better understand the scope and direction of their investments for digital transformation. It's a global phenomenon, where those savvy vendors with a client-centered view of how to quickly achieve commercial outcomes will gain the most market share.

European spending on information technologies and services that enable the digital transformation (DX) of business practices, products, and organizations is forecast to reach $378.2 billion in 2022, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Digital Transformation Market Development

Within Europe, DX spending is expected to steadily expand throughout the 2017-2022 forecast period, achieving a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.1 percent.

Europe is the third largest geography for DX spending, after the United States and China. Four industries will be responsible for nearly 44 percent of the $256 billion in European DX spending in 2019 -- discrete manufacturing ($39 billion), process manufacturing ($25 billion), retail ($26 billion), and utilities ($23 billion).

For the European manufacturing sector, IDC expects the industry to invest more than $27.6 billion in smart manufacturing next year along with significant investments in digital innovation ($8.8 billion) and digital supply chain optimization ($5.5 billion).

In the retail space, the leading strategic priority is omni-channel commerce, which translates to nearly $5 billion in spending for related platforms and order orchestration and fulfillment.

Meanwhile, the top priority for the utility industry is the digital grid, which will drive investments of more than $13.6 billion in intelligent and predictive grid management and digital grid simulation.

IDC says the largest investments in DX use cases across all industries in 2019 will be freight management ($11 billion), autonomic operations ($7 billion), robotic manufacturing ($8 billion), and intelligent and predictive grid management ($12 billion).

"European manufacturing companies are increasingly adopting innovation accelerator technologies," said Neli Vacheva, senior analyst at IDC. "The sector is introducing innovation-enabled production processes, advanced asset and inventory management, and new sales models based on IoT, robotization, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and 3D printing."

Outlook for DX Infrastructure Investment in Europe

From a technology perspective, hardware and services will account for more than 78 percent of all DX spending in 2019. Services spending will be led by IT services ($43 billion) and connectivity services ($25 billion), while business services will post the highest growth (19.8 percent CAGR) over the five-year forecast period.

Hardware spending will be spread across several categories, including enterprise hardware, personal devices, and IaaS infrastructure. DX-related software spending will total $55 billion in 2019 and will be the fastest-growing technology category with a CAGR of 18.1 percent, according to the IDC assessment.

How Fintech Payments will Transform Financial Services

Fintech innovation has evolved over several years. However, it's only recently that fintech has started to achieve its potential to transform the legacy global financial services sector.

The Internet of Things (IoT) -- devices that can handle a range of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and human-machine interactions -- enable a variety of offerings that rely on new technologies.

These now form distinct technology platforms for online payments, and other financial functions across the IoT, which can be considered distinct from fintech in general.

Fintech Payment Market Development

The ability to use connected objects to pay for things has been a key component of the IoT concept for many years. These can vary from using an IoT device as a discrete method of payment -- such as an NFC-enabled wearable -- to automated payments based on the state of the object being measured through various sensors.

According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, the IoT payments market will grow at an average of 75 percent per year over the next 5 years, reaching $410 billion by 2023. This is up from an estimated $24.5 billion in 2018 -- and the most growth will come from in-vehicle payments.

Juniper analysts have found that the automotive sector will become the most lucrative IoT platform by 2021, accounting for $63 billion in transactions that year and 55 percent of the overall market.

That's compared to just over $50 billion for connected home devices, including smart speakers and TVs. However, car-based transactions will mostly include payments for fuel and tolls, but little increase in spending overall.

Meanwhile, smart speaker voice-enabled commerce transactions are forecast to reach $51 billion annually by 2023. Goods purchased through these devices will account for just under 12 percent of connected home transactions by volume over the next 5 years.

According to the Juniper assessment, the majority of these purchases will be for digital content, typically made through connected TVs.

"Full financial service products will be slow to come to voice commerce, as the automated processes need to satisfy compliance requirements," said James Moar, senior analyst at Juniper Research.

However, with voice assistants already supplying advisory and finance updates, there will be much data to draw on once the regulatory requirements are established and met by service providers.

Outlook for Fintech Payment Applications Growth

Juniper found a significant opportunity for vendors in the IoT-enabled insurance market -- which will exceed $334 billion by 2023, primarily through telematics-based motor policies.

However, this evolution will likely reduce insurance premiums -- impacting insurers’ gross revenues. Juniper believes that this decline in premiums will be offset by improved overall profitability due to reduced costs per claim.

This anticipated transformation will become more immediately evident in homeowner insurance, with automated accident prevention enabled through the appropriate IoT-based infrastructure.

How IT Services Adapt to Ongoing Digital Transformation

As CIOs and CTOs shift their focus to digital transformation projects and the launch of new digital business offerings, demand for traditional IT services has evolved. Worldwide revenues for IT Services and Business Services totaled $506 billion in the first half of 2018 (1H18) -- that's an increase of 4 percent year over year, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

During 1H18, it was a mixed picture for tier-one global outsourcers and systems integrators headquartered in developed countries. Most remained flat or declined slightly. But this was partially offset by stronger performances by two large global vendors, who returned to double-digit growth.

IT Services Market Development

Indian IT services firms still outpace the U.S. and European counterparts, but their growth slowed from a year ago, continuing their 2H17 deceleration. While most large Indian vendors continued to grow at rates in the low single digits to high teens, it was offset by a few vendors' sharp slowdowns.

Project-oriented revenues grew by 5.2 percent in 1H18 to $191 billion, followed by 3.6 percent growth for managed services and 2.7 percent for support services. The above-the-market growth in project-oriented markets was mostly led by business consulting and application development markets with growth rates of 7.5 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively.

Most major management consulting firms still posted strong earnings in 2018, although growth rates cooled slightly: business consultants still extract more value in digital transformation. However, the market is now being driven by enterprise buyers who are executing their digital growth agenda.

In outsourcing, revenues grew 3.6 percent to $238 million in 1H18. Application-related managed services revenues (hosted and on-premise application management) outpaced infrastructure and business process outsourcing.

On the infrastructure side, while hosting infrastructure services revenue accelerated to 7.2 percent growth in 1H18, mostly due to cloud adoption, IT Outsourcing (ITO) – still almost twice as large a market and mostly big buyers and vendors – declined by 1.5 percent, largely chipped away by cloud cannibalization across all regions.

On a geographic basis, the United States grew by 4.3 percent, slightly higher than the market rate, while Western Europe grew only by 2.6 percent. IDC expects Western European services revenues to be stable but structurally weaker than North America. IDC forecasts the region to grow below 3 percent annually in the coming years.

In emerging markets, Latin America, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ), and Central & Eastern Europe led in growth. In Latin America, most major economies are turning the corner despite problems in Argentina and Venezuela.

In APeJ, Australia saw its growth scaled back slightly to 3.8 percent in 1H18, from 4.3 percent in 1H17. The largest market, China, trimmed its growth rate to just 7.2 percent, down from the 8 percent to 9 percent during the last two or three years.

Outlook for IT Services in Emerging Markets

So far in 2018, the weaker growth in China and Australia was partially offset by faster growth from other emerging markets in APeJ. IDC expects this trend to continue. Governments will fund large digital transformation initiatives and a better investment outlook will also drive IT spending.

"Steady growth in the IT services market is being driven by continued demand for digital solutions across the regions," said Lisa Nagamine, research manager at IDC. "But during 2018, as well as most of 2017, it is really the Americas and cloud-related services that are having the largest impact on revenue worldwide."

Digital Transformation for Real Estate Market Segments

Across a variety of industries, there is a growing integration of technology to automate manual transactions and make commercial processes more efficient. This digital business innovation has extended to many long-established areas of the economy such as logistics, insurance and regulation.

However, thus far, the traditional commercial and residential real estate sectors have experienced minimal digital transformation. That's likely to change, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research which has found that revenues generated by property technology (Proptech) rental platforms will reach $6.5 billion by 2023 -- that's up from an estimated $290 million in 2018.

Proptech Market Development

Proptech refers to technology applications used to transform the legacy practices.

Contrary to progress in other sectors, the property and real estate industries were held back by the incumbent's slow rate of change and adoption. But now that there is increasing investment in the Proptech sector, disruption of the status quo will create a more efficient and agile property landscape.

According to the new research findings, online rental platforms such as Flip and Avail are rapidly gaining traction in the rental market, by enabling landlords and tenants alike to address the prior high costs and complicated agent processes.

These solutions, by incorporating a superior online listing, legal and payment service, will propel the total number of Proptech-facilitated home rentals to 22 million by 2023 --that's up from 3.6 million in 2018. This momentum will force legacy real estate agents to adopt online-focused business models.

The research found that e-commerce conveyancing platforms, which take complicated legal processes and streamline them using simple online platforms, will deliver annual consumer savings of $1.5 billion by 2023, as well as eliminating a large cause of frustration.

"The rise of online conveyancing platforms is a wake-up call to the wider conveyancing industry, which must work to reduce costs and customer frustration. If it fails to do this, it will become increasingly bypassed by newer, more technically adept players," said Nick Maynard, research analyst at Juniper Research.

Outlook for Increased Proptech Market Growth

Juniper also found that commercial property utilization is being reimagined via Proptech solutions, with office-sharing vendors such as WeWork growing rapidly. This growth will lead to total annual platform revenues for shared office space companies of over $13 billion by 2023.

Platform vendors in this space are, however, taking large risks, by securing long-term leases within expensive commercial real estate markets. Juniper recommends that vendors minimize lease length to reduce future risks in a highly cyclical space, such as economic uncertainty or weak demand.

Global Industrial Robotics Revenue will Reach $22 Billion

The industrial and collaborative robotics market is gaining momentum, as more vendors and industries embrace automation. Development in cloud robotics, deep learning based machine operation, and a wider ecosystem will enable robots to become more reliable, versatile and efficient.

The industrial robotics sector is already experiencing robust growth. The revenues of commercial robots in manufacturing are forecasted to grow from $166 million in 2018 to $22 billion by 2027, according to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research.

Industrial Robotics Market Development

The newest trend is complementary robotics technologies that put mobile robots on the factory floor. Made up of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), these robots will complement existing robotic arms in factories that are increasingly becoming more autonomous and smarter.

There has been plenty of debate within the industry on the different benefits of AGVs and AMRs. While AGVs are a much cheaper precursor to AMRs, they require floor markers to guide their movement and are more ideal in greenfield deployments. For those wanting infrastructure-free navigation and flexible production line, AMRs represent the future standard.

"The advancements in machine vision, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), swarm intelligence, and sensor fusion are making it possible for mobile robots to operate in unstructured environments such as the factory warehouse and the assembly area," said Lian Jye Su, principal analyst at ABI Research.

These technologies are being supported by many cameras and sensors, such as LiDAR and radar. Moving forward, the robot can benefit from the integration of deep learning algorithms with sensor fusion and swarm intelligence.

In addition, as factories undergo digital transformation, more factories will start to adopt smart manufacturing platforms. With this development, the value proposition of cloud robotics becomes more relevant.

However, there are still many challenges related to the adoption and deployment of cloud robotics. Data security, data analytics, and virtualization services must be in place before connecting any robot to an industrial cloud platform.

Outlook for More Industrial Robotics Applications

As robotic technologies continue to mature, different vendors are starting to engage in ecosystem play. Universal Robot, the world’s largest collaborative robot arm vendor, has its own ecosystem called UR+, which features over fifty partners in grippers, accessories, and software platforms.

According to the ABI assessment, industrial factory embrace of collaborative robots, AGVs, and AMRs indicates that manufacturers are also embracing versatility and modularity.

"The increasing number of stock keeping units (SKUs) and short product life cycles necessitate the deployment of robotics solutions that can be retrained and redeployed for different manufacturing processes and factory layouts," Su concluded.

Digital Transformation Investment will Reach $1.97 Trillion

Across the globe, savvy CIOs and CTOs are deploying a wide variety of new technologies to enable their digital strategies. A hybrid IT infrastructure is the norm, where on-premises systems coexist with public cloud service offerings. Together, these ICT platforms create the foundation for an evolving suite of software applications and associated digital business processes.

Worldwide spending on the technologies and services that enable the digital transformation (DX) of business practices, products, and organizations is forecast to reach $1.97 trillion in 2022, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Digital Transformation Market Development

IDC now forecasts that DX spending is expected to steadily expand throughout the 2017-2022 period, achieving a five-year compound annual growth rate of 16.7 percent.

"IDC predicts that, by 2020, 30 percent of G2000 companies will have allocated capital budget equal to at least 10 percent of revenue to fuel their digital strategies," said Shawn Fitzgerald, research director at IDC.

This shift toward capital funding is an important one as business executives come to recognize digital transformation as a long-term investment. This commitment to funding DX will continue to drive IT spending well into the next decade.

Four industries will be responsible for nearly half of the $1.25 trillion in worldwide DX spending in 2019: discrete manufacturing ($220 billion), process manufacturing ($135 billion), transportation ($116 billion), and retail ($98 billion).

For the discrete and process manufacturing industries, the top DX spending priority is smart manufacturing. IDC expects the two industries to invest more than $167 billion in smart manufacturing next year along with significant investments in digital innovation ($46 billion) and digital supply chain optimization ($29 billion).

In the transportation industry, the leading strategic priority is digital supply chain optimization, which translates to nearly $65 billion in spending for freight management and intelligent scheduling.

Meanwhile, the top priority for the retail industry is multichannel commerce capabilities, which will drive investments of more than $27 billion in omni-channel commerce platforms, augmented virtual experience, in-store contextualized marketing, and next-generation payments.

The DX use cases that will see the largest investment across all industries in 2019 will be freight management ($60 billion), autonomic operations ($54 billion), robotic manufacturing ($46 billion), and intelligent and predictive grid management for electricity, gas, and water ($45 billion).

According to the IDC assessment, other use cases that will see investments in excess of $20 billion in 2019 include root cause, self-healing assets and automated maintenance, and quality and compliance.

From a technology perspective, hardware and services spending will account for more than 75 percent of all DX spending in 2019. Services spending will be led by IT services ($152 billion) and connectivity services ($147 billion) while business services will experience the fastest growth (29 percent CAGR) over the five-year forecast period.

Hardware spending will be spread across a number of categories, including enterprise hardware, personal devices, and IaaS infrastructure. DX-related software spending will total $288 billion in 2019 and will be the fastest growing technology category with a CAGR of 18.8 percent.

Outlook for Regional Growth of DX Investment

The United States and China will be the two largest geographic markets for DX spending, delivering more than half the worldwide total in 2019.

In the U.S. market, the leading industries will be discrete manufacturing ($63 billion), transportation ($40 billion), and professional services ($37 billion) with DX spending focused on IT services, applications, and connectivity services.

In China, the industries spending the most on DX will be discrete manufacturing ($60 billion), process manufacturing ($35 billion), and utilities ($27 billion). Connectivity services and enterprise hardware will be the largest technology categories in China.

Telecom Service Provider 5G Network Launch Plans

Mobile network service providers have been eagerly planning for the launch of 5G service deployment. Juniper Research anticipates that the first commercial network launches will occur in 2019 -- the initial networks to provide 5G services will be located within the Far East & China and North America regions.

Meanwhile, network operators in Europe have mostly adopted a wait-and-see approach, closely following the progress of operators in the two leading regions. Over the past two years, telecom service providers and network equipment vendors have been actively trialing 5G infrastructure components.

5G Services Market Development

According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, global annual network operator billed revenues from 5G connections will approach $300 billion by 2025, rising from $894 million in 2019. This represents an average annual growth of 163 percent in its first six years of operation.

Juniper believes that these substantial revenues will offer relief to the telecom service providers experiencing declining revenues and profitability. That said, Juniper analysts forecast that 5G service revenues will be 38 percent of total operator billed revenues by 2025, despite the anticipated 1.5 billion 5G connections accounting for 14 percent of all cellular connections in the same year.

According to the Juniper assessment, network operators must optimize pricing strategies and network configuration to secure a return on their 5G investment. Given the variety of internet of things (IoT) devices that will use 5G, pricing strategies must reflect data usage, device type and required network speeds to ensure profitability.

Juniper also forecasts that the total data traffic generated by 5G connections will reach 955 Exabytes annually by 2025. Network operators will likely need to implement technologies that minimize the cost-per-bit of 5G data -- including network virtualization -- to provide on-demand network agility for the data-intensive demands of 5G connections.

Outlook for 5G Network Investment

"5G for home broadband services will be the biggest driver in the growth of cellular traffic after initial launches," said Sam Barker, senior analyst at Juniper Research. "By 2025, the average 5G home broadband connection will generate over 430GB of data per month."

In addition, the researchers estimated that cumulative 5G research and development spending by network operators, hardware vendors and public bodies will approach $60 billion by the end of 2018. In 2018 alone, it is anticipated that telecom service providers will invest nearly $30 billion to deploy and test networks in preparation for commercial launches in 2019.

Robotic Exoskeleton Revenue will Reach $5.8 Billion

CIOs and CTOs are searching to find the information and guidance they need to increase opportunities and minimize risk when employing robotics technologies. Many now desire to create new markets and product categories, open additional lines of business, enhance existing product lines, invest in or acquire start-up companies, or create robotics innovation labs.

Across a range of applications, exoskeletons are increasingly being introduced to augment human capability -- for assistive purposes in the workplace, and for enabling or rehabilitative purposes in the healthcare market.

Exoskeleton Market Development

According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, as of 2018, global shipments will reach 7 thousand units with a hardware revenue of $192 million.

However, total shipments are expected to reach over 91 thousand by 2023 and 301 thousand by 2028. As a result, global revenue for the suits is now forecast to reach $5.8 billion in 2028.

"The market gets healthier with each passing month. The culmination of start-up activity, an increasingly permissive regulatory environment, improving drive and materials technology, and partnerships with larger corporations suggest the exo-market is in the best position it has ever been,” said Rian Whitton, research analyst at ABI Research.

Until very recently, Exoskeletons have been something of a novelty, but now advancements in the technology have made numerous new applications viable within developed economies.

For example, power consumption has been a longstanding problem and now the efficiency of battery technology has extended the viable use-time for powered exo-suits.

Also, considering that the aging population and systemic skills shortage in developed countries is forcing companies to invest more in the workforce they already have, exoskeletons will become a force-multiplier in improving productivity, and in avoiding and mitigating against injuries.

In the long run, their adoption will save billions of dollars of waste every year accrued from lost hours due to physical injury. That said, the future value of exoskeletons is not limited to industrial apps. Rehabilitation-focused exoskeletons showcase their potential in the global healthcare market.

Now though, the momentum for exoskeletons is in the workspace. Sarcos Robotics, which plans to release its full-body exoskeleton in 2019, is targeting most industrial markets, from manufacturing and warehousing to construction and extraction.

So far, the distribution is tilted heavily towards industrial and commercial applications. The industrial market for exoskeletons -- including manufacturing, construction, utilities etc. -- is expected to reach revenues of $2.8 billion by 2028. Meanwhile, commercial use-cases (including health and warehouse logistics) will reach $2 billion.

But there are barriers to adoption. Exoskeletons are still expensive and the deployment of these complex systems requires further partnerships between OEM’s, distributors and service providers.

According to the ABI assessment, more work needs to be done in creating modular exoskeleton platforms that can be retrofitted with a range of capable end-effectors to widen market appeal.

Outlook for Exoskeleton Application Growth

Furthermore, there is likely to be increased emphasis on data collection and cognitive capabilities of exoskeletons -- as autonomous smart devices that provide valuable insights to managers regarding worker performance and health.

Even as the market continues to evolve and expand, exoskeletons have yet to gain the attention of other innovative robotic technology markets, such as collaborative robots and autonomous vehicles.

"As their value across a wide range of verticals becomes more apparent and services lower the barriers to adoption, this will change rapidly," Whitton concludes.

Digital Transformation Investment will Reach $5.5 Trillion

Senior executives that have already developed strategies for business technology adoption may believe that their organization is prepared for the next wave of disruption in the Global Networked Economy. However, a mindful assessment of the forward-looking digital environment will help to uncover the potential for emerging new challenges and opportunities.

International Data Corporation (IDC) unveiled their "FutureScape: Worldwide Digital Transformation (DX) 2019 Predictions." Within their predictions, IDC has identified two DX organization segments that are based on specific market trends and leadership attributes.

Digital Transformation Market Development

According to IDC, leaders in transformation (the digitally determined) are those organizations that have aligned the necessary elements of people, process, and technology for success.

In contrast, laggards (the digitally distressed) have not developed the enterprise strategy necessary to align the organization effectively for meaningful business transformation.

IDC analysts present ten predictions that will impact digital transformation efforts of enterprise CIOs and CTOs over the next one to five years. The latest IDC predictions are as follows:

By 2020, at least 55 percent of organizations will be digitally determined, transforming markets and reimagining the future through new business models and digitally enabled products and services.

By 2022, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) title will be in decline, as digital will have become fully embedded, but more than 60 percent of CEOs will have spent part of their careers leading digital initiatives.

The paramount importance of customer advocacy will result in 60 percent of B2C brands embracing 'net promoter score' (NPS) as their leading success metric by the end of 2020.

By 2020, 80 percent of enterprises will create data management and monetization capabilities, thus enhancing enterprise functions, strengthening competitiveness, and creating new sources of revenue.

By 2020, 30 percent of G2000 companies will have implemented advanced digital twins of their operational processes, which will enable flatter organizations and one-third fewer knowledge workers.

By 2023, 35 percent of workers will start working with bots or other forms of artificial intelligence (AI), requiring company leaders to redesign operational processes, performance metrics, and recruitment strategies.

By 2020, 30 percent of G2000 companies will have allocated capital budget equal to at least 10 percent of revenue to fuel their digital strategies.

By 2021, prominent in-industry value chains, enabled by blockchains, will have extended their digital platforms to their entire omni-experience ecosystems, thus reducing transaction costs by 35 percent.

By 2021, about 30 percent of manufacturers and retailers globally will have built digital trust through blockchain services that enable collaborative supply chains and allow consumers to access product histories.

By 2023, 95 percent of entities will have incorporated new digital KPI sets -- focusing on product or service innovation rates, data capitalization, and employee experience -- to navigate the digital economy.

"With direct digital transformation investment spending of $5.5 trillion over the years 2018 to 2021, this topic continues to be a central area of business leadership thinking," said Shawn Fitzgerald, research director at IDC.