Workforce challenges and changing IT demands spurred by the pandemic are accelerating the shift to services: software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, and platform-as-a-service will continue to gain popularity, and hardware-as-a-service will increasingly catch on as a way for businesses to provide integrated services to their hybrid workforces. What’s more, leaders view everything-as-a-service (XaaS) as critical to their digital transformation and key to creating new solutions and business models to thrive in the new normal.

Cloud is rapidly becoming the preferred platform for enabling XaaS and spurring innovation—powering AI capabilities, intelligent edge services, and advanced wireless connectivity. Many organizations are leveraging a hybrid, multi-cloud strategy to increase access to best-in-breed technologies, optimize costs, improve resilience and reliability, and minimize vendor lock-in. Moreover, distributing workloads—across multiple clouds and on-premise—can help enterprises satisfy requirements around performance, data security and privacy, regulation, and cost, which can vary by application and geography.

The complexity of this multi-cloud, multi-vendor approach means organizations will need a way to seamlessly integrate and coordinate a multitude of cloud-based applications and data from a single platform or dashboard. Tech companies are stepping forward to meet this growing need for orchestration, and we expect the playing field for solutions to grow over the next few years.

Strategic questions to consider:

• How will tech providers expand their multi-cloud orchestration capabilities, such as developing their own products and services, acquiring other companies, or partnering?
• How can XaaS providers better understand their customers’ needs and behavior, improve their experience, and become trusted partners?
•  How can XaaS providers collaborate with user organizations and stakeholders to fully understand the risk environment, and to clarify who bears responsibility for which risks? How can they better utilize assurance reporting?

The supply chain disruption that occurred amid the pandemic affected everything from automotive production to consumer appliances, medical devices, and even toys. Its impact extended far beyond the semiconductor sector, exposing the tech industry’s critical chokepoints across complex distribution and supply chains.

Supply chain bottlenecks have affected the indirect channel partners and distributors of tech companies as well. Rising product prices have led them to take financial hits in the form of higher discounts offered to customers, and potentially losing out on business to tech companies’ direct sales channels. In 2022, tech companies should work with their channel partners to review channel performance and relationships, change and adapt channel programs, and figure out new ways to go to market together.

To effectively deal with future (and potentially greater) supply chain challenges, tech companies should build their supply networks with the ability to offer granular visibility across all tiers and levels. Incorporating advanced technologies such as 5G, robotic automation, blockchain, and AI can provide sales, distribution, and channel executives with near-real-time insight, and better visibility into diverse areas across their supply chain, logistics, and channel operations.

Strategic questions to consider:

• What parts of company sourcing operations can be moved in-house or outsourced to nearshore third-party contractors and service providers?
• What new analytics capabilities do tech companies need to enable live intelligence sharing and enhance preparedness for future disruptions?
• What business and channel partnerships and alliances do tech companies need to reassess, terminate, expand, or build from scratch to capture new markets and customers?

Many have said that 2021 was the year of the “Great Resignation,” driven by changing employee attitudes and expectations because of the pandemic. And while the tech industry is accustomed to high turnover, intense competition for talent, and critical shortages in emerging technology experts, it has nonetheless been hit especially hard. What makes this year different is that hybrid work is now the norm.

To attract and retain talent, technology companies are trying to capture the best of both the at-home experience and the in-office one, balancing the flexibility their employees are demanding with the business needs of their organization. Tech companies that do not adapt may struggle to maintain a unified culture, feeling of belonging, and sense of fairness among their employees, with respect to advancement and compensation.

To address this challenge, companies should focus on three areas: creating equivalence between in-person and virtual work, driving purposeful engagement, and establishing rules on how and when to co-locate. Equivalence ensures that all employees can be equally involved regardless of location, individual sensitivities, and working styles. Purposeful engagement requires engineering moments that matter in order to build strong connections. Co-location rules require broad agreement on what talent needs to be concentrated in one location, when to have in-person interactions, and how to make the most of them.

Strategic questions to consider:

• How will companies train and reskill managers to best take advantage of a hybrid working environment, supporting employees in the real and virtual worlds?
• What new collaboration approaches and enabling technologies will emerge over the next few years? What is the best way for companies to experiment with them?
• How will planned and proposed global and US tax reforms impact remote, hybrid, and in-office work?

Tech leaders are aware of the environmental impacts from current technology systems. Manufacturing processes, billions of connected devices, and proliferating data centers come with enormous energy demands. As a result, the tech sector may be responsible for 2%–3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Thankfully, technology leaders are already taking bold actions to drive essential change. Several have set ambitious goals for reducing their carbon footprints, and we expect tech giants will continue to be top global buyers of renewable energy in 2022. Some tech companies are tackling the e-waste problem, using more recycled materials in their products, designing them for better repair and recycling, and promoting a circular economy for electronics.

Perhaps most significantly, we expect tech companies to accelerate the creation of digital innovations that track and mitigate the effects of climate change. For example, environmental monitoring satellites, IoT, data analysis, blockchain, and AI can be used to increase efficiencies of buildings, manufacturing, and agriculture; improve data center management; and reduce traffic congestion.

Strategic questions to consider:

• What steps are tech companies taking to evaluate, understand, and address the risks that climate change may pose to their operations, employees, customers, market reputation, and business models?
• How can tech companies prepare for the complexities of a future regulatory environment that is likely to place greater emphasis on ESG reporting and compliance?
• How can tech companies accelerate the research and development of tech innovations that not only advance their own sustainability initiatives, but also create opportunities for new products, services, and business models?