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IT insights, March: What has been going on in the world of IT

SoftwareOne blog editorial team
Blog Editorial Team
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Updated: March 27, 2023

What has been happening in the tech and vendor world in March? We compiled the latest vendor news and trending topics of the past month. It takes just a few minutes to be up to date.

IT in uncertain economic times

This month has seen the publication of several insightful new reports and whitepapers by leading tech vendors and service providers, all drawing very similar conclusions:

SoftwareOne released the results of its CIO Pulse: 2023 budgets and priorities report, which showed that 83% of CIOs will have to achieve more with less this year, despite 93% saying they expect IT budgets to go up. FinOps seems to be the solution to achieve this with 95% of IT leaders wanting to increase visibility and control of cloud costs and 80% expect to increase spending on FinOps this year. Read the full report here

This is echoed in the recently released State of FinOps 2023 report from the FinOps Foundation, which showed that FinOps has continued to proliferate within companies around the world enabling cross-functional teams to maximise value from the cloud. Get The State of FinOps report here

Much like SoftwareOne’s CIO Pulse survey, Flexera’s 12th annual State of the Cloud Report released this month, shows that despite economic uncertainty challenging many organisations and refocusing priorities, it hasn’t slowed cloud growth and FinOps adoption has become a priority. Read more at Flexera 2023 State of the Cloud

Finally, IDC has published a number of predictions that indicate a global trend for increased investment in security, AI and ICT despite potentially choppy economic waters. The new IDC spending guide forecasts worldwide security investments will grow 12.1% in 2023 to $219 bn, while Asia/Pacific security spending is to grow 16.7% in 2023 with the Government taking the lead, and European ICT spending to reach $1.2 trillion this year despite fear of recession.

In short, IT spend continues to grow, but being smart about how it is spent is now a priority.

The rise and rise of AI

Amongst the figures released from IDC this month was the predicted worldwide spend on AI-centric systems, which is forecast to reach $154 billion in 2023. This is reflected in the number of AI-related announcements made recently with Microsoft and Nvidia leading the pack.

Microsoft has announced GPT-4 is available in preview in Azure OpenAI service. With this milestone, Microsoft will bring the world’s most advanced AI models to Azure customers. The software giant also introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot in both CRM and ERP which brings next-generation AI to every line of business. It committed $13 billion to its partnership with the start-up OpenAI and in addition, Microsoft announced that it is creating new opportunities for partners through AI offerings and the expansion of the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program.

NVIDIA and Microsoft announced that they will bring the industrial metaverse and AI to hundreds of millions of enterprise users via Azure Cloud. However, NVIDIA is also partnering with AWS on ‘Next Generation’ AI Infrastructure to build out “the world's most scalable, on-demand artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure optimised for training increasingly complex large language models and developing generative AI applications.” And the GPU manufacturer announced that is has chosen Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for its AI Services.

In other AI news, AWS Chatbot is now integrated into Microsoft Teams. It will allow the user to centralise the management of infrastructure and applications, as well as to automate and streamline the workflows. And if you’re wondering how all the recently released AI chatbots compare, this Verge article compares Google’s Bard to Microsoft’s Bing and OpenAI’s ChatGBT.

General industry and vendor news

Microsoft Defender for IoT cloud-managed platform is now generally available which lets busi-nesses interconnect their operational technology environment without compromising security.

IBM and Adobe have partnered to help marketing and creative organisations optimise their content supply chain. Meanwhile, to meet the significant demand for greater data security and resilience in hybrid cloud environments, IBM and Cohesity have launched a new partnership, collaborating on a solution that increases data security and resiliency in hybrid cloud environments. IBM also plans to acquire NS1 to help enterprises drive network agility in their hybrid cloud environments. It marks IBM’s second acquisition of 2023.

Oracle is exploring new locations for cloud zones in Latin America. Thus far, the company has confirmed the first cloud zone for Colombia and the second for Mexico, while markets in Central America and Peru are being studied.

SAP hosted its SAP Insider event in Las Vegas in March during which it launched its SAP cloud ERP offering for midsize companies. It also finalised a new sustainability-linked revolving credit facility of €3 bn and teamed up with Fujitsu announcing a regional strategic services partner program.

Gartner unveiled a new set of magic quadrants including:

  • IBM was once again recognised as a leader in the 2023 Gartner magic quadrant for enterprise conversational AI platforms.
  • Oracle was recognised as a visionary in the 2022 Gartner magic quadrant for cloud infrastructure and platform services.
  • AWS, IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat were named as leaders in the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market for their strategies and leadership in promoting advanced technologies.

And finally, layoffs in the tech sector continue, with Amazon confirming another round of layoffs, impacting 9,000 people mostly in its cloud services, advertising, and Twitch live streaming units. IBM also slashed a significant part of its Australian IT consulting arm, and Accenture announced that 19,000 jobs around the world would be axed.

In contrast, Adobe has pledged no company-wide layoffs this year, as it opens its fourth office in Silicon Valley.

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Make smarter IT decisions with improved visibility

Do you need better visibility into your organisations IT asset management? Take our free ITAM Diagnostic Assessment. Our self-paced ITAM Diagnostic assessment can be done in less than 30 minutes, giving you a high-level overview of your ITAM maturity. As part of this assessment, you receive an initial set of recommendations that identify the most critical gaps so you can improve the overall performance of your ITAM programme.

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SoftwareOne blog editorial team

Blog Editorial Team

We analyse the latest IT trends and industry-relevant innovations to keep you up-to-date with the latest technology.