2023 predictions: What new experiences and opportunities can we expect?
2023 predictions: What new experiences and opportunities can we expect?
2022 set the groundwork for new possibilities enabled by connectivity and the cloud. As you continue to plan your 2023, here are some areas to consider.
Raman Abrol
General Manager, Amdocs, CEO of Vubiquity
"We’re already seeing content consolidation, and entertainment consolidation is likely next in 2023."
Changing the streaming conversation in light of new customer expectations
We’re already seeing content consolidation, and entertainment consolidation is likely next in 2023. As consumers move from cord-cutting to subscription-cutting, I believe a new strategy will appear among streaming and entertainment giants; producing new offerings, and creating unlikely partnerships, to remain competitive and continue to align with consumers' ever-changing preferences. Streaming will become just one element of a more comprehensive, bundled set of content.
These partnerships will usher in a new wave of combined subscription platforms. Besides bundling partnerships, new-found "experience bundles" will begin to emerge to capitalize on rising trends like cloud gaming or AR/VR and the metaverse. A recent Amdocs report found that most consumers (78%) are willing to pay at least $10 for cloud gaming if they could ensure a bundled 5G connection as an add-on, while almost half of these respondents (44%) would pay more than $20. As these new digital experiences become more engrained in our everyday lives, entertainment partnerships like these and new, flexible monetization approaches built on a foundation of 5G connectivity will become increasingly popular.
Amalia Avramov
Division President at Amdocs for Financial Services
"In 2023, banks will need solutions that give them faster time-to-market and flexibility in a way that works alongside their legacy systems."
Banks embrace the cloud as they look to keep pace with consumer demands
According to research from Amdocs, 64% of US consumers expect to increase their usage of digital banks over the next five years and just 22% feel traditional banks can keep pace with their needs in the next ten years. This should act as an eye-opener. And much of this consumer concern comes from an area they can’t see – on the IT side.
The cloud enables banks to create effective collaboration platforms that unite employees and third parties. Fast API-based integration fosters functional applications that seamlessly share real-time data and processes. A combination of fluid integration and cloud scalability allows data to be collected and analyzed in real-time.
The transition to the cloud won't happen overnight. Banks must move their line-of-business applications gradually, typically refactoring them along the way, while building underlying enterprise service stacks for better integration. This means they must prepare for a mixture of on-premise IT and private and public cloud systems. It's a complicated journey to make an experience simple. For traditional financial leaders to do this and grow, they must capitalize on the value they've created over decades while also building the experiences, agility, and innovation mindset required to thrive. Otherwise, they risk being left behind.
Samit Banerjee
Division President, Cloud Operations Services & Head of Customer Service Unit, Amdocs
"The future of the metaverse will resemble the real world in many ways and might replace some real-world activities as its concept starts incorporating Web3 technology enabled by blockchain."
The metaverse will become the genesis for the future of work
The future of the metaverse will resemble the real world in many ways and might replace some real-world activities as its concept starts incorporating Web3 technology enabled by blockchain. Its advent is expected to disrupt the existing business models. According to Gartner, by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour per day in the metaverse for work, shopping, education, socializing, and entertainment. The metaverse has presented itself as an opportunity for businesses to unlock infinite possibilities, adapt to digitally transformed models, communicate quickly, and use immersive simulations.
Consumer, retail, media, and telecommunications are most likely to be impacted by the metaverse. Luckily, these industries are already undertaking metaverse initiatives. Moreover, the metaverse future has the potential to contribute significantly to the growth of the virtual economy based on video games and the virtual world with minimum disruption. Hence, businesses are expected to develop virtual offices and evolve networking, employee engagement, and collaborations. However, since the transition to a virtual world may be accelerated, organizations must realize the importance of reskilling and upskilling their workforce to be future-ready. The metaverse today has become the genesis of the future of work.
Secure and sustainable cloud practices will be a key to long-term business growth and success
The rollout of 5G networks will realign the mechanism and functioning of business networks. 5G will unleash low latency, greater capacity, and higher bandwidth, which will be a catalyst for cloud computing. It will inevitably allow easier access to the cloud for IoT systems and devices. This connectivity will facilitate greater automation and digitization of business processes.
The deployment of the next generation of networks will speed up business adoption of the cloud. This rapid adoption in this dynamic environment can give rise to many security threats to data privacy and confidentiality. Organizations must upskill constantly and re-skill employees on cloud services to tackle this. Further, businesses will need to ensure the safety and integrity of their data, and to that extent, current checks in place will have to be upgraded. Hence, in the coming times, industries must adapt to secure and sustainable cloud practices for long-term growth and success.
Roy Barak
CEO of Amdocs’ Vindicia
"In 2023, I believe hardware manufacturers should start looking towards the mobile industry, offering installment plans for metaverse hardware throughout an internet or wireless contract to lower the cost of entry for consumers."
Tackling a significant metaverse barrier through subscription offerings
A significant metaverse hurdle continues to arise as the likes of Meta put out more expensive hardware ranging up to $1,499. Amdocs found that just 10% of consumers would spend more than $350 on metaverse hardware. This new pricing doesn’t precisely align with consumer expectations.
History shows us that subsidizing hardware works as a lower-cost entry, which can be critical for mass adoption. Just look at the iPhone in its early stages. In 2023, I believe hardware manufacturers should start looking towards the mobile industry, offering installment plans for metaverse hardware throughout an internet or wireless contract to lower the cost of entry for consumers. The option to bundle connectivity with digital entertainment and consumer services has the potential to change the discussion. With pay-TV continuing to lose ground and streaming momentum slowing, the possibility to bundle new experiences like the metaverse and cloud gaming can also be a win for communications service providers. ss.
Riki Efraim-Lederman
Division President, Amdocs Technology
"We expected more businesses to consume more sustainable IT, and add sustainability and carbon-footprint requirements to their business."
Economic pressures call for digital innovation and accelerated adoption of SaaS platforms
As the pandemic forced many organizations to quickly answer the digital needs of consumers and businesses, some chose the approach of launching a parallel business that is digital from the ground-up rather than converting their existing business to become more digitalized. This digital brands trend is evident across verticals such as: banking, insurance and telecommunications, and we see successful digital brands achieve much better customer satisfaction while increasing the business with their highly lean approach.
While the IT of traditional organizations struggle with the accelerated pace of change, we see new digital initiatives turn to SaaS solutions to avoid lengthy projects that require significant IT attention – freeing them to focus on their business agility. SaaS products also tend to be more efficient than traditional IT, also contributing to the competitiveness of digital-only offering.
2023 will be the year of sustainability
Awareness and preference for sustainable consumerism constantly increased in the past years – recent research show that 68% of consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable brands and products, and other research shows that 52% of consumers think that sustainable consumption is too expensive and 57% want to make sustainable alternatives more affordable. And that’s expected to grow exponentially post-pandemic and as additional portion of consumers – as well as corporate employees – are GenZ who are known to be more environmentally aware than previous generations.
With the recent energy crisis and global warming effects experienced around the globe, we expect more businesses to consume more sustainable IT, and add sustainability and carbon-footprint requirements in their business objectives as well as their RFP requirements.
Joe Hogan
CTO of 5G and Network, Amdocs
"Essentially, we’re moving to a world of ubiquitous connectivity. Expect this to be an area of great interest in 2023."
Satellite broadband starts to make ubiquitous connectivity a reality
The recently announced satellite capabilities from Apple and T-Mobile and SpaceX’s announcement of smartphone satellite connectivity coming next year are both milestone moments for the communications industry. While they are both small steps toward a world where consumers have a constant connection wherever they are, regardless of network, it sets the stage for future innovations that can close the digital divide and further improve our society. Essentially, we’re moving to a world of ubiquitous connectivity. Expect this to be an area of great interest in 2023.
When it comes to various kinds of connectivity, every aspect has its pros and cons. For instance, 5G may not be strong in all locations, and satellite broadband isn’t as cost-effective. By collaborating and creating a collection of the “best of both” worlds, consumers and businesses will benefit. A seamless end-to-end customer experience will be a critical piece of the puzzle when coming or going from these various networks. Artificial intelligence (AI) and network governance will become increasingly important in managing this.
Ragu Masilamany
VP and Global Head of Solutions Engineering at Amdocs
"As CSPs continue to shift from an 'infrastructure' to a 'platform' strategy, 5G monetization will open new business models that were not feasible before the 5G and edge combination was available."
Separating the 5G leaders and laggers
2023 could be the year that separates the leaders in 5G from those who decide to delay investment due to "5G fatigue."
As CSPs want faster monetization of 5G, recession fears loom, and the cost of energy increases, some have formed a shortsighted view of the network's true long-term impact. However, industry leaders are seeing a much different picture, with 5G investments already paying off for customers through increased video/gaming usage on 5G (vs. 4G), private 5G networks and customized network packages, demonstrating a taste of what's possible.
As CSPs continue to shift from an "infrastructure" to a "platform" strategy, 5G monetization will open new business models that were not feasible before the 5G and edge combination was available. Looking back, we will not see 5G as an upgrade of 4G but as a foundation for many new Gs, partnerships, and business models.
The reality is that 5G is mission critical to the future of enhanced connectivity and all the innovations and transformative technology that come along with that, so disinvesting or delaying the investment or waiting for a killer use case will only make companies vulnerable to having to play catch up in the future. Those who capitalized on 5G's early commercialization will be the first to reap the rewards from the new revenue streams it creates.
Niall Norton
General Manager, Amdocs Open Network, CEO of Openet
"2023 will be the time to look beyond the wireless radio network and usher in access to faster, more reliable, and secure connectivity through standalone networks."
Standalone 5G will unleash a new era of experiences
While the possibilities within new 5G use cases and business models are promising, the reality is that most of these innovations will necessitate standalone 5G networks to bring the sophisticated controls and experiences shaping capabilities that 5G can deliver. Right now, while 80%+ of the CSP community have (or are) deploying 5G radio, only ~10% of the CSPs have enabled the 5G network core functionality.
While the roll-out of non-standalone networks was an essential first step in 5G's global adoption, they can't deliver all the functionality and ultra-low latency that 5G is capable of. This is especially true for revolutionary IoT applications like Industry 4.0, self-driving cars, the metaverse, edge computing, etc.
Reetu Raina
Vice President and Global Head of Talent Management, Amdocs
"As talent becomes the priority area for the success of a business, organizations will have to focus on skill building that can be accomplished through reskilling programs, rigorous training, and employee engagement."
A deep focus on upskilling and reskilling to keep talent
Technological disruption is constantly changing the future of work, and the success parameter(s) of every business will depend on its readiness to deliver on the ever-changing business models. The constantly evolving business models have created significant demand for new skills, reskilling, and upskilling. If this demand is not addressed correctly, businesses will witness a talent shortage, impacting operations and success.
As talent will become the priority area for the success of a business, organizations will have to focus on skill building that can be accomplished through reskilling programs, rigorous training, and employee engagement. This will help build the employees' critical thinking skills, leadership and management, and advanced data analytics. As we advance, the success of companies will be defined by their ability to learn fast, build talent internally, and buy expertise when internal fulfillment becomes a challenge.
Gil Rosen
Chief Marketing Officer, Amdocs
"Unlike the existing (soon to be previous) era of the OTT players, the metaverse can only grow and flourish when the ecosystem of network providers, device manufacturers, platform and computing players and device manufactures work more closely together and collaborate."
The metaverse moves from nice-to-have to important-to-have and an integral part of society
As we’ve seen steps forward to make the metaverse become more of a reality, I predict we will likely see proponents of XR and the development of more advanced and immersive digital worlds come together first. In different aspects of society – whether that be in gaming, entertainment, education, healthcare, or manufacturing – we’re seeing the metaverse gain the attention of serious Fortune 100 companies, governments and a diverse selection of industry players who are starting to build metaverse-based solutions or develop a strategy to do so in the future.
I believe we’ll see increases in these types of immersive digital worlds both in the business and consumer domain. For instance, our research found two-thirds (64%) of sports fans expressed interest in using the metaverse to be part of a virtual stadium where they could watch sporting events with other fans as if they were there. Unlike the existing (soon to be previous) era of the OTT players, the metaverse can only grow and flourish when the ecosystem of network providers, device manufacturers, platform and computing players and device manufactures work more closely together and collaborate. The future belongs to those who play in concert, each bringing their respective value to bear so we don’t just enable the metaverse, we make it amazing.
Avishai Sharlin
Division President, Amdocs Technology
"In 2023 and beyond, we will see the adoption of AI chips embedded inside servers at the edge and related workloads."
Mainstream breakthroughs for AI and machine learnings
In 2023, we are going to see increased awareness of the capabilities of AI and ML, including DALL-E-2, a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in a natural language, and GPT-3, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. We will only see better and more unbelievable progress in this space. We will also see how faster AI chips by companies like Qualcomm, Intel, Google and NVIDIA make AI more consumable than ever.
Additionally, running AI at the edge will be critical in the future to solve problems as closest to the data being captured/ingested, which cannot be done fast enough when pushed to the central cloud. In 2023 and beyond, we will see the adoption of AI chips embedded inside servers at the edge and related workloads.
Multiple cloud adoption and distributed / edge computing
In 2023, we will see more organizations using multiple clouds to run their workloads, supporting numerous vendors to run workloads where they are best served. Most organizations have just started adopting cloud migration and cloud-native due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the demand to work from anywhere catalyzing the adoption and proving it works. We are also seeing edge computing and emerging solutions start taking shape, and distributed computing and edge computing are becoming real business opportunities at scale.
In the next year, we will see distributed edge cloud become the standard cloud perception and approach. As we trend toward distributed cloud and multi-cloud, zero-trust network access provides better security than ever before, so secure access service edge (SASE) uptake is expected.
Increased adoption of low-code will accelerate application execution speed
In 2023, we will see higher adoption of low-code to address new business demands and better time-to-market. During the coronavirus outbreak, a boom in remote software production fueled interest in low-code and no-code programming resources. This growth in low code has been influenced by the increased need for personalized tech applications to aid digitalization, which has spurred the advent of citizen developers outside of IT. Most low-code and no-code work focus on developing automation. IT leaders are stressed to significantly accelerate application execution speed and time-to-value due to digital market acceleration.
Increase in quantum computing resistant cryptography will improve data protection
In 2023, we will see increased adoption of quantum computing (QC) resistant cryptography. It is feared that recent QC advancements can seriously risk current encryption standards we have today, and that in the next 1-2 years QC will be powerful enough to break almost all security cryptography algorithms used today. It has already been reported that hackers are purposefully stealing highly encrypted data which they cannot decrypt today and storing it as they will be able to decrypt it in the next year and onward using QC.
We are seeing a call from the industry for organizations to start adopting Quantum Computing Resistant Crypto to better protect their data. This means we will see the adoption of new algorithms and ciphers to protect data in ways that cannot be broken by the QC power we have today and in the future.
Confidential computing for better security
In 2023, we will see further adoption of confidential computing as it will become the new minimum in years to come. Today, confidential computing is expensive as only specific CPU models from Intel and AMD support it, and Intel CPUs do not fully support all capabilities. This will change as more and more CPUs will natively support it. Confidential computing provides encryption of the entire server memory with a security key or each VM memory space with unique security keys. It ensures that memory cannot be read by any process, even by administrators or VM operators, as the system's memory is encrypted at the hardware level.
Confidential computing further secures public cloud shared environments and locks workloads to specific hardware and cloud, meaning even if someone steals a server or a VM, it cannot be used anywhere outside of the original place it was created, which is critical for sensitive data.
As confidential computing requires modern CPUs and chipsets to support this at the silicon level, the more common it is, the cheaper it will be. Intel currently supports memory encryption of the entire server memory but not per VM. This capability in their CPUs will change next year to be on par with AMD.
