1、Leadership Trends and Emerging TechnologiesFrom AI/ML to deglobalization and resilience:Insights for navigating turbulent timesPredictions 2023The Certainty of UncertaintyWe start not with a prediction,but a statement of the obvious:Things are kinda nuts right now.The global pandemic is not nearly a

2、s disruptive as in its first two years,but the supply chain woes of 2021 begat the panic-inducing inflation of 2022,which has driven world economies toward recession.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|03“Were in a turbulent economic cycle,”says Splunk CEO Gary Steele.“One fascinating element is that

3、there has never been a recession in the U.S.where the labor market is as tight as it is,even in the face of rising interest rates.So its hard to see how these recessionary pressures will play out.No one can predict the future.”True,but thats kinda part of Chief Strategy Officer Ammar Maraqas job,so:

4、“Im hopeful that this cycle will not look like one of the doomsday scenarios a softer landing or a milder recession rather than a severe one,”Maraqa says.“Broadly,the current situation looks a little different than the typical asset boom-and-bust scenarios of the 2008 housing market and the 2001 dot

5、com collapse.The labor market is strong,company earnings are generally good,but we have other macro factors introducing uncertainty from the effects of Covid to Russias war against Ukraine.All of these factors can shift quickly,making this cycle particularly hard to read.”Our Asia-Pacific leaders sa

6、y theres less fear in their region.“Generally,APAC has not been experiencing the same nervousness as youve seen in the U.S.,”says Simon Davies,SVP and general manager of Splunk in APAC.“For most of our customers,inflation is certainly a factor,but intense competition for talent is much more urgent.”

7、Europe is definitely seeing the clouds on the horizon,says Petra Jenner,SVP and general manager for Splunk in the EMEA region.“Right now,all the economic factors except employment point toward recession,”she says.“A lot of it is about confidence,”Maraqa says.“The more people think well have a recess

8、ion,the likelier it becomes.The psychology of it all is a big wild card.”He notes that sometimes the whiff of a downturn gives companies license to act,so well see layoffs.“The turbulence can provide air cover for companies to restructure,to increase focus,to slow their burn rate by reducing hiring

9、or laying off people.Thats painful but its a normal part of the cycle.”Early in the pandemic,some companies had to aggressively forward-invest and hire to handle demand spikes.“Ultimately,a lot of those companies overinvested,and now they are going to have to adjust,”Maraqa says.“Again,painful,but t

10、hats different than a broad-based recession.”The uncertainty doesnt necessarily mean hunkering down til the storm passes,he adds.“You have to be smart and judicious about how you plan for growth.Do robust scenario analysis and defer large fixed investments that would put you in trouble if topline gr

11、owth declines.”The tension lies in the impulse to minimize risk,on the one hand.On the other hand,he says,“Industry leaders dont miss a chance to widen the gap between themselves and their competitors during a downturn.”Predictions and Survival Strategies for 202306 Economy Less experimentation,more

12、 value.07 Resilience Its gotta be more than a buzzword.08 Deglobalization Take your strategies local.10 Future of Work The Great Renegotiation is here.12 Tech Talent Training will focus on core principles.13 Emerging Technologies16 AI and ML Your code will write itself(almost).18 AI Ethics Increased

13、 concerns will shape how ML is trained.20 NFTs Looking beyond the hype.21 Blockchain It aint unhackable.23 Smart Contracts Its a whole new marketplace.25 Metaverse The data challenges are coming.26 Quantum Computing Cybersecurity will never be the same.27 Better Data,Better Tech,Better Tomorrow30 Co

14、ntributorsSplunk Executive Predictions 2023|06PredictionEconomic uncertainty kills the appetite for experimentation.Vendors and visionaries will have to lead with value.Its a tough needle to thread:Growing your business and reinforcing operational and security resilience require investment.Yet the r

15、eaction to economic turmoil is to close your wallet and wait.“But digital transformation is one of those things that you cant completely deprioritize,”says Ammar Maraqa.“Organizations will be more nimble,with more incremental funding and a sharp focus on results.”“Companies are thinking clearly abou

16、t which tech investments they want to make,”says Splunk CEO Gary Steele.“Real value has to be delivered,pretty quickly.”“Companies are very concerned about investments in the face of a downturn,”says Petra Jenner,SVP and general manager for Splunk in the EMEA region.“Theyre purchasing only whats nee

17、ded right now,not making any forward-looking investments.”“Leaders I talk to are very focused on extracting as much value out of their data as effectively and quickly as possible,”says Chief Customer Officer Katie Bianchi.“Organizations struggle every day with the complexity of that challenge,and th

18、ey know they need more prescriptive counsel and a better ease of use from their technology partners.”Robert Pizzari,VP of security in the APAC region,has seen that as hes traveled through Asia.“Ive seen far more prudence applied to where investment dollars will be going,together with prioritization

19、of projects and a potential realignment of priorities.”“Cost optimization is a big consideration now,”says Dhiraj Goklani,VP of observability in APAC.“Organizations are trying to adopt next-generation technologies,but more cautiously and with a clearly defined business case.”Expect the value focus t

20、o center on digital experience,because nothing moves the needle more than direct improvements to how you serve your customers.And nothing moves it faster in the wrong direction than delivering a frustrating or broken interaction when better options are a click away.Which means resilience is a big de

21、al.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|07PredictionResilience is the new value focus,and strategic orgs are elevating leadership and converging data and tools around it.Resilience touches two no-compromise areas:the security of your data and systems,and your ability to serve your customers.Resilience

22、is therefore always fundamental,but recently it has reached buzzword status in some corners.A challenge for organizations in 2023 will be separating the buzz from the strategies and investments that will deliver meaningful improvement.“There are pockets of functional resilience in any organization,”

23、says Mark Woods,Splunks chief technical advisor in EMEA.“Bringing those functional-level pockets together to create full business relevance is the problem for most organizations.”“Resilience comes from strong security posture and a strong app environment,”says Splunk CEO Gary Steele.“Standardization

24、 is one essential way to drive resilience.When youve got a fragmented IT and security environment,with siloes everywhere and a million tools,youre in trouble.Organizations will drive to a common set of tools and data,including a convergence of security and observability data,to achieve more holistic

25、 resilience.”Dhiraj Goklani,VP of observability in the Asia-Pacific region,sees it happening as organizations evolve their monitoring capability to true observability.“Organizations that have invested in legacy tools are trying to unify and simplify the number of tools,or the number of vendors.Its t

26、he ongoing effort to modernize,simplify and reduce costs while they are trying to increase visibility of their environment.”Like resilience today,“digital transformation”has meant a lot of things over the past decade or two.Splunks chief customer officer,Katie Bianchi,says that DX is much more align

27、ed around operational resilience today.“Systems have to be resilient,because customer expectations have grown exponentially in our high-speed world,”Bianchi says.“Application performance and availability are at the heart of a great customer experience and a growing,innovative business.”Combining tha

28、t with better security,she says,is essential,and she points to automation as a key tool.“Driving scale,efficiency and intelligent decision-making through automation will continue to be a critical trend as companies deal with increasing complexity of their environments,plus talent fluctuations,plus r

29、ising types and volumes of cyber attack.”Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|08PredictionDeglobalization pressures wont let up.Although the digital revolution has made our world increasingly connected,the tides have somewhat turned,thanks to a global pandemic and growing political tensions.The effects

30、 of deglobalization are being felt across supply chains and through data residency regulations.The New York Times reported that France,Austria,South Africa and more than 50 other countries are more tightly restricting the flow of data around the world.Security and privacy are paramount concerns of d

31、ata residency laws.Governments worldwide have also become increasingly protective over national data and are voicing concerns about“digital sovereignty”as data increasingly concentrates in U.S.companies.A WEF paper on EU data sovereignty concerns noted that 92%of data collected in the West is housed

32、 in the United States,and that no European company is among the top 20 global tech brands.But its not just driven by governments.Organizations in the private sector,too,are making moves to contain their data.“Companies are stripping out privacy data and are anticipating laws that regulate privacy an

33、d data residency more strictly,”says Petra Jenner,Splunks SVP and General Manager for EMEA.“As organizations are preparing for heightened data residency regulations,theyll have to start serving European customers from European locations,which massively increases deglobalization,”says Mark Woods,Splu

34、nks chief technical advisor for EMEA.GDPR and other regulations are no longer setting the pace they were three to five years ago,”says Patrick Coughlin,vice president of GTM strategy and specialization at Splunk.“Today,companies are comfortable making their own data residency and privacy protections

35、 ahead of regulation.”Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|09Simon Davies,SVP and general manager of Splunk in APAC,notes that the sheer rise in data volume has also contributed to deglobalization.“Large organizations process tens to hundreds of terabytes per day,and even get up into the petabytes,”he

36、says.“The data has to physically sit somewhere,and if youve been moving between jurisdictions,there are all sorts of costs and challenges.”The net effect of the deglobalization trend will be this:To remain global,organizations will have to think local.Davies says,“Trying to drive a single global sol

37、ution footprint wont work,for three reasons:the varied legislation,the cost of moving data around,and the different levels of maturity of the markets served.If you think about large multinational companies,their business in China is very different from their business in Thailand,which is very differ

38、ent from the business in Australia or the United States.Global companies will have to think much more locally about cybersecurity and data strategies.”Will deglobalization get better anytime soon?Splunk CEO Gary Steele doesnt think so.“Its going to get harder,”he says.“And companies will have to get

39、 creative in how they adapt and how they rely on their vendors to get them through it.”PredictionEconomic uncertainty will erode some employee gains,but in-demand talent will still be mission-driven and WFH.The pandemic accelerated several notable trends in the human resources realm.Remote work beca

40、me necessary and remains common.There has been an increased focus on wellness benefits and practices designed to ease stress during a chaotic few years.Now,many businesses are seeking a return to a certain level of normalcy as people grow weary of pandemic precautions.And recessionary fears are driv

41、ing leaders to tighten purse strings and focus on value on measurable outputs that contribute to the bottom line.But unemployment remains low,and workers still have some leverage.Splunk Chief Strategy Officer Ammar Maraqa thinks that some of that leverage will shift back to employers,but he doesnt t

42、hink well go back to the pre-pandemic normal.“The remote-work taboo has been broken,and the mutual benefits of that flexibility will somewhat remain,”he says.“Maybe some companies will institute more hybrid work,rather than pure remote work,and perhaps will be more cautious about the costs of benefi

43、ts of traditional wellness programs.”Makes sense,but unless the economy really,really goes south,steady employment rates will mean that good workers remain hard to come by,and even in an uncertain market,theyll continue to switch employers faster and more easily than in the past.“There was a lot of

44、discussion last year around the Great Resignation,”notes EMEA GM Petra Jenner.“Now were seeing the Great Renegotiation of Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|11contracts.Workers are still confident about their position with employers,and they will ask for changes,or go elsewhere.This ties into the cha

45、llenge of retaining our most valuable workers.”In Europe,she says,workers are concerned with an employers environment,social and governance stance.“Were seeing a talent revolution in which younger workers in particular want to join organizations with a clear purpose and vision,”she says.Mark Woods,S

46、plunks chief technical advisor in EMEA,says mission-driven workers create a larger challenge for more established organizations.“You know,its incredibly hard to run a startup in Europe,”he says.“Initial funding is really hard,for instance.But they dont have a problem with talent,because startups ten

47、d to be purpose-driven and focused from the start.Larger companies have that challenge,and their buzzword bingo around social good isnt always convincing.People will join,but leave a few months later because the stated mission hasnt truly been embraced.”“In todays transparent world,corporations must

48、 align their social and environmental statements with action to attract and retain top talent,”says Kriss Deiglmeier,Splunks chief social impact officer.“People want to work for a purpose-driven company.”Part of the reason that in-demand workers can make demands of their employers,whether for wellne

49、ss benefits or social relevance,is that theyre in demand.And while a more severe recession would certainly lead to layoffs,key IT and security talent will always be scarce.“No matter what economic environment emerges,that very tight labor market wont change for security or IT,”notes Splunk CEO Gary

50、Steele.As a result,companies are trying harder to throw a wide net for talent,rather than a narrow net for skills.“The customers I talk to understand that there will never be enough higher-ed graduates to fill the jobs in the technology space,”says Robert Pizzari,Splunks VP of security in APAC.“Were

51、 seeing more creative approaches.For instance,do we really need a candidate to have these specific certifications or that four-year degree to work in cybersecurity?Theres a shift instead to looking for people from different backgrounds who have a curious nature and analytical mind,which is what you

52、really need on the front line of a SOC.”Dhiraj Goklani,VP of observability in APAC,agrees with that strategy,but notes that the problem isnt just a lack of STEM graduates.“In many Asian markets,were seeing an aging population,meaning that there are not enough people coming into the workforce,period,

53、”he says.“So in addition to smarter recruiting,automation and artificial intelligence are potential silver bullets to much of this problem.In the observability world,so much around pattern discovery and anomaly identification can be handled with automation and machine learning.”And ML models wont as

54、k you to explain your corporate value proposition,or demand on-site yoga classes.Yet.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|12PredictionTech teams will have to train more on core principles,not just tool skills.In 2022,a broad,even unlikely coalition of parties,from CEOs to union leaders,signed a letter

55、calling for states to update their K-12 curriculum so that every student can learn computer science.As necessary as that is,private businesses will have to step up as well,and it starts with software vendors.“Organizations need to rely on their suppliers to build the ecosystem of talent that will de

56、liver business outcomes most effectively,”says Chief Customer Officer Katie Bianchi.“Companies like Salesforce have been innovative because they recognized the need to build an ecosystem of talent that can use their platform to power major business outcomes.The goal is not to train teams just on usi

57、ng the solution,but also on using the solution to achieve business outcomes.”She says another onus on the supplier is to make the product as easy to use as possible.“Were trying to move in that direction ourselves,”says Lily Lee,senior manager of security solutions strategy.“In the case of security,

58、my team is looking at how we can make our product education more broadly applicable,so we are not just teaching you Splunk,but also how to be a better threat hunter,how to be a better tier one or tier two analyst.”This approach will build a better talent ecosystem,and make the companies that invest

59、in such career-level training more attractive to the very talent theyre trying so hard to retain in the first place.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|13Emerging TechnologiesEvery year,we take a look at the emerging technologies that our experts think have the most potential in the next few years.Thi

60、s year,perennial favorite AI/ML came up a lot,on its own and in conjunction with automation.While neither AI/ML nor automation are emergent as topics,theyre definitely moving past the hype phase to deliver the serious value that has long been promised.And all the complexity of modern IT infrastructu

61、re makes it a timely arrival.“Applying machine learning to predicting behavior is a huge value,especially given todays shortage of IT and security talent,”says Chief Customer Officer Katie Bianchi.She says machine learning will both simplify and improve all business outcomes,from application perform

62、ance to improved security detection.“In all those cases,ML provides better and more accurate insight so that we can see whats coming next and orchestrate the best response,”she says.“The need for both AI/ML and automation is really there,”Chief Strategy Officer Ammar Maraqa agrees.“Its the complexit

63、y,but also the shortage of skilled IT and security talent and the increasing pressure on costs and value.”Maraqa handicaps other hot technologies as well.More established trends around cloud and edge technology will continue.“The move to cloud is always happening,”he says.“People now are wrestling w

64、ith the complexities of and.On-prem and in the cloud;AWS and Azure.”Edge computing,he says,is another key playground for automation and machine Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|15learning.“We need more solutions to keep the data where it is and do as much as you can there,instead of schlepping it b

65、ack and forth.Its very expensive to move data.Edge and ML-driven automation fit into that need to do more before you move the data.”Hes also bullish on blockchain,despite the bad press in 2022 about cryptos collapse and hacks triggered by human error.“Blockchain is going to be one of the most exciti

66、ng technology areas for the next three to five years,”he says.“Its about the underlying technology and its use for authentication especially in terms of contracts and supply chains.”Simon Davies,SVP and general manager of Splunk in APAC,has seen a lot of interest in one specific application of block

67、chain.“Ive seen a lot of businesses trying to figure out Web3 and building and deploying applications on blockchain.”A number of our wonks also had thoughts on quantum computing and the metaverse,but weve put the bulk of our effort into the topics most applicable to the next few years.And through th

68、at lens,nothing compares to artificial intelligence and machine learning.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|16PredictionLarge language models are the next transformative AI/ML technology.While ML is going to be“in everything,”there are some standout areas to watch.One,all our data science folks tell

69、us,is large language models.“Trying to productionize large machine learning language models is going to be a big area of focus in the next few years,”says Subho Majumdar,a senior applied scientist focused on machine learning at Splunk.“Were seeing this right now with GitHub Copilot,and well see more

70、 cases in which vendors offer the capabilities of proprietary models that theyve developed as a service to other parties.Startups are already coming up right now to do that,and I think were going to see a lot more of them.”“The range of problems that language models can be applied to is wider than w

71、e now conceive of,”says Joe Ross,who like Majumdar points to GitHub Copilot as a prime example.Its a language tool that translates plain-English descriptions of coding goals into actual code.Many security researchers and others have pointed out that Copilot doesnt produce code youd want to ship stra

72、ight into production,but it can be a good first draft.“The objective is to help engineers write code more efficiently by predicting a first version of the code they want to write,”says Majumdar.“The idea is not to get to production-level code,but just to get people started.”Its also a way to extend

73、limited human talent,if technically proficient staff who arent quite coders can use a copilot to get started,with senior developers and quality assurance staff following up to review.However it shakes out,its a great application of the translation tool idea thats already letting you travel with a so

74、lid language translator on your phone.And these kinds of coder-support tools will get better.GitHub Copilot was built on the Microsoft-fueled OpenAI GPT-3 language-generating algorithm led to OpenAI Codex.Similarly,Googles DeepMind has developed AlphaCode,another ML model for writing computer progra

75、ms,that has fared reasonably well in coding competitions.(Eventually theyll fight it out and the winner will be crowned Skynet.)Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|17When these sorts of language models arent helping us write code or order lunch overseas,theyll be powering chatbots you can actually cha

76、t with,allowing you to literally talk to a search engine(and get meaningful results),personalizing tutoring plans,correcting your grammar,and writing basic contracts,news articles,marketing copy and reports like this.Whether that worries you or makes you eager for tomorrow,this talking computer futu

77、re wont be here overnight.“One characteristic of these large language models is that its kinda impossible for most organizations,whether in academic or industrial spaces,to train one on their own,”Joe Ross says.Its hard to get the right data set,hard to curate and prepare the data,and then the human

78、 supervision and raw compute costs of developing the model are expensive.“This sort of thing cant really be done in most places,but it is possible to extract a model as an artifact and then build applications on top of that.”Thats the next horizon,machine learning models as a service,and were almost

79、 there.“That combination of an ML model and(a sample of)the curated and prepared data set is now commonly packaged as one thing,”Ross says.“The result is closer to a finished product,something that a relatively smaller engineering team can then tinker with.”The result of essentially democratizing la

80、rge language models will be hugely influential,Ross says.“People will be able to interact with systems more in English and not have to deal with underlying complexities,”he says.“Spoken to written language is a solved problem.Translating speech or text directly into action,without having to actually

81、 do it yourself,is the next horizon,and well see that in maybe three to five years.”Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|18PredictionIncreased concerns about ethical AI will affect how ML is trained and maintained and create new roles to do it.Our third look at the increasing pervasiveness of machine l

82、earning is in terms of evolving ethical practices.Stories of unintended bias discovered in ML models regularly emerge.Fortunately,ML Ops practices will bring more standardization and transparency,making it easier to assess models for fairness and to maintain and retrain to prevent biases from creepi

83、ng in.For more,we turned to Subho Majumdar who may not have written the book on ML ethics,but he certainly co-wrote a book on the topic(Practicing Trustworthy Machine Learning,just published by OReilly).Majumdar is active with multiple community efforts Trustworthy ML initiative,Bias Buccaneers,and

84、AI Vulnerability Database which are looking to guide and educate ML practitioners to develop ML models that are fair,safe,robust,explainable and that preserve privacy.Majumdar says that transparency,a necessary prerequisite of fairness and other values,is increasingly important.“Trustworthy ML invol

85、ves operationalizing ML while incorporating human values into your ML pipeline,”he says.“The goal is to build trustworthy ML pipelines from the beginning,so you dont face biases and other problems in your outputs after the models are deployed in the real world.”Joe Ross points to model cards,which p

86、rovide brief documentation about an ML model that increases transparency into the model and its outputs.A card would describe a models uses and limitations,review bias and ethical considerations,and detail the data and methods used to train the model.“And were seeking work at HuggingFace and other r

87、epositories to ensure that we can understand the lineage of a model,”he says.“This moves us toward being able to make scientific demonstrations of bias in the model as part of a standard review process that checks for a list of known biases.”Bias checklists,he says,could become a standard part of ML

88、 quality assurance,both when the model rolls out and over time,as additional data potentially alters its outputs.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|19In addition to new processes,concern with AI ethics will also create new jobs.Majumdar foresees specific team roles for an AI ethicist,and for a prompt

89、s engineer,who would focus on how prompts not only influence the accuracy of the models outputs,but its potential biases.“As a community,were progressing toward providing transparency to whomever the stakeholder is,”Majumdar says.“If its the government,that would mean transparently abiding by any re

90、gulations and compliance guidelines.If the stakeholder is the consumer,there needs to be a way to file a ticket or a complaint about any concerns on algorithmic decision making.There is already an AI Incident Database,which tracks things that went wrong with deployed AI/ML models.Its kind of like th

91、e CDCs vaccine effectiveness database,where you can submit any problem that occurred because of a vaccination.This is a complicated area,so it will take a few years for the ML community to figure things out.But I do think we are going to see more standards and best practices on trust and transparenc

92、y in ML.“Regulation is always behind the cutting edge technologies,whether youre talking about blockchain,ML,even ecommerce,”Mangesh Pimpalkhare says.And hes hopeful that some of the worst outcomes weve seen to date around data privacy and technologies such as social media will provide learnings to

93、shape the next wave of technology.“The wildness of tech will continue,but it wont take as long to reach a responsible endpoint.Its in the industrys best interest to establish effective self regulation ahead of lawmakers.You see some of that now,with self-declarative responsible AI initiatives.”Kriss

94、 Deiglmeier,who leads Splunks global impact initiative,agrees that regulation isnt an immediate answer,and that the public wont be content to wait.“AI and data ethics are becoming more important to business,and in the short term it will be the responsibility of business to make their own progress,”s

95、he says.“Regulation will follow,but itll likely be different in each country or region.”Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|20PredictionIn a few years,NFTs will secure ownership and identity.The big blockchain story of 2021 was the explosion of NFTs in the art and entertainment world,with NFTs non-fun

96、gible tokens,a blockchain-based proof of authenticity for digital art(and,inexplicably,the first tweet)selling for astronomical sums.By 2022,NFTs werent drawing as many headlines,and those in the mainstream media were unkind.(September CNN headline:“No one seems to want NFTs anymore.Heres why.”)But

97、dont count NFTs out.The technology will soon underlie a lot more than digital art.“Eventually,”Tom Martin says,“everything from your degrees and certifications to your titles for your car and your house,to your in-video-game items,will be represented with NFTs.”So what was with an“authentic copy”of

98、Jack Dorseys first tweet selling for nearly three million bucks?“Its the hype cycle,”Martin says.“Cryptocurrency was hugely hyped,and it crashed pretty heavily in 2022,but underneath all that,decentralized finance is emerging to bring real value from blockchain.NFTs have finished their first hype ro

99、und,but the technological applications will continue to develop,and theyll be significant.”Itll be another few years until we start seeing widespread NFT-based digital ownership and representation of physical items,Martin says.But if you want to bid on an NFT-authenticated version of this very repor

100、t,were sure we can work something out.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|21PredictionBlockchain hacks will continue,but as is often the case in security,its not the tech,its the humanity.Blockchain hacks are already happening.Last summer,a massive hack of crypto token Solana captured headlines,report

101、edly costing thousands of users a total north of$4.5 million dollars.In the same month,a CNBC report put cryptocurrency theft in the first half of 2022 at$1.9 billion.But wait,blockchain is unhackable,right?No perfect technology is unhackable when its administered by inevitably imperfect humans.The

102、Solana hack was attributed to embarrassingly negligent security controls,not some deeply buried software flaw.It was the digital equivalent of burglars getting in your house because they had the key to the front door.The Nomad attack reportedly exploited a flawed update to a smart contract that comp

103、romised a blockchain bridge,which enables transfers from one cryptocurrency chain to another.“I think that some of the biggest financial impacts in terms of cyberspace breaches will be in the blockchain space,”says Patrick Coughlin,vice president of GTM strategy and specialization.“All these headlin

104、e-grabbing hacks are just the start.”“The job of blockchain is to be decentralized and traceable,”says Tom Martin,principal solutions engineer for blockchain and digital ledger technology at Splunk.“That doesnt mean Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|22its immune from coding errors.In fact,when you l

105、ook at these incidents,the transactions that took place were legitimate from the systems perspective,based on the parameters that had been programmed.The system worked exactly as intended and fortunately,for the aftermath,it kept a perfect record of everything that happened.”“Even with the crypto cr

106、ash last year,so much money is moving through these blockchain networks yet so much of it is still the Wild West,says Coughlin,whose deep security background includes cofounding threat-intelligence startup TruSTAR.“These incidents force us to think about how blockchain is different in terms of resil

107、ience.How does blockchain fit into the definition of cyber resilience?How can we apply similar people/process/technology lessons weve learned over the last 20 years to defend these digital networks?Thats an exciting challenge that will come with a lot of pain and pioneer tax as we learn from past mi

108、stakes and blaze new ground.”And a lot of financial reward for bad guys until the industry gets it right.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|23PredictionFully digital agreements will drastically increase efficiency and ultimately will unlock new products and services.In the early days of the internet,

109、we replicated analog services in a digital space.Newspapers posted digital versions of the copy that ran through their presses.Netflix let you order by mail the DVD you could drive over to Blockbuster to rent.Its still common these days to either scan a paper contract and its ink signature,or sign a

110、n agreement digitally through services that verify an“electronic signature.”But today,a newspaper article may contain complex,interactive data visualizations that are impossible in print,or it may include audio or video components.Rather than request physical media,we stream whole seasons of TV in a

111、 weekend.We rent access to music libraries rather than purchase music on discs.Just as weve seen new paradigms in how we consume and share,were on the edge of a massive transformation in how we make and verify binding agreements.Thanks to distributed ledger technology(DLT),in which a ledger is distr

112、ibuted among many entities rather than existing as a single instance controlled by a single entity resulting in agreements that are more efficient and more trustworthy.No more easy-to-forge,cumbersome-to-verify ink signatures.No more storing digital documents in a single,easily modified database.“Th

113、e entire world operates via agreements in the form of contracts,which are massively inefficient and error prone,”says Tom Martin,principal solutions engineer for blockchain and digital ledger technology at Splunk.“Fully digital agreements will become dominant,massively increasing the speed of busine

114、ss.”With ATM cards in our wallets and banking apps on our phones,its hard to believe that access to banking services used to be limited to six or eight hours per day,five or six days a week,if you could make it to your nearest branch.Todays children will grow up unable to believe that ink signatures

115、 were used for verification,and that it took weeks to close the sale of items such as buying a home.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|24“Weve acclimated to inefficiency to such a degree already that we dont realize how much better it can still be,”Martin says.“Once you understand smart contracts,you

116、 see all the inefficiency and realize that its all ripe for change.”The result will be new ways to recognize,secure and exchange value.Decentralized finance,or DeFi,is a significant innovation that is already well-established.Smart contracting and digital assets will combine to produce a profound sh

117、ift already underway in the idea of value.Today you might invest value in the form of paper money or a physical asset like gold by depositing it in a bank and earning interest.Or you can invest it in a stock that may appreciate in value as the company performs well.You could also have value in the f

118、orm of a cryptocurrency that changes in value in the open market.You might convert some of that value to buy unique digital items in a video game,and if those items increase in value,you might sell them for a hefty profit and pay your rent with the proceeds.Try explaining that to your grandfather.“N

119、ew products and services are emerging,”Martin says.“How we store and transfer value is changing,and unique digital assets are coming into existence,all enabled by blockchain technology.Were at the cusp of a change in the concepts of ownership and validation that will be revolutionary.”Splunk Executi

120、ve Predictions 2023|25PredictionThe metaverse is a long way out.But its not too soon to think about the data.A virtual reality metaverse where we all live somewhere between kaleidoscopic Ready Player One adventure and monochromatic Matrix misery is a long way out,but its too much fun to think about.

121、For starters,theres the underlying technologies,which are coming to fruition even before a full Snow Crash reality arrives.“Im very bullish on AR,which were seeing in the world already,”says Chief Strategy Officer Ammar Maraqa.“You map your driving route.Field techs use AR glasses or iPad apps to ov

122、erlay data on the equipment they repair.Thats the short-term value of AR:Applying data to make human lives easier.I dont have to be a programmer to route myself around a traffic jam or get information served up to me on a historic building I am looking at.”The IKEA app that lets you see what a white

123、 sofa would look like in that corner of your living room is really cool,and Amazon has one that lets you see how a pair of shoes would look on your feet,but when will we just cut to the chase and furnish virtual apartments to lounge around in our virtual outfits?“VR is further out,with gaming as the

124、 leading edge,”Maraqa says.“Well see it in military training,and in pilot training.Its being used in medical training already,but its still clunky.There is a lot of investment happening in this area by the major tech firms,but they are still inventing the building blocks.”The interest is there,thoug

125、h,especially among companies in Asia.“We talk to a lot of companies that really want to improve customer experience,and the forward-thinking ones see VR as a way to do that,”says Dhiraj Goklani,APAC VP of observability.“There are several startups in this part of the world who are building apps for t

126、he metaverse.Its still early days,but I think well see a lot more.”Our APAC team expects youth culture in South Korea,K-pop artists in particular,to drive interest in virtual reality,especially around entertainment and esports.And though the full metaverse experience is years away,its never too soon

127、 to start thinking about the data challenges.“AR/VR will drive the creation of more data for insights,”says Katie Bianchi,Splunks chief customer officer.“Think of how much data we generate just interacting with flat screens.Immersive virtual reality experiences will generate exponentially more data

128、that organizations will have to manage and understand.It will be another challenge of complexity and scale.”She points not only to the raw amount of data that any metaverse application will generate,but the networking challenges,the analytics challenges,the privacy,security and observability concern

129、s.A lot of change will have to happen,and it wont arrive all at once.Bianchis advice:Never stop evolving data capabilities.As soon as youve solved a data problem,youll be up against a new challenge.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|26PredictionQuantum computing is not a near-term thing,but it will b

130、e hugely transformative.In ways few can imagine.Quantum computing is another far-horizon big deal,involving using quantum mechanics to solve problems that standard computers cant handle.But few organizations can even begin to work with the developing technology.“Quantum computing is inherently cost-

131、prohibitive today,”says John Reed,principal product manager at Splunk specializing in AI.“The amount of physical support infrastructure needed to get that computer cooled to nearly zero kelvin is not approachable for most organizations,which leaves cloud companies like Google,Amazon and IBM to try t

132、o create it as a service,but there are barriers there,too.”“And people havent figured out the programming model for quantum computers,”adds Mangesh Pimpalkhare,vice president of product management for the Splunk platform.“Were far from bridging the gap between the math for neural network based machi

133、ne models and the algorithms that work for quantum computers.”Whats not a long way off is worrying about the impacts of this new technology.American Scientist notes that quantum computers could eventually have enough power to“break most modern cryptography.The effect would be to render communication

134、s as insecure as if they werent encoded at all.”“Cybersecurity as we know it today is dependent on cryptography,and quantum computing will completely upend that,”says Robert Pizzari,VP of security for APAC.Work is already being done:The Biden Administration issued executive orders in May,and Congres

135、s passed legislation in August,to pursue quantum technology.And NIST,concerned specifically with the encryption issues,is already at work on post-quantum cryptographic standards.While we wont see the full arrival of quantum computing for some time,expect the technology to usher in big changes in the

136、 next five years.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|27Better Data,Better Tech,Better TomorrowEven before we dive head-first into the Matrix,digital experience has become central to how we live and what we need to thrive.“The pandemic fundamentally changed the way people live their lives and interact

137、with each other,”says Katie Bianchi.“Even well past the lockdowns and mask mandates,were still much more digital in the way we live and work.That trend will continue.”Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|28Making progress through turbulent times requires resilience,she adds.Digital resilience means the

138、 ability to prevent,observe and quickly remediate security and performance incidents.That requires not only a holistic approach to data,but technology.“Given ongoing talent shortages,”she says,“automation enables you to scale domain expertise.”On the security side,Patrick Coughlin,who has led cybers

139、ecurity teams for government and private sector organizations,sees it happening already.“The technologies that matter in protecting cyber resilience are converging,and the organizational structure and silos are coming together,”he says.“Data has been converging for a decade.I think were entering a g

140、olden age,a turnaround in how we think about cybersecurity talent and resources.”What really defines a golden age is not just its technology or resources,but the good outcomes those resources enable.In addition to driving the efficiency and resilience of digital businesses,the technologies discussed

141、 in this report,and others,will be used to tackle challenges around health,safety and climate.Theres real momentum,says Chief Social Impact Officer Kriss Deiglmeier.She notes younger workers insistence that companies stand for something more than pure profit.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|29“Youn

142、g people are deciding where to work based on more than the paycheck,”she says.“They see caring for the community as valuable,and of course mitigating climate change and economic inequalities is better for business,for resilience,for everyone.”This,she says,leads into the next phase of capitalism,whi

143、ch will incorporate company stakeholders into decisions a“smart capitalism”in which every stakeholder and priority,including but not limited to the bottom line,is taken care of.If that sounds a little like tailgate talk outside a Grateful Dead show,remember that in 2019,the influential Business Roun

144、dtable redefined the purpose of a corporation from enriching shareholders to benefit all stakeholders,including customers,employees,suppliers,communities and shareholders.“Data will drive all these outcomes,business,environmental and social,”Deiglmeier adds.“There is not one corporate development go

145、al that data is not relevant to.”Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|30ContributorsDhiraj GoklaniDhiraj is Splunks vice president of observability in APAC,where he applies more than two decades of experience in the tech industry to helping grow the observability market in the region.Petra JennerPetra

146、is SVP and general manager in EMEA for Splunk.Previously,she held leadership roles at Salesforce,Microsoft,Checkpoint and Pivotal.She holds a Masters Degree in Business and IT,and studied International Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Singapore.Lily LeeLily is a senior manag

147、er of security solutions strategy at Splunk.She leads a global team of industry and product experts that support Splunks security business and serve as thought leaders and trusted advisors for Splunk customers,partners and the security community.Subho MajumdarSubho is a senior applied ML researcher

148、in Splunks threat science group.Previously he was with AT&T Data Science and AI Research.A cofounder of multiple community efforts in ML,Subho recently co-authored Practicing Trustworthy Machine Learning.Katie BianchiKatie is Splunks senior vice president and chief customer officer.Previously,she wa

149、s vice president of customer success at GE Digital,and has held leadership roles in product management,business development,services,marketing and operations across industries,including aviation,power generation,and oil and gas.Patrick CoughlinPatrick,Splunks VP of GTM strategy and specialization,co

150、mes from a deep security background.He was co-founder and CEO of TruSTAR,a cyber intelligence management platform acquired by Splunk.Previously,he led cybersecurity and counterterrorism analyst teams for the U.S.government and private sector clients.Simon DaviesAs senior vice president and general m

151、anager in APAC,Simon is responsible for the full portfolio of Splunk solutions in the Asia-Pacific and Japan markets.He is a veteran of Microsoft,Salesforce,Oracle and Citibank.Kriss DeiglmeierKriss is Splunks chief of social impact and Splunk Global Impact.She is recognized as a social innovator,is

152、 a frequent speaker at global events,and was recently listed among the“50 Most Influential Women in U.S.Philanthropy”by Inside Philanthropy.Splunk Executive Predictions 2023|31Ammar MaraqaAmmar is Splunks senior vice president and chief strategy officer.Back in the day,he led corporate strategy at C

153、isco,was part of the M&A team there,held product roles at Dell,and started his career as a consultant with Bain&Co.Tom MartinAs a principal solution engineer on Splunks blockchain team,Toms an evangelist for new technologies and a liaison between customers and product management in the areas of Bloc

154、kchain and Web3 technologies.Previously,he was at Silverstream,VMWare,Pivotal Software,Wily Technology and New Relic.Mangesh PimpalkhareMangesh is vice president of product management for Splunk Platform.As a product executive,he has had more than 15 years of operating experience and more than eight

155、 years of venture capital experience in diverse software(SaaS),systems and technology companies.Robert PizzariRobert is Splunks vice president of security in the APAC region.Previously,he held leadership roles at Check Point,FireEye,Trustwave and Cisco.John ReedJohn is a Principal Product Manager at

156、 Splunk.His responsibility includes the strategy and execution of initiatives across Machine Learning and Core Search.Previously,John was a product manager at AWS,where he worked across the AI/ML service portfolio.Joe RossJoe is senior principal applied scientist at Splunk.Before joining Splunk,he w

157、orked in senior data scientist roles at SignalFx(before it was acquired by Splunk)and Ayasdi.He has a background in mathematics,and has publications in pure math and statistics.Gary SteeleGary is the president and CEO of Splunk and a member of our board of directors.Prior to joining Splunk in 2022,G

158、ary was the founding CEO of Proofpoint,where he led the companys growth from an early-stage start-up to a leading,publicly traded security-as-a-service provider.Mark WoodsSplunks chief technical advisor in EMEA,Mark has been an engineer,consultant,entrepreneur and CTO.He helps executive teams and in

159、ternational policymakers understand the seismic potential of data-driven approaches.For more 2023 predictions,see the IT/observability,public sector and data security reports.Splunk,Splunk and Turn Data Into Doing are trademarks and registered trademarks of Splunk Inc.in the United States and other countries.All other brand names,product names or trademarks belong to their respective owners.2022 Splunk Inc.All rights reserved.22-25647-Splunk-Executive Predictions 2023-EB-106Learn More