Interview: Nick Hoskins, Cloudera

In our annual Leaders in Technology series, we ask the experts what the year ahead holds. Today we talk data with Cloudera’s Nick Hoskins.

How have Australian workplaces coped with COVID? Will things go back to normal?

Every organisation is facing a perfect storm of radical change, supercharged by the impact of COVID. Organisations that embraced technology are generating more data than ever, at every point of business. This will not slow down as we transition to the ‘next normal’. Organisations are becoming hyper digitalised and old data and models have become inaccurate, so the need for new, real-time insights is vital.

One thing we recently learnt was the importance of flexibility. The IT world will continue to rapidly change, and we need to move with it to continue to ensure security and governance. The ‘next normal’ is still unfolding, but remote working is here to stay. And while organisations have embraced distributed workforces, there needs to be more investment to support the expansion of high-quality internet to keep people and data securely connected.

Which new technologies will reach critical mass in 2021?

The acceleration of cloud will continue as organisations turn to it to provide flexibility with a greater focus on cost management and security. This is critical when it comes to how we define and store IP data. New management systems for streaming data will increase adoption of the IoT and determine how organisations use it. This will be valuable when it comes to citizen services, through the discovery of human behaviour trends that can be used to reduce costs.

Additionally, containerisation will enable the flow of vast amounts of data, and this will be vital for organisations to have the right data strategy with a distributed workforce as data volume and value continue to accelerate.

How will IT improve operational efficiency in 2021, and who should lead the charge?

Organisational efficiency and productivity only work when teams are aligned, it should never be just one person working down their own path. Organisations need to introduce more tech-savvy leaders into management groups and bring teams together to gain real benefits from IT.

For organisations to thrive, they need to be able to do more with their data and make better sense of it. This is the time to leverage good data and make clear, actionable insights across every on-premise and cloud environment for a successful digital transformation. Doing so will allow leaders to accurately measure progress and use the information to predict progress.

What’s on your wish list from government, industry and innovators?

With the acceleration of IT, the industry needs to offer better security to protect our information. An abundance of data comes at a cost because threat actors know how valuable that information is, which is why organisations need to have access to stringent data protection tools. Organisations also need to be able to process their data in real time to get believable information to help them back investments. As the IT sector continues to flourish, this is the time for the government and business to invest in the talent pool and create the future IT leaders who will secure our digital future.

Nick Hoskins leads the field organisation and is responsible for overall Cloudera strategy and business in this region. His charter is to expand Cloudera’s customer base and help organisations realise the measurable benefits of a modern platform for machine learning and analytics, on-premise or in the cloud.