Interview: Tony Hudson, Vertel

What is the major potential tech pain point that will face all organisations large and small in 2023?

Accelerated digital and cloud initiatives deployed by organisations to improve customer and user experience, deliver new services and advance different operating models (especially arising from the global COVID-19 experiences) continue to demand high-performing, reliable corporate wide area networks (WANs), home networks and public networks. This makes it even more essential to manage network security and mitigate the risk of breaches.

As organisations continue to prioritise cloud investment, build for the future and focus on business resilience, software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) is emerging as a critical enabling technology that dramatically improves the WAN’s responsiveness, dynamism and performance. Organisations can also look to secure access service edge (SASE), an architecture that combines comprehensive WAN capabilities, including SD-WAN, routing and WAN optimisation, with cloud-delivered security services, such as zero trust network access (ZTNA) to bolster their secure technology investments. This will further address the need for improved application performance and increased network security, especially as remote user numbers increase and as enterprises continue to migrate applications to the cloud.

What’s on your tech wish list from governments, innovators and the wider industry in 2023?

Government agencies in general should be more broadly polling the market for innovation, technology procurement and partnerships, rather than defaulting to perceived traditional low-risk providers for new technology investments. This is a wasted opportunity that sees government potentially missing new innovations and fresh perspectives from other market providers with different approaches. Technology evolves so quickly that it’s critical for government agencies to look for agile, flexible partners that can move at pace with the speed of technology, while still providing low-risk approaches and options.

Which new technologies will reach critical mass and become dominant in 2023?

Cybersecurity will be the biggest concern for government and enterprises alike with the threat landscape expanding and the threat actors increasing in volume, ferocity and severity, making many cybersecurity-related technologies reach critical mass in 2023 and beyond. This may also drive the increased adoption of automation across other technology platforms and infrastructure to alleviate pressure on already stretched internal IT resources — for example, cloud and SD-WAN — giving them time back to focus on this critical issue.

How is the current talent shortage impacting your industry and how will this be overcome in 2023?

In 2023, we will see a continued and increased reliance on managed service providers (MSPs), with government and enterprises alike using MSPs to help plug existing and ongoing skills gaps. Many government organisations have experienced a loss of talent, and thereby capability, over the past few years as a result of the pandemic-induced global shortage of experienced staff across both private and public sector organisations. While the sector will be looking to upskill in-house employees, government will need to continue to utilise (and potentially expand the use of) external service providers to be able to bridge the shortage of skilled staff and capabilities throughout 2023. These service providers will provide an opportunity for government agencies to broaden their capability and client service delivery through partnerships with third-party suppliers that can deliver new and innovative capabilities. For all organisations, culture will play a critical role in retaining and attracting new staff, with employees looking for more than just a place to work; rather, looking for a great place to work with flexible arrangements, competitive salaries, career trajectory and strong initiatives such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I).

Tony Hudson is the commercial director at Vertel where he leads the sales and marketing teams. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the information technology and telecommunication sectors. He was previously head of government for Vertel and has held management roles with Optus, IBM and WordFlow Information Liquidity.