Executive Insights for Supplier Intelligence

Industries and businesses are recording a rise in the number of digital products with the development of tools, techniques and capabilities that collaborate and connect in various ways. Cloud-based, no-code, low-code, scalable, resilient and secure platforms are in high demand because they efficiently deliver digital engineering services, including design, experience, operations and applications, across industries. Platform engineering toolchains enable self-service capabilities and help address end-user requirements.

Microsoft plays a pivotal role in many businesses’ digital transformation strategies and is one of the world’s leading enterprise technology vendors. Its products form the backbone of digital transformation for companies across the U.S. As a U.S.-based company, Microsoft generates half its revenues from its home country and has a strong historical footing in the region, especially among larger firms. The tech titan subdivides its offerings into three main pillars: Microsoft 365, which includes Office 365 and Windows; Dynamics 365, a business application suite; and Azure, a hyperscale cloud platform that operates globally. Power Platform, a more recent addition to the Microsoft portfolio, is a low-code development platform that enables citizen developers to build apps and workflows, thus extending the capabilities of existing portfolios.

The mainframe service market continues to grow as per ISG’s expectations for both conventional mainframe outsourcing and consulting services as enterprises migrate their mainframe applications to the cloud. With clients under pressure to reduce their mainframe costs, several service providers are addressing the increasing demand to free business data that resides in mainframe systems.

Global enterprises are accepting the hybrid working model, wherein their workforce is allowed to work from a location of their choice and asked to report to office in case of absolute need. Depending on an employee’s work profile, corporate culture and vision requirements, organizations worldwide are framing policies to distribute their workforce into remote and in-office working modes.

In 2022, enterprises in the U.S. invested significantly in analytics solutions to empower their business leaders and employees to make decisions using a data-driven approach. The market witnessed a notable change in the mindset of enterprise executives, reflected in the changing pattern of their investments that shifted from capturing and storing data to actively deriving value out of data. A burgeoning competitive environment and new-age startups with disruptive business models necessitated investments in analytics solutions that drive real-time insights and enable decision-making that is essentially data-driven. While the changing market dynamics demand a variety of analytics solutions and platforms, ISG’s analysis reveals that most of the U.S. enterprises are still in their early stages of analytics and data maturity, which warrants the adoption of tools and platforms that help in delivering visualized insights, data-led storytelling and eventually decision-making.

In the past year, as the world continued to recover from the challenges and restrictions implemented to manage the COVID-19 situation, leading life science companies and the providers that support them made significant advances in incorporating technology solutions into the DNA of their operations. This sector has historically been reluctant to embrace innovative approaches at scale, but the pandemic has catalyzed a permanent change. For starters, the pandemic made many formerly standard processes, such as in-person patient visits and justin- time supply chain practices impossible, which created an unprecedented demand for innovative solutions. Leading solution providers not only intervened with existing technology solutions but also demonstrated their readiness to collaborate, innovate and invest with greater flexibility and customer-centric focus than ever before.

The oil and gas industry is going through a phase of long-standing uncertainties. An unpredictable economy, the Russia- Ukraine conflict, reduced investment in upstream assets, price volatility and energy transition initiatives have all created an imbalance in supply and demand. Despite the uncertainties, rising oil prices resulted in record revenues and profits for major oil and gas companies. Majors have posted profits much higher than their previous year’s numbers. For example, BP posted a profit of $8.15 billion in the third (July to September) quarter of 2022, which is approximately 1.5 times the previous year’s number.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused 1.6 million deaths in the U.S. as of this writing. While death rates are falling, the physical and mental consequences for individual health outcomes will continue for decades. Long COVID-19 symptoms might last a lifetime, while much remains unknown about longer- term health effects. As was the rest of the society, the U.S. healthcare system was unprepared for the rapid change in demand for care, hospital beds, equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE). The industry is making changes to respond to the disease and to accommodate the increasing demand for healthcare services. Digital transformation and IT services are helping stakeholders in all parts of the healthcare ecosystem deal with the present and be future ready.

As businesses are becoming software and data-driven, they need an infrastructure base that can adapt to the changing market conditions, be managed as a hybrid model and to always be accessible. Most data center outsourcing engagements now have elements of private/hybrid cloud and intuitive cloud management and cognitive platforms enablement.

With vehicles becoming more software oriented, from being hardware oriented, and digital thread use gaining traction in R&D, enterprises can benefit from using a single source of data. Thus, a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution should be clearly explained to software developers by mechanical and electrical engineers. Accordingly, stakeholders in the U.S. are exploring options for driving the value proposition through the convergence of PLM, service lifecycle management (SLM) and application lifecycle management (ALM) in smart manufacturing in North America.

The U.S. insurance industry, like other regions, continues to face challenges pertaining to losses resulting from pandemic-related claims, climate change risks, rising operation costs, claims inflation, and cyberattacks. These are compounded by energy scarcity, rapid inflation, geopolitical tensions, increased need for operational readiness for regulatory changes, and changing customer expectations. The world has entered a new era that has become structurally different over the past 30 years.

Global enterprises are building new digital platforms to implement automation solutions that can replicate human action and eliminate employee routine tasks to achieve higher outcomes across industry verticals. Automation creates a new paradigm of people, processes and technology collaboration that complements and enhances business outcomes.

Intelligent automation is now a mainstream technology spanning across enterprise portfolios. The evolution of RPA platforms in the past decade has been astounding, and the technology is now a vital constituent for driving digital business transformation. Core RPA characteristics are being integrated into platforms for building advanced products and capabilities. These platforms converge proprietary capabilities, emerging technologies and third-party solutions to develop a unique value proposition. This continuously evolving category acts as a differentiator and is one of the significant developments in the software vendor market.

In today’s world, to enable key business initiatives, cloud adoption plays a central and leading role in ensuring enterprise continuity. Enterprises are dependent on IT’s ability to deliver technology and solutions that provide differentiation in the market. The public cloud service market continues to grow as observed in previous years. This is mainly due to the acceleration of digital business transformation programs undertaken by enterprises to grow their businesses and improve customer experience (CX). Cloud migration and application modernization represent the leading enterprise initiatives. Data and analytics come third on the priority list, with cloud governance interest increasing in enterprises.

This ISG Public Sector Provider Lens™ research study examines public cloud service providers that develop, enable and deliver capabilities needed by these public sector organizations in the U.S. as they work to improve operations, reduce costs, address digital change, and improve their ability to serve constituencies and internal users alike.

The banking industry has been experiencing major shifts globally, driven by emerging technologies, innovations triggered by the COVID-19-induced movement restrictions, changes in consumers’ preferences and behaviors, and the increasing regulations in the industry. The adoption of the net-zero approach and emerging enterprise-level risk management and compliance requirements are also driving banks to change their strategies and businessoperating models.

As the contact center industry is rapidly evolving to address future consumers’ needs, businesses are beginning to realize the need for new technologies and operating models. Accelerating transformation has become a priority for all businesses. There has been a drastic change in the business approach in the last 30 months, and new trends, which are redefining this industry, are emerging.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the consumption of over-thetop (OTT) platforms, further accelerating the disruption of the well-established media and entertainment business ecosystem. In addition to streaming new content, many OTT players act as distributors, pooling content from different media companies and offering it to their customers seamlessly. End users in this rapidly developing ecosystem will require robust content management systems that automate the content supply chain and royalty rights without disrupting the quality of experience (QoE) of their customers.

After adapting to the changes brought upon by the pandemic in the last two years, enterprise clients in the U.S. are reassessing their strategies for transforming their workplaces. The Microsoft Future of Work study 2022 shows that many enterprises in the region are now embracing hybrid work models while maintaining the post-COVID norms.

Workplace changes that were already underway were vastly accelerated to address the needs triggered by the pandemic, and those organizations that were holding out have now realized that transformation is essential. Organizations have developed a new understanding of the importance of workplace resilience.