Dell lists cutting-edge trends for 2021

5G use cases, edge computing, multicloud and digital transformation are the technology features enterprises in Asia-Pacific will prioritise this year, says US tech giant Dell Technologies.

“Advanced technologies help with business operation continuity during the pandemic. If this happened five years ago, we would not achieve this,” said Amit Midha, president for AsiaPacific and Japan at Dell Technologies, during a virtual conference.

Mr Midha said enterprises last year were forced to gear up for digital transformation and change how they work. Asia is likely to become the global centre where these technologies are deployed, said Mr Midha.

He said 65% of the population with access to 5G this year would be in Asia, and he pointed out the ultra-fast mobile internet network would have a fundamental impact on the region.

Hybrid and multi-cloud which have the potential to support workload and data flow with real-time engagement would also be prioritised, he said.

John Roese, global chief of technology at Dell Technologies, said the pandemic could potentially level up global usage of 5G and high-speed broadband as remote working and online learning push up demand for spectrum and internet network capacity.

“2021 will be the year of 5G standalone technology, which will provide true high-speed network and lead to evolving tech enablement,” said Mr Roese.

Mr Roese said enterprises will focus more on 5G use cases, which would dominate the landscape of 5G public and private technology deployment.

Although businesses had decided to defer digital transformation projects in 2020 when they were busy grappling with the impact of the pandemic to keep operations running, they would need to shift their focus to these projects this year, he said.

At the global level, quantum computing usage would be on the rise in 2021, he said. Quantum programming needs to be developed through simulators or sandboxes.

He said semiconductors need to be adjusted in line with the trend of heterogeneous computing.

“We’ve been on the move, changing the way we think about computing from homogeneous computing to heterogeneous for a number of years,” Mr Roese said.

This ushers in a new model in which semiconductors work as they must be integrated with software modernisation and integration platforms that lead to future servers. The proliferation of edge computing adoption will be seen as users need to reduce latency. This will lead to the emergence of edge platforms for shared capacity. Edge platforms will become a major new era of on-premise IT capacity delivery, Mr Roese said.