ManageEngine has collated a list of six significant trends in the IT management industry in 2020.

“Thanks to the emergence of new technologies and the continued evolution of established ones, the way people work will change in 2020,” said Rajesh Ganesan, vice president at ManageEngine. "IT departments will see privacy, security and cost management strategies, along with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), play pivotal roles."

1. Enterprises will realise the importance of securing their AI systems

According to a recent PwC report, 62 percent of organisations in India have implemented AI in some form. As that figure grows, businesses will recognise the necessity of securing their AI systems.

* Enterprises will see value in investing in explainable AI technologies, which involve the AI system giving the reasons for its actions and decisions so IT teams can review and correct the AI system in real time.

* AI training data and ML models will need to be protected by techniques like homomorphic encryption, which perform complex mathematical operations on encrypted information without decrypting it first.

* Organisations will need to protect their AI models against concept drift, as it can make an AI model irrelevant and cause the system to lose control.

2. 2020 will witness the rise of hyper automation

Hyper automation will take tech growth in India a notch higher in 2020, as companies begin investing in intelligence driven by AI and ML, along with autonomous engineering powered by robotic and cognitive process automation. Hyper automation will primarily be utilised to make dynamic, complex business processes, such as insurance claims, loan processing and warehouse dispatch, faster and more precise without driving up costs.

3. Employees to shoulder responsibility for adherence to privacy laws

The Indian government is working on implementing a data protection law similar to the European Union’s GDPR. Under this new law, businesses will need to adhere to several requirements aimed at ensuring the proper handling of sensitive information. As vital stakeholders in business operations, employees will have to bear some of the responsibility of complying with the law. Organisations are likely to take concrete steps to educate and train their employees on new privacy concerns.

4. Businesses will turn to personalisation to deliver tailored customer experiences

Organisations will use their vast data sets to create clear, complete pictures of their customers and thereby deliver tailored customer experiences. Personalisation will help companies respond to each customer’s unique needs, so that for each interaction the right product, service or support is offered, and the right people in the company are involved.

5. Endpoint protection will be a top priority

With the number and type of endpoint devices ever increasing, and devices becoming 'smarter' endpoints have become critical targets and even more vulnerable to external attacks. Mobile applications may well be the source of the next large-scale enterprise security breach, especially as the influx of non-traditional workers and their remote devices continues. Considering the security threats hovering around endpoints, organisations will pay closer attention to protection techniques such as data loss prevention (DLP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR).

6. Companies rein in cloud spending

This year, companies will work to optimise their costs. While the cloud, especially SaaS, has enabled the democratisation of technology across all business functions, it has also resulted in organisations spending more than needed. However, solutions to give business leaders better control and visibility are emerging.