Rapid Circle expects cloud computing to play a central role on a number of major themes, both in scarcity, the transition to new ways of working and the need for organisations to modernise their application landscape. The Microsoft specialist identified a number of important developments for 2023.

INCREASING ROLE OF IT IN RISING COSTS IN HEALTHCARE

Gelre hospitals was the first Dutch hospital to migrate the EHR to the Azure cloud in 2022. It is expected that more organisations in healthcare will follow. Harold Punter, CEO of Rapid Circle: “The pressure on healthcare remains unabated and demand and costs will continue to rise in the coming years. We need to learn to organise and deliver care in other ways. The role of technology is crucial. With the opening up of applications to the cloud, it becomes possible to make more and more data available and exchange data, and new possibilities arise for integrations with wearables, home automation and smart devices. Through smart configurations and automations, operational costs can be reduced.”

OFFER AN ATTRACTIVE WORKPLACE

Being able to offer an attractive workplace, wherever your employees are, will play a greater role in attracting and retaining talent in 2023. Due to the scarcity of personnel and the increasing flexibility of the way people work, it is becoming increasingly important for organisations to facilitate this as much as possible. Punter: “Due to the rise of hybrid working, there will be a major role for special spaces such as Microsoft Teams rooms and Microsoft Places, where colleagues in the office can easily collaborate with their colleagues elsewhere. In addition, it remains important that employees can always access the data they need to work, while organisations want to guarantee this in a secure way. A solid cloud strategy contributes to an environment that is always up-to-date, so that employees can be optimally productive.”

CLOUD STRATEGY RESULTS IN MODERNISATION OF APPLICATION LANDSCAPE

Punter: “A cloud strategy cannot be seen separately from a rationalisation of the application landscape that often leads to a modernisation of applications. On the one hand, this is done by purchasing more and more PaaS services, but often the migration to the cloud is also used to migrate to the latest version of that application. In 2023, we expect an increasing demand from organisations for the modernisation of the application landscape while making optimal use of the underlying Azure infrastructure. In this way, they benefit from advantages such as scalability, speed of innovation, flexibility, the implementation of AI and cost savings.”

FAR-REACHING IMPLEMENTATION OF VIDEO CALLING

The application of video calling is expected to take off again. In recent years, it has often been used as a crisis technology with which people and organisations could still stay in touch with each other despite all the restrictions. Punter: “It is our expectation that in 2023 video calling will be used more and more to remove the pressure caused by the scarcity of specialists. In healthcare, for example, the technology offers more and more possibilities to conduct diagnoses and consultations remotely, while in the manufacturing industry, remote inspections are made possible.”

ATTENTION TO DIGITAL WELL-BEING

The technology that is used for home and hybrid working is accompanied by many notifications and extra channels that require attention. Punter: “We expect much more attention to be paid to the digital well-being of the employee. Organisations will spend more time explaining and training employees, on how they can also use the technology to create focus moments for themselves by minimising distractions, and how technology allows them to organise their days in such a way that they are optimally productive. The possibilities are often already offered by technology such as Microsoft Viva but are still used by few organisations.”