I heard a speaker once state: “Those who are invited to the most “games” in life are best equipped to foresee an enemy and know how to confront it before it reaches the gate.” When the speaker stated this, he was still admittedly perplexed by the connection between these tendencies. I am too, but I believe it is becoming clearer now for me in my arena of business

With a considerable amount of time spent in the IT Consulting arena, I find myself looking back and trying to find cyclical trends; to anticipate the future prospective enemies at our gates and at the gates of our clients. Regardless of whether these enemies are infrastructure “gremlins” or real live hackers plotting their next move, it would be valuable to anticipate and then know how to confront these challenges, like a Jedi-Quant-Ninja before they arrive as a present threat.

Now that I have hit the ten-year anniversary of being in this specific arena and I am rapidly approaching the twenty-year anniversary of my career, I think it is important to reflect and take inventory of any wisdom gained and to share it. This debut blog post of my company is an attempt to do just that.

In the post that follows I will aim to highlight some observations and analysis of the last 10 years as an IT Services Consultant. This is in an effort to anticipate future trends, future threats and how to prepare, mitigate, defend against, and take advantage.

First question: What is the same from 10 years ago until now?

• Cybersecurity threats are ever-present and growing
• Most IT leaders have an evolving “Cloud Strategy” and have made progress toward it, albeit with an often-moving goalpost.
• Companies are fighting over a finite pool of technical talent for their org.
• Smaller-sized businesses are challenged with getting the technical solutions and attention from quality service providers that they need to advance and remain competitive.
• Large enterprises see both the largest explosive growth cycles and greatest implosive contractions.
• Business demands on networking infrastructure are still growing.

Next question: What is different from 10 years ago until now?

• Cybersecurity budgets have increased across the board.
• Cybersecurity products and services have matured and expanded.
• Cloud (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) has grown mightily.
  • AWS quarterly revenue 10 years ago was around $1B. It is now $18B.
  • AWS is only recently seeing rate of growth decrease while Microsoft and Google steadily increase their market share.
• India has seen average salaries increase greater than any other country over the last 10-year stretch (over 10% in the last year alone). This is obviously driven by the tech industry and the offshoring of infrastructure and engineering resources to India from across the globe. India has done the best of any country with:
  • Educating their population in the area of greatest demand – Technology.
  • Promoting/enabling their country’s businesses to provide their talent to the world.
• As a result, India is reaping the benefit. The rest of the world is catching on and competing because India is no longer the least expensive place to find a large and very talented pool of engineers. We see you Philippines and Brazil!
• Cloud Security has grown along with the cloud, both in need and creative products and services to fill that need. Cloud based service providers are the big fat target for most hackers looking for paydays and notoriety.

What sort of strategy can be developed for the future from analyzing the past ten years?

As a service provider, NavNet is taking this strategy:

• Establish partnerships with the OEMs and Services providers that can expand our strength in:
  • Infrastructure deployment & management.
  • Cybersecurity.
• Establish partnerships that expand our global reach and leverage global resources.
• Educate ourselves on:
  • The enemies who are currently “at the gate”, and
  • The technologies that are taking the best approach to defend and stabilize the infrastructure.

To end with where I started: Those who are invited to play in the most “games” are best equipped to foresee, manage and mitigate the enemy before it reaches the gate.

So, we at NavNet will work to be a team that is worthy of being invited to as many “games” as possible. We will refine and improve upon what we are good at while continually educating and training ourselves in new areas, so that we may become more aware of and become even more advanced at vetting technologies and resources and then fitting them with our customers when their needs align.

Thank you for reading! More to come!