2021 Enterprise Forecast: Tech Trends on the Rise
Tags: Predictions, Startups, Wbenterprise, 2021, Enterprise

It’s that time of year again! As we close out December, we asked our team here at Work-Bench as well as our portfolio companies to reflect on the biggest enterprise trends and technologies they foresee emerging in the new year.

It’s no secret Work-Bench has always championed enterprise software, and one year ago we predicted 2020 would be the year automation and efficiency reigned supreme. While so much of this past year was unprecedented, and as we experienced the work-from-home phenomenon go from temporary to “the new normal,” our predictions held strong as enterprise leaders adopted new technologies in order to keep up new demand for remote working, reliance on the cloud, and automation.

As we kick off 2021 (new year means new budget!), the enterprises’ magnified focus on digital transformation isn’t going anywhere. Here are a few predictions of where we see the industry heading:

Ballooning Cloud Costs Will Drive a New Generation of Cloud Efficiency Tools

“It’s no surprise that enterprise usage of cloud is growing and has no signs of slowing down. However, cloud isn’t always the cheapest alternative to on-prem, and its hefty cost has become a leading concern for organizations. We expect to see a surge in cloud cost management tools to measure and reduce spending, allowing organizations to fully maximize the efficiency and productivity of the cloud without wasting resources. These tools will analyze everything from vendor contracts and licenses to optimizing varying levels of cloud resource consumption, including CPU, storage, and network utilization and code execution.”

— Kelley Mak, Principal, Work-Bench

The Future of Finance is FinOps

“Finance faces an enormous data problem — they can no longer keep up with the influx of data using their current tools, which compromises their ability to make the best business decisions. As a result, they’re spending the majority of their time transacting/record-keeping rather than pushing their businesses forward. Just as Sales and Marketing have spun off their own specialized ‘Operations’ groups to solve their data issues, Finance must also establish their own Finance Operations (FinOps) team. FinOps will gather, extract, and prepare data for Finance so that Finance can spend more time analyzing financial performance and making strategic decisions for the business. We’ve already been seeing more and more of these job functions pop up at fast-growing companies.”

— Raymond Lau, CEO, Leapfin

Code Automation Will Overtake the Rise In Complex Software Architecture

“2020 was a big setback for many companies who had to conserve resources and flatlined, or reduce engineering staff to weather the economic storm of the pandemic. With the turn of the year, we’ll see an unleashing of pent-up demand for delivery of new software features and functionality. Code observability and code quality automation will gain traction as part of enterprises’ scale-up initiatives, and become core to their success in 2021. Pressure on teams to do more with fewer members will mean more assistive technologies in lieu of hiring up expensive technical staff, such as architects and security engineers.”

— Elizabeth Lawler, CEO, AppLand

Artificial Intelligence Will Redefine Security Due Diligence in the Post-COVID Era

“Artificial intelligence will be the next phase of efficiency for security due diligence in the era of distributed workforces and third party technologies. Security questionnaires and manual risk analysis add months to the procurement process and often lead to poor decisions. With increased pressure to bring on more third parties faster and with less risk, automated due diligence delivers the timely, accurate information needed to make good risk decisions without slowing down business.”

— Paul Valente, CEO, VISO Trust

*Leapfin, AppLand, and VISO Trust are Work-Bench portfolio companies.