Ireland will exceed global growth averages in the cloud market, according to predictions from Deloitte in its Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2021.
The report highlights how trends in TMT may affect businesses and consumers worldwide and in Ireland in the coming year, with one early conclusion being that many of these trends are driven by the global pandemic’s economic and societal impacts, resulting in intensifying growth in video, virtual, and cloud technologies.
Partner and head of technology Daryl Hanberry (pictured) said: “Covid-19 has been a catalyst – an unwelcome one, but still a catalyst – for needed changes across the TMT landscape.
“Some of these changes happened extremely quickly. Movements to the cloud and to video visits for medicine were already under way, but have been accelerated. In many parts of the TMT ecosystem, observers have been repeating some version of the comment ‘There have been five years of change in five months due to the pandemic’.
“We hope that in Ireland, 2021 will see organisations moving towards focusing on thriving in the future rather than responding to the immediate threats caused by the pandemic.”
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Cloud providers and others in the ecosystem will have the opportunity to capitalise on increased usage, according to the report, while users can seek to explore new ways for it to create value. And in the near future cloud technologies may become the dominant solution across all types of businesses.
On telemedicine, the report predicts that the rate of virtual visits to doctors will rise to 5% globally this year, up from an estimated 1% in 2019. Even single-digit growth is significant: 8.5 billion doctor’s visits, worth a total of approximately US$500 billion, took place in the 36 OECD countries in 2019 alone.
In March last year, a survey for the Irish Medical Council suggested that only 4% of the population had ever used telemedicine, which includes all technology such as video, telephone, websites and apps delivered by a registered medical practitioner to provide healthcare to patients.
A similar survey in October 2020 saw that increase five-fold to 21%. While video only makes up a proportion of that interaction (32% of the total), it still demonstrates that Irish consumers and practitioners are adapting to the changing environment.
Generally, enterprises are accelerating their journey on the cloud, and the market will likely emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever, according to Deloitte.
Consulting partner Ruairí Allen added: “The growth we have seen in the cloud market in 2020 has no doubt been accelerated by Covid-19, with lockdowns and ‘work-from-anywhere’ having increased demand for new digital services and collaboration tooling.
“We predict that global revenue growth will remain at or above 2019 levels – that is, greater than 30% – for 2021 through 2025, as companies move to cloud to realise efficiencies, become more agile and unlock innovation. We see this global trend reflected in the Irish market. In fact, Ireland is likely to exceed the global growth averages, as enterprises seek to enable business transformation and technical modernisation through the adoption of cloud.”
The full report, with many more predictions, is here.
