In a recent round table discussion with Dell Technologies’ president for EMEA, Adrian McDonald, he offered a snapshot view of some of the emerging technologies and predominant trends that businesses can expect to see in the year ahead.

Of course, the current pandemic is the elephant in the room in every discussion still, and so McDonald began by speaking to how Covid-19 has impacted on businesses.

The surprise is that for all its tragic impact, there have been some silver linings as well. He noted that Covid-19 has certainly accelerated digital adoption, and also accelerated the pace for those businesses that were already progressing with sound business models that are based on digitization.

“Those companies that were able to deliver a superb customer service using digital means have been doing very well. For other companies, Covid has started a race to digital and a race to catch up,” he added.

He continued that there has also been an immense amount of innovation going on. “We are certainly going through a big innovation cycle right now, but Covid has been a proving ground for many companies,” he said. McDonald noted that while companies could have done Zoom or Teams meetings and used digital tools the way they are now, they simply didn’t. But Covid has spurred that adoption on, by making it a necessity.

As to what we can expect to see in 2021 as particular trends, he cites application modernization becoming essential and cloud adoption with multicloud emerging as the basis for driving business agility.

For greater detail, take a look at our Insights from Experts video below, where McDonald unpacks how technology has played a role in addressing the pandemic, what it has meant to businesses and their strategies moving forward, and particular trends to watch out for in 2021.