AI-Exposed Sectors Experience Productivity Surge as AI Jobs Climb and See Up to 25% Wage Premium in 2024 — PwC
Sectors more exposed to AI are experiencing almost five times (4.8x) higher growth in labor productivity, according to PwC’s inaugural 2024 Global AI Jobs Barometer, published today.
The report, which analyzed over half a billion job ads from 15 countries, suggests that AI could allow many nations to break out of persistent low productivity growth, generating economic development, higher wages, and enhanced living standards.
The report finds that for every job posting requiring AI specialist skills (i.e., machine learning) in 2012, there are now seven job postings.1 PwC research also finds that growth in jobs demanding AI skills has outpaced all jobs since 2016, with postings for jobs requiring AI skills growing 3.5x faster than for all jobs
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ISG Maintains 2024 Forecast; Sees Stronger Growth in 2025
The global market for IT and business services achieved record results in the third quarter, climbing back to the pinnacle of performance following an extended slump that reached bottom more than a year ago, according to the latest state-of-the industry report from Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III ), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.
Data from the global ISG Index™, which measures commercial outsourcing contracts with annual contract value (ACV) of $5 million or more, show third-quarter ACV for the combined global market (both managed services and cloud-based as-a-service) reached a record $26.7 billion, up 15 percent versus the prior year and at its highest level since its previous peak of $26.4 billion in the first quarter of 2022. It was the fifth straight quarter the global market has advanced sequentially since hitting a low point of $23.2 billion in the second quarter last year.
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CSPs Struggle with Expanding Cyber Threats, Limited Resources, and Insurability Gaps -- Cysurance and ZirrusOne
Communications service providers (CSPs)—including cable operators, ISPs, and entertainment service providers—sit at the heart of the digital economy, delivering critical connectivity to millions of businesses and consumers. However, this position makes them prime targets for cyberattacks, with their interconnected networks and vast attack surfaces presenting significant vulnerabilities.
Adding to these challenges, CSPs often struggle to meet the stringent requirements needed to obtain comprehensive cyber insurance coverage. This dual threat of escalating cyber risks and limited insurability has left many in the sector vulnerable to both breaches and significant financial losses.
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Industry Roundtable: Driving Sustainability in the Media and Entertainment Technology Sector
The rapid evolution and expansion of the digital media and entertainment industry have significantly impacted the environment through carbon emissions, energy use, and waste generation.
According to research from the Sustainable Production Alliance, tentpole movies had an average carbon footprint of 3,370 metric tons—or about 33 metric tons per shooting day. Large films had a carbon footprint of 1,081 metric tons, medium films had a carbon footprint of 769 metric tons, and small films had a carbon footprint of 391 metric tons. TV series, noted researcher, can have an even more significant impact because prolonged production activities generate more carbon over their entire run.
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Less than Half of Companies Achieve Their Cost Savings Targets --BCG
BOSTON—Inflation, increased barriers to trade, and relatively low global growth are among the factors currently placing tremendous pressure on business leaders and forcing firms to review and re-evaluate their costs to stay competitive and innovate. Despite these high stakes, only 48% of companies on average achieve their cost savings targets. Further, only 35% of executives report that their organizations’ approach to cost is strategic and planned, while the remaining 65% admit that their most recent cost-optimization program was an ad-hoc response to changing market conditions.
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Global Online Retail Sales To Grow 8.9% Annually, Reaching $6.8 Trillion In 2028 -- Forrester
Forecasts that total global online retail sales will grow from $4.4 trillion in 2023 to $6.8 trillion by 2028 at an 8.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). According to the report Global Retail E-Commerce Forecast, 2024 To 2028, which provides a five-year forecast for total, online, and offline retail sales for 40 countries globally, despite the growth in e-commerce, 76% (or $21.9 trillion) of global retail sales will still occur offline in 2028. As a result, retailers must continue to invest in omnichannel strategies that provide a seamless shopping experience, both online and offline.
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80% of asset and wealth managers say AI will fuel revenue growth while ‘tech-as-a-service’ could see 12% boost to revenues by 2028 --PwC
LONDON- Four-fifths (80%) of asset and wealth management (AWM) organisations say disruptive technologies such as AI will fuel revenue growth, with those moving quickly to adopt ‘tech-as-a-service’ potentially seeing a 12% boost to revenues by 2028, according to PwC analysis.
PwC’s 2024 Asset & Wealth Management Report, released today, surveyed 264 asset managers and 257 institutional investors from across 28 countries and territories, and also finds that four-fifths (81%) are contemplating strategic partnerships, consolidations, or mergers and acquisitions in order to enhance technological capabilities and build an ‘extended tech ecosystem’ to innovate, expand into new markets, and democratise access to investment products ahead of a great wealth transfer.
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Cysurance Insurability Assessment Program Powered by Check Point Streamlines Cyber Insurance Process for Brokers and Clients While Reducing Risks and Costs
In a vidcast interview for journalists, industry leaders Kirsten Bay, CEO of Cysurance, and Enterprise Security Architect Randle Henry from Check Point, shed light on the emerging role of insurability assessments in bridging the gap between cybersecurity and insurance. The conversation put into context the Cysurance Insurability Assessment Program, Powered by Check Point – a joint initiative that is bending the risk curve in favor of businesses by assessing and managing their cyber exposure profiles.
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Industry Experts Discuss Low-Code, AI Integration at CIO.com Virtual Roundtable
During a recent CIO.com virtual roundtable co-hosted with Tiago Azevedo, Chief Information Officer of OutSystems, technology leaders representing a broad swath of vertical industries -- from financial services and technology, to manufacturing and professional services -- gathered to explore how the integration of low-code and no-code platforms with AI governance may affect enterprise transformation strategies. The event highlighted the potential of Low-Code No-Code platforms to accelerate application development while ensuring governance and transparency.
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Gartner Survey Reveals Only 48% of Digital Initiatives Are Successful
In 2025, Over 80% of EMEA CIOs Plan to Increase Investments in Cybersecurity, AI/GenAI, Business Intelligence and Data Analytics
Only 14% of EMEA CIOs to Prioritize Building an Enterprise-Wide Technology Workforce in 2025On average, only 48% of digital initiatives meet or exceed business outcome targets, according to Gartner, Inc.’s annual global survey of more than 3,100 CIOs and technology executives, and more than 1,100 executive leaders outside of IT (CxOs). A cohort of CIOs and CxOs, known as the “Digital Vanguard,” has the highest achievement rate, where 71% of their digital initiatives meet or exceed outcome targets.
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IT Distribution Revenues Remain Stable with Software and Security Led Growth, According to the IDC North America Distribution Tracker
Distributor revenues inched up from the previous quarter to $20.2 B in the third quarter of 2024 (3Q24), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) North America Distribution Tracker (NADT). Year-over-year growth was down a fraction of a percent with continued growth in Software, Personal Computing, and Security, but offset by declines in Network Infrastructure, Services, and AV.
“IT distributors remain a critical component of a successful strategy,” said Ruth Flynn, research vice president, IDC Tracker & Data Products. “The flexibility and product coverage of IT distributors helped balance factors like interest rates and political uncertainty with post-pandemic recovery in a challenging Q3. An example is PC growth of 2% through distribution where overall PC shipments were down 6% in preliminary Q3 reporting.”
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IDC Unveils 2025 FutureScapes: Worldwide IT Industry Predictions
Today, International Data Corporation (IDC) released its highly anticipated worldwide information technology (IT) industry predictions for 2025 and beyond. The IDC FutureScape report outlines IDC’s top 10 predictions shaping the future of the IT industry and highlights how organizations across all industries will strategically pivot towards AI (artificial intelligence) to build resilient, AI-driven enterprises.
This year’s predictions underscore the urgent need to accelerate the AI pivot, advocating for strategic, long-term investments in advanced AI-enabled capabilities. Over the past 18 months, organizations of all sizes and industries engaged in extensive hyper-experimentation with AI. In 2025, we anticipate a shift from experimentation to reinvention. This shift will be driven by the introduction of AI agents, renovations in data, infrastructure, and cloud to deliver scalable ‘answers,’ and an enhanced focus on resilience through sound economics and pervasive cyber-recovery. Supporting this transformation, IDC forecasts that worldwide spending on AI-supporting technologies will surpass $749 billion by 2028. Notably, IDC reports 67% of the projected $227 billion AI spending in 2025 will come from enterprises embedding AI capabilities into their core business operations, surpassing investments in leading cloud and digital service providers.
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European Spending on Artificial Intelligence to Reach $133 Billion by 2028, According to a New IDC Spending Guide
According to a new forecast from the Worldwide AI and Generative AI Spending Guide published by International Data Corporation (IDC), European spending on artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to reach $133 billion by 2028, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.3% over the 2024–2028 forecast period.
The IDC AI technology scope also includes generative AI (GenAI) solutions, which have been capturing significant attention since late 2022. “While artificial intelligence itself is not new, the acceleration in AI adoption is largely driven by the attention surrounding generative AI,” says Carla La Croce, research manager, Data and Analytics at IDC. “GenAI adoption is moving swiftly from early testing and experimentation to more integrated business solutions. The CAGR for GenAI is expected to be 55% over the forecast period, significantly higher than that of more established AI technologies.”
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Exploring the Role Data and Trust in the Era ot AI – CIO Roundtable
While artificial intelligence (AI) holds the potential to unlock new levels of efficiency and innovation for businesses, sustained success will hinge on a wide spectrum of trust – including the underlying data and the community of professionals that act on the ensuing insights. Building trust in AI-generated insights will require both robust data management and human oversight. These were among the key takeaways from a recent CIO.com roundtable dinner in Boston.
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Capturing the $2 Trillion Personalization Opportunity with AI -- Boston Consulting Group
In a world in which consumers expect products, services, and support to be accessible instantly, seamlessly, and in just the way they want—personalization has become a do-or-die business objective.
Over the next five years, $2 trillion in revenue will shift to companies that understand how to create personalized experiences and personalized communications. Most companies aren’t currently doing personalization very well, but new AI capabilities mean companies can personalize with unprecedented precision, and fine tune every customer interaction.
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New Research From Legit Security and TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group Shows Outdated Application Security Approaches Do Not Work With Modern Development Trends ---ESG
Legit Security, the definitive application security posture management (ASPM) leader providing end-to-end visibility and protection across the entire software factory, and TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a leading IT analyst, research, and strategy firm, today announced the publication of Modernizing Application Security to Scale for Cloud-native Development. The report delves into the development trends driving the need to modernize application security programs and evaluates pressing challenges that application security teams encounter with their current tools. The findings underscore the urgency for organizations to modernize their application security practices so that they can support growth and mitigate risks.
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Only 2% of businesses have implemented firm-wide cyber resilience, even as cyber security concerns are top-of-mind and the average data breach exceeds US$3M --- PwC
Almost four-fifths (77%) expect their cyber budget to increase over the coming year as only 2% say their company has implemented cyber resilience across their organisation. Cyber risks are top-of-mind: two-thirds (66%) of tech leaders rank cyber as their top risk for mitigation in 2024, compared to 48% of business leaders. Estimated cost of the average data breach is US$3.3M while cloud-related threats (42%), hack-and-leak operations (38%), and third-party data breaches (35%) rank as the highest cyber threats according to leaders. Four-fifths (78%) have increased their investment in GenAI over the last 12-months and two-thirds (67%) of security leaders state that GenAI has increased their attack surface over the last year.
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Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 7.5% in 2024
Worldwide IT spending is expected to total $5.26 trillion in 2024, an increase of 7.5% from 2023, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. This is a decrease from the previous quarter’s forecast of 8% growth, but an increase of the overall spend forecast of $5.06 trillion.
“Generative AI (GenAI) is being felt across all technology segments and subsegments, but not to everyone’s benefit,” said John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “Some software spending increases are attributable to GenAI, but to a software company, GenAI most closely resembles a tax. Revenue gains from the sale of GenAI add-ons or tokens flow back to their AI model provider partner.”
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AI Shapes Analytics for Complex, Expanding Supply Chains -- ISG
Many companies with complex supply chains are co-developing specialized analytics systems with providers that allow them to adapt quickly to dynamic market conditions, according to a new research report published today by Information Services Group ( ISG ) (Nasdaq: III ), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.
The 2024 ISG Provider Lens™ global Specialty Analytics Services report for the supply chain industry finds that organizations are investing in technologies to harness enterprise and ecosystem data for better decision-making. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of global supply chains, so enterprises are exploring how data and analytics can make systems more resilient and sustainable.
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Higher education PC investment looks to device customisation and performance to drive learning — Futuresource Consulting
Universities and colleges worldwide continue to focus on advancing the student learning experience. Engagement, collaborative spaces and technology improvements are all part of the equation, with AI and high-performance computing (HPC) moving into the foreground.
According to a new report from Futuresource Consulting, institutional purchases of mobile and desktop devices in the higher education sector saw steady growth during the first half of 2024, with continued momentum expected for the rest of the year.
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