The Three Most Important Takeaways from Spiceworks’ #SpiceWorldATX

This week, thousands of IT professionals and reps from hundreds of tech brands descended on Austin, Texas for the 11th annual SpiceWorld conference. Hosted by the IT industry marketplace, Spiceworks, SpiceWorld 2019 featured more than 60 expert-led tech sessions, hands-on demos of newly released tools, and a peek at what’s next in the IT industry.

And, as usual, the conference didn’t disappoint.                                       

If you weren’t able to make it to SpiceWorld this year, don’t worry. Acronis Community Evangelist Bagaudin Satuev walked the show floor and attended the most highly anticipated sessions to share valuable takeaways from the conference. Read his SpiceWorld 2019 recap below to make sure you’re caught up with the top three insights from this year’s show to help your career and your business excel.

1. IT Budget Growth is on the Rise
2. Tech’s Future is in Expanding Capabilities
3. Intrusions are Inevitable. Data Breaches are Not.

The conference kicked off with some welcome statistics from Spiceworks Executive Director of Product Management Elizabeth Ronco: 44% of businesses plan to increase their IT budgets in 2020. That represents a 6% increase over 2019 respondents. Key drivers in this IT budget increase decision include IT infrastructure enhancements and updates, security expansions, and employee growth efforts – all of which directly correlate with the increased complexity, security, and cost challenges found in modern IT environments.

These new funds are due to be widely spread, Ronco added, drawing audience attention to results from Spiceworks recently released its State of IT Report. According to their research, your IT budget allocation is likely to breakdown with:

• 33% dedicated to hardware
• 29% dedicated to software
• 22% dedicated to hosted/cloud-based services
• 15% dedicated to managed services

The future of technology is expanding rapidly. Innovations in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, serverless computing, 5G, hyperconverged infrastructures, and more are all vying for your attention and your budget. But MIT Media Lab researcher Dr. Kate Darling noted that, all too often, we approach these innovations the wrong way.

 “When it comes to robots and AI, we’re constantly comparing artificial intelligence to human intelligence and robots to people,” said Darling. “However, artificial intelligence is not like human intelligence. The robots are already much smarter than us in really specific ways.”

In suggesting this realigned perspective, Darling imagines innovations like AI as a complementary resource to what humans already excel at. “The potential of the technology is not in recreating something that we already have. When we’re thinking about integrating artificial intelligence and robots, we should be thinking about the technologies as a partner.”

As AI and other innovations become central to IT operations, they will become more and more vital to performing your job and protecting your data. And, per Darling’s advice, the best way to strengthen your comfort with these technologies is to consider how they can help you achieve more.

Journalist and best-selling author Brian Krebs helped close out SpiceWorld 2019 with an analysis of cybercrime, ransomware, and data breaches. Interestingly, Krebs focused his talk on what an IT professional can learn from these attacks more so than what they can do to help prevent them.

“As long as humans are behind keyboards, intrusions are inevitable. What’s not inevitable is the data breach,” said Krebs. He went on to say that, while robust protection from cyberthreats like ransomware is invaluable, learning from data breaches are just as important for future improvements.

“We need to get better at learning lessons from breaches about how we’re doing security poorly,” Krebs said. Among the many lessons he cited IT professionals could learn from these events were the need for improved password regulations, mobile policies, and 24/7 monitoring.

“If your organization doesn’t have monitoring looking for anomalies, blocking certain file types, and being really suspicious of things coming into your gateway,” he warned, “you’re going to have a really hard time overcoming modern cyberthreats.”

If these tech takeaways from SpiceWorld are valuable to your work, then next month’s Acronis Global Cyber Summit should definitely be on your schedule.

From October 13-16 in sunny Miami, Florida, Acronis will bring together the world’s largest community of cyber protection professionals for a two-and-a-half day conference dedicated to exploring and improving protection of critical data assets and systems.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to register for the Acronis Global Cyber Summit to join IT professionals, service providers, resellers, ISVs, and developers from around the world. You’ll gain first-hand experience with the latest innovations in cyber protection, connect with industry experts on the topics above, and learn how you can get your organization CyberFit so it can counter modern threats – ensuring the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security of your data.

Register for the Acronis Global Cyber Summit today.