The Big Tech Comeback: Three Industry Issues Blocking the Path to Success

Who doesn’t love a comeback story? From drastic reductions in venture capital funding to mass layoffs, indications of a high-tech downturn have been evident for several years, but observers like The Wall Street Journal say there are compelling signs the industry’s post-pandemic fortunes will soon reverse.

For cloud providers, cybersecurity experts, and others seeking to overcome stagnation and ride the wave in 2025 and beyond, reducing common high-tech industry challenges will be the key to getting there.

Here are three recurrent issues in the high-tech industry and innovative ways to overcome them.

Issue 1: A Need for Fresh Approaches to Cybersecurity

High-tech companies sit at the forefront of the cybersecurity battle, and the last few years have exposed an important truth: If you’re waiting for things to break to respond —applying a patch from the software vendor or looking for a security scanner to flag an issue before investigating it — you’re inviting trouble.

Though it wasn’t the result of hostile activity, July 2024’s CrowdStrike-Microsoft outage highlights how the trust businesses give the break-patch-fix model can lead to disaster.

As our CEO and Founder, Tomás O’Leary, said shortly following the headline-grabbing incident, “Our unhealthy dependence on patches and updates has created a cycle of artificial obsolescence.”

When businesses act as though a patch is the only way to resolve an issue, or they give software megavendors carte blanche to release updates to live systems without testing them first, they don’t just contribute to that cycle, they open themselves to very real, very avoidable risks.

The need for new thinking is especially pressing in incumbent high-tech businesses, which tend to have a healthy mix of cutting-edge and established systems working together. As the downsides of patch-first thinking continue to reveal themselves, expect the industry’s forward thinkers to embrace alternative independent cybersecurity methodologies that do more than shore up single points of failure.

Issue 2: Better Post-Pandemic Cost Management

The expansion high-tech businesses experienced through the early pandemic years triggered a ripple effect. As unprecedented technology demand spikes returned to a baseline, many companies found themselves with more staff, technology, and capacity than they needed.

Whether it manifests as layoffs or customer cost increases, the boom-and-bust nature of the past few years has created an appetite for more predictable, manageable costs. Software maintenance spending, which chews up a startling 90% of the average IT budget, is one logical area high-tech businesses can target to keep software spending more consistent and less susceptible to the negative effects of external/internal change.

While vendors like IBM and HCL are known for bleeding customers through exorbitant maintenance costs and end–of-support policies, partnering with an independent software maintenance provider can make it possible to keep software supported by product experts without overspending on unnecessary version upgrades or bloated new ELAs. That makes it easier for tech companies to allocate their projected bumps in budget to projects that support business growth.

Issue 3: Talent Acquisition and Retention

Can an ongoing skills gap be a serious problem in an industry facing broadscale layoffs? Experts like Deloitte say yes. In fact, the firm’s research indicates as many as 90% of IT stakeholders view finding and keeping talent as “a moderate or major challenge.” Fully resolving that challenge will require more than a steady stream of fresh graduates.

Finding the right people to keep established technologies working alongside newer ones sits at the core of the seemingly endless IT skills gap problem. And though they tend to receive the biggest share of the discussion, older coding languages like COBOL aren’t the only technologies that create blockers as relevant skills fade out of the workforce. Finding people who know how to keep established (typically on-premises, perpetually licensed) software highly productive as the years go on has also proven to be a considerable tech industry business issue.

Of course, sourcing niche software skills out of thin air is impossible, and spending increasing amounts to keep existing software operational is only feasible for so long. Instead of ignoring the problem until it becomes untenable, high-tech leaders will likely spend 2025 and beyond securing partnerships that allow access to IBM, HCL, and VMware software experts – a move that provides companies with more runway with their current software and makes it possible to integrate existing software with solutions that are added to the estate years later.

Ready to take control of your IT maintenance costs? Download our e-book, A Practical Guide to Independent Software Maintenance, and learn how to achieve proactive, cost-effective software support.