Business digital transformation, and two technology trends that are accelerating it—artificial intelligence and DevOps—are still primary priorities for the C suite today.

Lest readers believe that business digital transformation has fallen out of fashion, recent data suggests that digital transformation initiatives are still high on the agenda for today’s leaders.

According to a recent Thomson Reuters survey, nearly 50% of C-level executives said that business digital transformation was their top priority over the next 18 months, followed by reducing costs (44%) and increasing customer satisfaction (44%). Business digital transformation and modernization are enduring objectives, despite the  rise of generative AI as a priority over the past year.

That’s why, according to a LinkedIn article, business digital transformation is no longer a nice-to-have.

In fact, buisiness digital transformation may now be mandatory for organizations to survive and thrive in increasingly volatile and competitive macro-economic environments:

“If you consider the pre-covid [sic] era, digital transformation was a bonus,” the article argues. “Now, however, with the way the pandemic has caused a major disruption in businesses on a global level, digital transformation has become a thing of necessity.

Not surprisingly, business digital transformation is also a growing market.

According to Markets and Markets, for example, the digital transformation market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.1%, from $521.5 billion in 2021 to $127.5 billion in 2026.

Digitally transformed organizations are expected to contribute to more than half of the GDP by 2023, accounting for $53.3 trillion. And according to Statista, $2.4 trillion will be spent on digital transformation on 2024.

Which technology trends are fueling business digital transformation? AI and DevOps, of course

The C suite is also betting on certain technology trends to drive the next chapter of digital transformation: artificial intelligence and DevOps.

According to the Thomson Reuters survey, nearly 40% of respondents say they are using generative AI*–to fuel buisness digital transformation.

While generative AI has received much of the attention since 2022 for enabling innovation and efficiency, various forms of AI—generative, causal**, and predictive AI***—will work together to automate processes, introduce innovation, and other activities in service of digital transformation.

According to IDC, AI technology will be inserted into the processes and products of at least 90% of new enterprise apps by 2025. And according to S&P Global’s 2023 Global Trends, 69% of surveyed organizations have at least one AI project in production, while 28% are achieving enterprise scale.

DevOps methodology—which brings development and ITOps teams together—also forwards digital transformation.

By bringing developers and IT operations teams together, teams can collaborate to accelerate software development times, increase workflow efficiency, automate manual tasks, and create higher-quality software. DevOps can also reduce human error throughout the software deployment process.

For one Dynatrace customer, a hardware and software provider, introducing automation into DevOps processes was a game-changer.

Previously, developers at this Dynatrace customer were bogged down with administrative tasks, spending only 20% of their timing writing software to achieve digital transformation objectives. Today, with greater focus on DevOps and developer observability, engineers spend 70%-75% of their time writing code and increasing product innovation. It has effectively flipped its time spent on manual and administrative tasks vs. its strategic software development efforts.

Another Dynatrace customer, a federal agency, used DevOps automation to reduce mean time to repair (MTTR) so teams could resolve issues before they affected users or compromised systems.

In 2024, the C suite clearly has its eye on AI and DevOps as core enabling technology trends for business digital transformation. Ultimately, these tech trends can elevate organizations’ competitive advantage and accelerate modernization.

Today, they are paving the way for greater automation, more strategic and high-quality product development, and less error-prone activity. And of course, these goals overlap with the objectives of digital transformation, including product innovation, cost optimization, and risk mitigation.

Ultimately, buisness digital transformation, AI, and DevOps are interwoven. Each trend is enabling the others, and forward-leaning organizations are steering their modernization efforts in accordance with this notion.

For more on DevOps automation, check out our “DevOps automation is becoming a strategic imperative.”

And for more on digital transformation, check out “Master your digital transformation.”

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*Generative AI—artificial intelligence that generates content, such as text, programming code, images, audio, videos, and more.

**Causal AI is an AI technique that identifies the precise cause and effect of events or behavior.

***Predictive AI uses machine learning, data analysis, statistical models, and AI methods to predict anomalies, identify patterns, and create forecasts about future events.