A new year is fast approaching. 2024 has been a difficult one for businesses with geopolitical tensions, rising prices and many changes to contend with in the workplace. Businesses have still managed to grow, even with these challenges. Intelligent SME.tech spoke to three companies about their 2025 growth plans.
Paul Special, CMO at Scality:
Scality is solving the biggest data storage challenges of the world’s most critical industries. From space exploration and genomic research to the stringent cybersecurity requirements of the financial industry and the performance standards of cloud service providers, organisations everywhere require pioneering, cyber-resilient technologies that can meet massive data demands.
The global demand for data storage will continue to grow, in part fuelled by the ongoing expansion of AI and Machine Learning projects that drive IT investment.
In 2024, leading analysts recognised Scality as a market leader in object storage, ahead of all competitors.
Our aim is to continue to safeguard data with unbreakable ransomware protection. In 2024 we’ve launched version 3.0 of ARTESCA, our secure S3 object storage software that seamlessly integrates with Veeam for immutable, ransomware-proof backups.
And we’ve just released RING XP, the world’s fastest object storage solution, that offers unprecedented latency times measured in just microseconds. This kind of performance is needed for bleeding-edge data storage environments, such as high-performance AI applications with potentially billions of small objects required for model training.
Object storage for AI
Object storage will emerge as the preferred data storage model of choice for developers responsible for AI application development, and we will continue to deliver the most reliable and performant object storage solutions for AI and cyber-resilience.
Many of our customers, as well as other global 2000 enterprises, government agencies and cloud service providers are all investing in AI and Machine Learning projects, and developers are seeking flat, virtually unlimited namespaces, without having to deal with capacity, performance or other limitations in legacy file and block storage.
Robust ransomware protection via immutability
Object storage is already becoming the dominant form of immutable storage for protection against ransomware. Data immutability is a cornerstone of data protection from wide ranging cyberthreats, including ransomware, data exfiltration and other forms of malware, and we expect this emphasis to remain and grow. By placing backup data on immutable storage, organisations will increase their ability to recover data and business operations in the event of an attack.
Object storage offers intrinsic write-once-read-many (WORM) capabilities that allow data to be stored in a form that cannot be encrypted, modified or deleted by unauthorised users.
Legislative challenges
In an evolving legislative environment, the data storage industry will evolve to meet EU data privacy regulations, driving a new wave of decentralisation. This is because GDPR has consequences across the world for mandating data privacy, ensuring personal information is subject to data sovereignty rules. The new European NIS2 and DORA cybersecurity regulations will have a similar global reach, forcing organisations to take more stringent measures.
Next year, as a result of these new requirements, organisations will begin to establish new and EU data centres, separate from their main data pool, to comply with strict mechanisms for sovereignty, cyber-resiliency and cross-border data transfers.
When organisations are faced with the need for scalability, security and flexibility, while keeping an eye on new laws that protect data privacy, object storage is the future of enterprise data.
Cataline Salazar, Global Head of Wolt Ads, Wolt:
Wolt is officially a decade old, and what a journey it’s been – but there’s much more to accomplish. What started as a small restaurant delivery service in 2014 – set up by six co-founders in Helsinki – has today grown into a global platform, serving customers, supporting local businesses and creating earning opportunities across 1,000 cities and 28 countries.
Wolt isn’t just about bringing joy and simplicity to our customers’ everyday lives (although that’s of course a big part), we’re also about supporting local neighbourhoods. With more than €15 billion in sales generated for local merchants and €3 billion in earnings for over 450,000 couriers so far, Wolt has become a lifeline for small businesses and individuals alike. We’re proud to help local high streets thrive and empower people to be their own boss and earn flexible and supplementary income.
As the years have gone by, Wolt has evolved far beyond just delivering restaurant food. Sure, we’ve delivered over 130 million burgers (people really do love burgers) but now you can get nearly everything delivered – from groceries and flowers, to prescriptions and pet food, almost anything is possible through the platform. Today, non-restaurant orders make up about 20% of our business, with grocery sales alone topping €1 billion annually. Next year, we’re excited to tap into new markets and enable local communities to thrive via our platform.
Our Wolt+ membership programme will be central to this growth. It allows customers to save through zero delivery fees, exclusive discounts and big affordability campaigns. Launched in 2021, we’ve already reached 1 million subscribers and saved customers over €200 million.
What’s more, over the next year, our focus is on scaling our retail media network across all the countries where Wolt operates, enhancing Wolt Ads product offerings to meet the growing demands of both merchants and global brands. We’re also prioritising innovation in AI-driven ad solutions to refine personalisation and targeting capabilities even further, expanding our partnerships with global brands and unlocking new revenue streams through advanced advertising formats.
As we race into the future, we’re certainly not slowing down. We plan to invest in more countries and products, such as pharmacy. Ultimately, we want to continue bringing more joy, simplicity and income to neighbourhoods all over the world. Our mission is to build the most relevant company for consumers globally.
Chris Jackson, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Six Degrees:
For many business leaders, now’s the time to consider next year’s IT priorities and organisational goals. It’s an annual ritual – the corporate equivalent of New Year’s resolutions. But is it possible for IT to deliver sustainable, manageable growth based only on a 12-month plan? Is there an argument that longer-term planning might be the way forward?
I looked at data from our UK SME Cloud Intelligence Report to see if some of the five-year objectives set out by IT decision-makers could provide some useful insights. To recap, their top five five-year objectives were:
- Develop an IT infrastructure that allows long-term hybrid working
- Increase automation
- Harness AI and Machine Learning to support business goals
- Outsource IT operations where possible and practical
- Improve diversity and inclusivity within the IT team and wider business
These objectives suggest a long-term commitment to improving productivity and maximising profit. The top four seek to do this by deploying new technology, implementing existing IT in new ways and leveraging vast amounts of valuable data. Diversity and inclusivity improvements also play a key role by driving productivity, stimulating innovation and minimising the risk of groupthink.
Tackling AI implementation as part of a five-year plan is a smart move – so long as that plan is already well underway. The last few years have shown us how quickly AI evolves, so organisations would be wise to have already started setting clear AI-related goals and objectives that relate directly to business outcomes.
They should also be implementing policies and procedures to address instances where AI implementations could impact security, data access and governance policies. For those not already doing so, updating data gathering and storage capabilities to provide AI-based applications with the best possible information is also a good idea.
This more considered approach will help ensure organisations are getting all the efficiencies and benefits from AI without exposing company data to the wrong people – and putting themselves, their employees, their IP and their competitive advantage at risk.
Taking a longer-term approach should already be helping companies lay the foundations for successful AI implementations that will drive sustainable multi-year growth. They may also be seeing the first signs of how AI can potentially help them achieve more of their objectives in a shorter timeframe – often because they are not defaulting to traditional problem-solving approaches.