Corporate tech leaders were quick to tap many different technologies this year to support huge new armies of remote workers and speed up digital commerce. Our 2020 Forbes CIO Awards, selected in consultation with Ray Wang, the founder and CEO of tech analyst firm Constellation Research, highlight some of the most impactful of these.
Best Product: Virtual private networks (VPNs)
If there were an award for CIOs’ worst nightmare, the prospect of millions of employees suddenly working outside the reach of offices’ cyber-defenses would certainly win it. Hence soaring demand this year for VPNs, which offer secure online channels for connecting to other networks over the internet.
Most Intriguing Newcomer: Miro
To keep innovative ideas flowing when in-person brainstorming is out of the question, some companies turned to cloud-based virtual whiteboards that offer tools such as virtual Post-It notes and project templates. Miro, a startup that landed $50 million in funding in April, came up several times in conversations with CIOs this year and featured on the Forbes Cloud 100 list.
Disruptive Innovator: Contactless commerce
Digital payment apps have been around for a while, but the pandemic turbocharged their use. “You’ve also seen a lot of new hybrid models that use a combination of digital prepayments and curbside pickups,” says Wang. Domino’s Pizza is a great example of a business whose IT team has been heavily involved in pioneering this approach. One of its apps notifies workers when a customer’s car draws up outside a store so they can deposit food directly into the trunk.
Domino's Pizza
Jeff Greenberg/Getty ImagesOutstanding Firm: Amazon
Many CIOs have leaned heavily on cloud companies this year as part of their crisis-management plans, and all of the biggest players, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud, have seen a big boost in revenues as a result. It’s kind of hard to single one out, but Wang thinks AWS deserves our award for its pioneering work in the field.
Annus Horribilis: Virtual reality
The pandemic was a made-for-VR moment: Unable to gather in person, workers could have spent time hanging out occasionally in virtual offices. However, a lack of superfast connectivity and sufficiently advanced hardware is still holding the tech back. In a rare experiment, investment bank UBS gave traders working from home VR headsets so they could join a virtual trading floor, but it hasn’t raved about the results. Seems like Hollywood won’t be filming The Virtual Wolf of Wall Street for a while.
Microsoft's HoloLens 2
NurPhoto/Getty ImagesForbes Forecast: Meta workplace apps
Office workers have long had to use separate software applications to do things such as book meeting rooms and reserve “hot desks.” These will be folded into single workplace apps next year by corporate IT teams and building owners. These apps will also incorporate data from sensors and cameras to ensure safe social distancing. If that all sounds a bit Big Brother-ish, welcome to the not-quite-post-Covid-yet workplace.
And drumroll, please …
The Forbes Person Of The Year From The CIO Network: Stewart Butterfield
As CEO and cofounder of Slack, Butterfield built a workplace instant-messaging business that has become a cornerstone of many CIOs’ work-from-anywhere tech stacks. Wang thinks Salesforce’s $27.7 billion bid for the business will give it access to unique data that can be mined to come up with new product ideas. “There are quite a few social graphs in the consumer world, thanks to companies such as Facebook,” he says, “but few businesses have a composite view of how people interact in the corporate world.”
