Author name: Magdalena Libiszewska

For the sixteenth consecutive year, Forbes Poland magazine, in collaboration with Dun & Bradstreet, has spotlighted companies making significant strides in economic development. RITS Professional Services has secured a prominent position among businesses with annual revenues ranging from PLN 50-250 million.

Who is a data scientist?

A data scientist is an expert who is fluent in the world of big data, able to properly collect and analyze it. His basic duties in the company include:

• preparation of strategy

Together with the company’s management and its employees, he decides what types of data will be most important for analysis to improve business processes.

• searching for data sources

The basic feature of big data is its diversity. They may come from data warehouses and spreadsheets (structured data) or, for example, e-mails, social media or multimedia files (unstructured data). Therefore, selecting data sources is a difficult but crucial task.

•  data visualization and cleansing

The next stage is data visualization so that it is possible to work with IT specialists and data engineers. Its goal is to determine whether the selected sources will provide data that can optimize the company’s decision-making process. The point is to limit their number as much as possible, getting rid of the „noise” of unnecessary information that makes the analysis difficult.

• building and training models

Data scientists often use machine learning and AI to process large amounts of data quickly and accurately. This requires first preparing the model by implementing appropriate algorithms and then training the models on the input data. The most effective models are implemented.

• monitoring

The operation of the entire system is monitored, an expert manages it and measures success based on previously selected criteria. If necessary, the entire process is repeated.

In what areas can data analysis be used

Application areas of data analysis include data extraction, creation of a data platform, processing and visualization of data, connectivity or ensuring privacy and security. The use of this technology allows for:

• new product introduction,
• supply chain planning and management,
• manufacturing engineering,
• production and logistics improvements,
• ensuring the quality of production,
• supporting maintaince,
• better energy and utilities management,
• taking care of health and safety.

The benefits of using data science are also visible at the organizational level. They help in preparing a strategy and roadmap, managing and optimizing processes, as well as optimizing ecosystem partnering. It is also an opportunity to improve the team’s digital skills and capabilities and legal compliance management.

Examples of the benefits of data analysis in the production process

Data science can be successfully used to optimize manufacturing processes. This includes, among others, such aspects like:

• real-time monitoring

Thanks to data analysis, you can identify bottlenecks and make corrections on an ongoing basis, gaining knowledge about machine performance and product quality.

• predictive maintaince

Predictive maintenance is key to preventing equipment failures, reducing downtime and improving safety. Data science can help you analyze machine performance data, identify patterns, and predict failures. It is possible to monitor the status of devices using IoT to gain access to large amounts of data. It also helps in predictive modeling using machine learning to predict equipment life or maintenance schedule.

• quality control: 

Data on defects, customer complaints and returns may be analyzed. By identifying patterns and root causes of quality problems, manufacturers can implement corrective actions and prevent future defects. All this leads to improved product quality

• supply chain optimization

Data science allows you to analyze information about suppliers, inventory levels and demand. Predictive analytics can be performed to forecast demand, adjust inventory levels and optimize supply processes.

• energy consumption management and reduction

Real-time monitoring of machine operation and data analysis allow for optimization of energy consumption. This can lead to significant savings.

Data science for better manufacturing

The benefits of data science in the manufacturing industry are undoubted. To fully use them, you need a professional data analysis team. It should consist of experienced experts skilled in data acquisition and creating algorithms for their analysis.

A suitable solution is to use the services of an IT outsourcing company. You then gain access to high-class specialists with many years of experience. They have already implemented dozens of different types of projects, so they can perfectly adapt to the needs of each company.

If you’re curious about how RITS Professional Services support business partners in their IT projects, be sure to check out our  section: Case studies | RITS Professional Services.

Can you imagine managing your finances today without access to mobile banking apps or online payment systems?

The surge in popularity of the fintech industry is attributed to its ability to streamline financial transactions, enhance user experiences, and broaden financial inclusion. Now, individuals and organizations can access financial services without relying on traditional banks or physical infrastructure, thanks to the convenience of smartphones and the Internet. That’s the reason that the fintech industry is developing dynamically. In 2017, its revenue was approximately USD 90.5 billion, while in 2023 it will be over twice as much. It is forecast also that by 2028 the current value of USD 194 billion will increase to USD 492 billion (CAGR growth of 16.8%).

The competition in this market is very high. There are over 30,000 startups and large companies operating there. Therefore, organizations must do everything to remain competitive. One of the methods for this is full digital transformation, which is based on migration to the cloud.

Cost efficiency, security, scalability and flexibility – the undeniable advantages of the cloud computing

Cloud computing has equipped both financial firms and small fintech startups with the means to enhance their operations and transform their working processes. This technology enables them to leverage robust computing power and services without a significant upfront investment. Rather than purchasing expensive hardware and software outright, they can rent the necessary resources from the cloud, enabling them to compete with established industry players.

To handle sensitive information, fintech companies must adhere to stringent industry regulations. This is where cloud providers come to the rescue, consistently enhance their security protocols, incorporating techniques such as firewalls, intrusion detection, endpoint security, data encryption, audits, penetration testing, VPNs, and various other measures.

Cloud computing technology in the fintech industry brings additional advantages in terms of scalability and flexibility. Leveraging cloud resources allows the fintech sector to easily adjust its infrastructure to match demand, ensuring both stability and responsiveness. Whether managing millions of transactions per second or accommodating a sudden increase in user sign-ups, the cloud seamlessly adapts. Furthermore, cloud services offer secure access to data from any location with an internet connection. Fintech professionals and customers can access financial information and services based on their needs, regardless of their physical location.

Without a doubt, cloud computing offers the fintech industry and beyond numerous benefits that are hard to count on your fingers, and we have listed just a few.

But who will move your company’s data to the cloud?

The entire process of data migration to the cloud in the fintech industry must respect the highest quality standards. After all, this is sensitive data related to users’ finances. Therefore, the team of IT professionals must consist of high-class experts – emphasizes Magdalena Szarek, Head of Recruitment RITS Professional Services.

Let’s imagine the migration process in such a company. It requires a team with very broad competences. It must include:

• project manager, a cloud expert who manages the overall project,
• cloud architect, certified cloud engineer developing optimal migration solutions,
• cloud developer who carries out migration on an ongoing basis,
• cloud security manager, responsible for implementing, configuring and maintaining basic cloud security,
• compliance specialist, responsible for ensuring the organization’s compliance with GDPR requirements.

What if the company runs out of them? Our organization may lack, for example, cloud developers and compliance specialists who play a key role in the entire migration. It is also possible that there is a need to assemble an entire team because cloud technology is a wholly new issue for the company. The obvious solution seems to be the recruitment of new employees. The challenge lies in the fact that it incurs costs, and we’re not just referring to monetary expenses but, more importantly, the precious commodity of time, which holds significant value in the industry.

The solution we can offer you as RITS Professional Services is to outsource IT solutions and collaborate in various models, from staff augmentation, team leasing and managed services to tailor-made solutions.

If you’re curious about how we support our business partners in their IT projects, be sure to check out our  section: Case studies | RITS Professional Services.

What do cybercriminals care about?

Most often it’s personal data – PESEL number, identity document number, parents’ names, with which it is possible to, for example: extort credit or hack into online banking and clean out your account. In the case of recruitment offers, which have been hitting IT professionals en masse lately – they’re counting on clicks to make money. That’s for starters. The offer involves testing new tools or optimizing new products, and you getting paid in the form of Tether cryptocurrency (USDT). To complete the tasks, you need to create an account. And everything on the surface looks fine. Well, maybe the rates are much more favorable but, after all, you want to make quick and easy money… After completing the task, it turns out that you can earn even more. In order to unlock further opportunities to earn, it is necessary to contact the technical department. At this stage there is a request to transfer a small amount via your bank account with a commission left to yourself.

This will guarantee you even more money and… the status of a financial mule, i.e. a person who transfers money to another person (digitally or in cash), received from a third party, for which he receives a commission. The whole fraud process is step-by-step and quite complex, and the goal of cybercriminals is to launder money. Yes, you can inadvertently take part in money laundering, and this carries legal and financial consequences for you – you might end up on the blacklist of credit and banking information. This is quite a sophisticated scam, but it turns out to be effective. Criminals even go as far as to use the brands of well-known IT companies or recruitment agencies!

Never act under time pressure. Calmly and carefully read the message. Scammers take advantage of the weaknesses of social media – they send messages and impersonate familiar people to lull alertness, so check the sender. The name seems fine, the photo is quite similar, but you haven’t received any messages from this messenger until now? This is the first warning signal. Is there a link attached to the message, that you should click on if you want to learn more? Don’t do it.

If you are not sure that you are being addressed by a person with whom you have been in contact before, and someone who is impersonating a familiar name or company – check this by contacting the familiar person through previously used communication channels, call the said company to see if such an offer is indeed coming from them. Organizations have established channels of communication with, for example, potential candidates in the recruitment process.

You can always check RITS Professional Services recruitment offers HERE. And if you need to take care of your company’s cyber security – we are ready for that with our teams of IT professionals.

The cloud computing market is constantly growing. According to Gartner forecasts for 2023, the growth in end-user spending on cloud services will be 21.7%. This will amount to USD 597.3 billion, compared to USD 491 billion in 2022. This also means that the number of businesses that decide to migrate to the cloud is constantly increasing. What is it coming from?

Why is it worth performing cloud migration?

• Scalability
  The cloud allows you to handle larger workloads and more users. There is no need to expand the local infrastructure and no risk that it cannot cope with, e.g., periodically increasing traffic. In the local model, companies had to invest in their servers, their operation, configuration, and software. The cloud frees them from this.
• Lower operating expenses
  Companies that carry out cloud migration spend much less on current IT operations. They do not have to pay, among others, for maintenance tasks such as software updates.
• Efficiency
  With cloud computing, end users can be served more efficiently, without downtime and delays that occur with heavy traffic loads when using your own infrastructure. Lower latencies also result from access to resources in different locations, closer to the end user.
• Better user experience
  Company employees and customers can access data from anywhere. It is a modern and flexible solution that increases the convenience of users’ work (including mobile applications).

How cloud migration is carried out

A properly performed cloud migration comprises the following stages:

1. Preparation of strategy
Appropriate business analysis is the basis for preparing a strategy. What does the IT infrastructure of the company you want to migrate to the cloud look like? What team skills will be needed to deal with new technologies? With this knowledge, you can plan how you want to carry out cloud migration.

2. Choosing the right cloud service provider
We have hundreds of cloud service providers available. We know it’s overwhelming. Therefore, you need to narrow your search to those companies that are compatible with the technology stack you use and have a proven performance record.

The basic issue is crisis management procedures – how data is recovered in the event of a failure. The convenience of using SaaS software is also important. To check this, you can use trial periods offered by many companies.

3. Taking care of safety
Data stored in the cloud must be safe. Think about this when performing cloud migration. Analyzing your own IT resources may lead to finding gaps in the current system, which will allow you to learn what to pay attention to after migration.

Many vendors offer security controls and are worth choosing for this reason. This means protection against cyber threats (e.g. leading to data leaks) often at a higher level than what you could provide in your infrastructure.

Digital transformation = cloud
The benefits of migrating to the cloud undoubtedly exceed any difficulties in implementing it. Without it, digital transformation is very difficult. We have to rely on our own IT infrastructure, which can always have problems with performance, scalability and security. The cloud offers enormous opportunities in these matters.

How can RITS Professional Services help with your digital transformation challenges? Read the stories of our client partnerships: Case studies | RITS Professional Services

– We have been working with US companies for several years. More organizations are joining our existing clients, and the potential of the US market for the services we offer is growing every year. Our knowledge and experience in understanding the technological needs of U.S. companies is already solidly in place, and this puts us in an excellent position to meet the expectations of new clients. We have just registered RITS US Corp. and I claim that with our services we carry a remedy for companies that have needs in the area of technology – says Łukasz Kośnik, CEO of RITS US Corp. 

The goals of digital transformation have long been clear – businesses build competitive advantage, improve customer experience and reduce costs through continuous large-scale technology deployment. The choice of technologies with such intense development, as well as finding competent and agile teams to implement them, are more difficult issues. 

– Developing software, mobile applications or technology platforms, data migrations, supporting our clients’ IT teams with skills in project management or programming itself, these are the tasks and roles to which we direct our next IT professionals every day. Behind us, counted in the hundreds, we have completed and executed a wide variety of IT projects for global and local brands. What are their results? Our business partners increase their operational efficiency, better serve their customers, have the ability to make data-driven decisions, and their competitiveness in the market increases – adds Paweł Olejniczak, Board Member, VP Sales RITS Professional Services. 

Providing the expertise, technology, scalability and flexibility needed to drive successful transformation initiatives, RITS Professional Services has been an excellent partner to companies undergoing digital transformation for years. RITS US Corp. will strengthen this position in yet another foreign market. 

– Working with clients in a wide range of industries – financial, banking, manufacturing, medical, media, ecommerce and many, many more – has taught us to very quickly identify, review and respond to their technological needs and construct teams perfectly matched in terms of experience, skills or assumed costs. Constant access to a huge IT talent base and digital proficiency is the key to the survival and growth of businesses. We have it, and we are eager to use it to open the door to the path of digital transformation for more partners – emphasizes Michał Jaremek, Board Member, Director of the Professional Services Department RITS Professional Services.

– According to Gartner’s current forecast, global IT spending will grow by 5.5 percent in 2023, and this is mainly due to increased demand from businesses to develop IT software and services. Companies around the world are looking for ways to increase productivity and automation. The United States, meanwhile, is considered home to the world’s most innovative companies, which are creating the vision and increasing the pace of digital transformation for the rest of the globe. I’m pleased that this home includes RITS US Corp. – adds Damiene J Humphrey, who has assumed the position of VP of Business Development United States RITS US Corp.

1. Democratized Generative AI
Generative AI (GenAI) is becoming democratized by the confluence of massively pretrained models, cloud computing and open source, making these models accessible to workers worldwide. By 2026, Gartner predicts that over 80% of enterprises will have used GenAI APIs and models and/or deployed GenAI-enabled applications in production environments, up from less than 5% early 2023.

GenAI applications can make vast sources of information — internal and external — accessible and available to business users. This means the rapid adoption of GenAI will significantly democratize knowledge and skills in the enterprise. Large language models enable enterprises to connect their workers with knowledge in a conversational style with rich semantic understanding.

2. AI Trust, Risk and Security Management
The democratization of access to AI has made the need for AI Trust, Risk and Security Management (TRiSM) even more urgent and clear. Without guardrails, AI models can rapidly generate compounding negative effects that spin out of control, overshadowing any positive performance and societal gains that AI enables. AI TRiSM provides tooling for ModelOps, proactive data protection, AI-specific security, model monitoring (including monitoring for data drift, model drift, and/or unintended outcomes) and risk controls for inputs and outputs to third-party models and applications.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, enterprises that apply AI TRiSM controls will increase the accuracy of their decision making by eliminating up to 80% of faulty and illegitimate information.

3. AI-Augmented Development
AI-augmented development is the use of AI technologies, such as GenAI and machine learning, to aid software engineers in designing, coding and testing applications. AI-assisted software engineering improves developer productivity and enables development teams to address the increasing demand for software to run the business. These AI-infused development tools allow software engineers to spend less time writing code, so they can spend more time on more strategic activities such as the design and composition of compelling business applications.

4. Intelligent Applications
Intelligent applications include intelligence — which Gartner defines as learned adaptation to respond appropriately and autonomously — as a capability. This intelligence can be utilized in many use cases to better augment or automate work. As a foundational capability, intelligence in applications comprises various AI-based services, such as machine learning, vector stores and connected data. Consequently, intelligent applications deliver experiences that dynamically adapt to the user.

A clear need and demand for intelligent applications exists. Twenty-six percent of CEOs in the 2023 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey cited the talent shortage as the most damaging risk for their organization. Attracting and retaining talent is CEOs’ top workforce priority, while AI was named the technology that will most significantly impact their industries over the next three years.

5. Augmented-Connected Workforce
The augmented-connected workforce (ACWF) is a strategy for optimizing the value derived from human workers. The need to accelerate and scale talent is driving the ACWF trend. The ACWF uses intelligent applications and workforce analytics to provide everyday context and guidance to support the workforce’s experience, well-being, and ability to develop its own skills. At the same time, the ACWF drives business results and positive impact for key stakeholders.
Through 2027, 25% of CIOs will use augmented-connected workforce initiatives to reduce time to competency by 50% for key roles.

6. Continuous Threat Exposure Management
Continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) is a pragmatic and systemic approach that allows organizations to evaluate the accessibility, exposure and exploitability of an enterprise’s digital and physical assets continually and consistently. Aligning CTEM assessment and remediation scopes with threat vectors or business projects, rather than an infrastructure component, surfaces not only the vulnerabilities, but also unpatchable threats.

By 2026, Gartner predicts that organizations prioritizing their security investments based on a CTEM program will realize a two-thirds reduction in breaches.

7. Machine Customers
Machine customers (also called 'custobots’) are nonhuman economic actors that can autonomously negotiate and purchase goods and services in exchange for payment. By 2028, 15 billion connected products will exist with the potential to behave as customers, with billions more to follow in the coming years. This growth trend will be the source of trillions of dollars in revenues by 2030 and eventually become more significant than the arrival of digital commerce. Strategic considerations should include opportunities to either facilitate these algorithms and devices, or even create new custobots.

8. Sustainable Technology
Sustainable technology is a framework of digital solutions used to enable environmental, social and governance (ESG) outcomes that support long-term ecological balance and human rights. The use of technologies such as AI, cryptocurrency, the Internet of Things and cloud computing is driving concern about the related energy consumption and environmental impacts. This makes it more critical to ensure that the use of IT becomes more efficient, circular and sustainable. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2027, 25% of CIOs will see their personal compensation linked to their sustainable technology impact.

9. Platform Engineering
Platform engineering is the discipline of building and operating self-service internal development platforms. Each platform is a layer, created and maintained by a dedicated product team, designed to support the needs of its users by interfacing with tools and processes. The goal of platform engineering is to optimize productivity, the user experience and accelerate delivery of business value.

10. Industry Cloud Platforms
By 2027, Gartner predicts more than 70% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms (ICPs) to accelerate their business initiatives, up from less than 15% in 2023. ICPs address industry-relevant business outcomes by combining underlying SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services into a whole product offering with composable capabilities. These typically include an industry data fabric, a library of packaged business capabilities, composition tools and other platform innovations. ICPs are tailored cloud proposals specific to an industry and can further be tailored to an organization’s needs.

For more information, visit: www.gartner.com

Get detailed guide to the 2024 Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends HERE.