The Covid-19 pandemic threw just about every prediction for 2020 out the window. And while we may not have seen it coming, this pandemic brought about several changes that will likely have a permanent impact on the way we work and operate in IT.

Outlined below is a checklist of key trends that I envision for the 2021 tech landscape (assuming the meteors and “murder hornets” aren’t entering stage left anytime soon).

2021 will be the year of innovation. Great challenges like Covid-19, remote work increases, demanding healthcare needs and societal changes could spawn great IT innovation. There is a need for a disproportionate amount of innovation today, and the innovations of the last few years, such as 3D printing, CRISPR, prototyping (Arduino/Raspberry Pi), holographic 3D displays, cloud and more have set us up for this next innovation wave.

Budgets will shift from travel to IT technology spend. Due to Covid-19, there is significantly less business travel for both vendors and end-user customers; in fact, some companies are probably spending closer to zero money on business travel and events. This trend will likely continue even after there is a vaccine because everyone is realizing that doing business via the internet and platforms like Zoom is fine. Travel budgets can now be redeployed to “shore up” projects that need a little extra funding — such as cybersecurity and enabling high availability at the edge.

Even more data breaches will dominate headlines. Significant and high-profile GDPR fines could continue to be levied against known companies, which will further emphasize the need for privacy and security across the tech ecosphere. Recent high-profile data breaches have impacted large organizations like British Airways, LifeLabs and Marriott International.

Individual security products will morph into comprehensive solutions. We could start to see core security technologies become embedded in order to boost adoption by increasing simplicity and affordability. During this process, security products could evolve more into all-in-one security solutions that reduce implementation errors and risks.

Confidential computing and TEE adoption will begin. A modest increase in confidential computing and trusted execution environment (TEE) adoption could emerge as part of vendors’ product hardening strategies. End users will greatly benefit but without largely understanding how or why just yet. While companies like Intel have recently made some of these solutions more accessible, it’s up to vendors to incorporate these advances into their architectures.

The edge could become a household concept. The concept of the edge will become much more widespread among the general population, much like everyone knows the term “cloud” now. This increased awareness will further establish the edge as the emerging frontier in technology.

The ruggedized edge will begin to emerge. Companies could start piecing together HCI solutions using disparate ruggedized technologies such as ruggedized routers and SSDs. The use case for this is harsh, demanding environments that general-purpose computing architectures weren’t designed for.

While some of the long-term implications of Covid-19 likely will not be known by next year, I’m confident that security strategies and edge adoption will continue their growth trajectories for the foreseeable future.