No one really loves to make New Year's resolutions. You have to decide on something that’s a challenge but achievable. That reluctance holds true for the SDxCentral editorial team, so we didn’t make any resolutions for ourselves. We have no problem making resolutions for you, tech vendors, and enterprise IT executives and professionals.

Below are five things we believe the tech world should resolve to do in the coming year.

2024 AI resolution, Dan Muse, editor in chief

While we’re all caught up in artificial intelligence (AI), the technology industry should resolve to act more responsibly on several levels. Bellwether companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, and others need to take responsibility for governing AI. We can’t rely on governments to quickly and intelligently regulate it. We can't expect governments around the world to know how to create new laws or apply existing ones for a technology evolving as fast as AI. To end the wild west nature of AI, industry leaders need to self-regulate.

Technology vendors need to avoid using AI as a marketing buzzword, dropping it into every press release and piece of product marketing collateral. Instead, they should resolve to articulate clear value propositions around their AI offerings.

Adding to the perfect storm of AI confusion, enterprise executives face pressure from boards and investors to use AI as a competitive advantage. Executives need to resolve not to force-fit generative AI into the processes because it's a shiny object and take a more strategic approach.

2024 telecom resolution, Dan Meyer, executive editor

The telecommunications ecosystem needs to resolve to end the ongoing disconnect in the line of communication between the cloud-focused software world and the hardware-focused telecommunications space before real work begins on 6G.

Those two sides have so far done a great job of bringing their areas of expertise to the table in bolstering and expanding the telecommunications space, but continue to struggle in completely bridging that gap. This has resulted in a frustrating lack of real progress toward operational and service goals that underpin nearly all future-looking prospects of what the telecommunications space can be.

With the 5G ecosystem basically locked into a frustratingly ineffectual architecture and business model, these two sides need to realize their own strengths and weaknesses and ask for help from the other side over the next 12 months unless they want the same to happen with 6G.

2024 cybersecurity resolution, Nancy Liu, editor

As we enter 2024, the cybersecurity sector should make three New Year’s resolutions for a safer and more secure digital world. First, industry leaders should show a renewed emphasis on the core and fundamental security practices, especially in the areas of identity and access management and incident response and recovery.

Second, more organizations should raise awareness and emphasize cybersecurity training around emerging threats, including encryptionless extortion and AI-powered attacks like phishing attempts and deepfakes.

Lastly, cybersecurity vendors should not only integrate generative AI more deeply into their platforms and solutions but also innovate beyond basic applications such as chatbots.

2024 cloud resolution, Emma Chervek, reporter

The major public cloud vendors should resolve to create a more collaborative ecosystem in 2024. Rather than isolating themselves from the reality that enterprise customers are dealing with multicloud computing environments spanning private, public, and edge infrastructure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and Google Cloud should embrace this substantial customer challenge.

For example, hyperscalers could lessen their use of anticompetitive practices like expensive egress fees and improve interoperability between cloud environments. Individual niches would continue to differentiate cloud providers, and customers might feel less disenfranchised with the industry, ultimately leading to continued market growth and healthy competition.

2024 career resolution, Nicole Cunningham, associate editor

Do you struggle with annual reviews? Now is a great time to make tracking your accomplishments a 2024 resolution. Here are three simple tricks to keep track of both the good and the bad throughout the year so you can give an honest and balanced self-evaluation.

1. Create a folder in your email program (e.g., “Kudos”) and copy any feedback emails to it as they come in throughout the year.
2. Create a doc and list all 12 months of the year, with two or three blank bullets below each month.
3. Set a calendar reminder at the beginning of every month to spend 15 minutes reviewing your Kudos email folder from the previous month. Add two or three bullets highlighting the accomplishments you achieved that month (and any struggles you had, be honest). Quote directly from the feedback emails if you can; that’s super helpful. Include whatever details you need to jog your memory later.

That’s it. Just 15 minutes a month, and when it’s time to write your self-evaluation, you can open your doc and have the whole year there for you to reference. Pro tip: You can also use this doc to update your accomplishments section of your resume.