If we take a step back in the 1990s, businesses then thought technology was nothing more just a hindrance; in the 2020 era, technology is redefining each and every sector. Technology has become a vital part of day-to-day life as now they are built based on needs and purpose. For example, Machine Learning is gaining grounds across industries as it helps to automate process and save time.
Technologies these days talk to each other and are stacked on each other to help build a streamlined ecosystem. Emerging technologies like blockchain, IoT and Artificial Intelligence which were all fictional things have come to life and in near future they seem to be ones who would be driving businesses. While we refrain ourselves from predicting how technology will be five years from now, we can definitely discuss about the 10 technologies we think are going to trend in 2019.
Tech Trend#1: Quantum computing
For those of you still unaware about what is Quantum Computing, let’s understand it with an example. In a library where people like you and me would read books one by one, quantum computer can read all the books available in the library at once.
Quantum computers can basically manage to do millions of computations instantaneously. When available commercially, quantum computing can transform many industries like healthcare, supply chain, retail and finance. As the technology is still an emerging one, businesses are working to improve their understanding and building potential use cases to adopt the technology.
Tech Trend #2: Blockchain
Blockchain is one amongst the distributed ledger technology which brought trust and reliability in a trustless business environment. The disruptive technology allows enterprises to make transactions and work with unknown parties without the need of a middleman.
Blockchain has seen massive adoption this year across businesses as well as governments and it is predicted that the technology will have a business value of $3.1T by 2030 (as predicted by Gartner). The disruptive technology reduces business costs, fastens money transactions, and enhances cash flow. Categorized into permissioned and permissionless, blockchain has found answers to age-old industry issues.
Tech Trend #3: Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence in recent years has advanced rapidly. Bots like Siri, Alexa and Cortana, have transformed customer interactions majorly. Enterprises like Google with Cloud Platform, Amazon with Web Services and Microsoft with Azure analyze mammoths of data to bring this digital transformation.
However, as these businesses continue to collect a massive amount of data, there will be soon a need to share this data. E.g. Google opened up AudioSet which consists of data from 632 audio event classes and 2,084,320 human-labeled sound clips uploaded on YouTube. Obviously, not all businesses are open to this idea, as Uber states that it only shares data when it gets something equally beneficial in return. In the year 2019, according to GDPR businesses needs to take permission before sharing customer data.
Nonetheless, Artificial Intelligence as technology is showing no signs of slowing down, and there are chances sub-trends of AI like Machine Learning will be critical for a company’s digital transformation.
Tech Trend #4: Data Science
Given the amount of data that is surging, it is becoming difficult to explore all the possibilities. This leads to businesses missing out on key insights which the data scientists are not able to analyze. Data science as well as machine learning is transforming the way business gain insights through analytics.
In the next two years it is predicted that more than 40% of data science tasks will be automated.
Automated analysis will better identity hidden pattern and will remove personal bias. However, there is still a risk of algorithms, and analytics being influenced. In times to come, data sciences along with augmented analytics and insights will be available across all industries including specialists, decision makers and operational workforce.
Tech Trend #5: Internet of Things
The internet of things IoT is enabling businesses to take informed and proactive decisions with the help of concrete data. A surge in the usage of mobile phones, laptops, along with enterprises going more techno-friendly leads to more data being present for the IoT industry to build a system self-reliant, self-monitoring programs
Business applications based on IoT are already present in many industries and the possible applications of how it can evolve businesses are only expanding. E.g. Manufacturing companies can monitor the performance of machinery with the help of digital twins.