We are amid an amazing technology evolution that has happened over the years. This evolution has been dominated by rapid economic growth around the world, driven by globalization and incredible technology progress. Technology is not only impacting every aspect of human life and society, it has also become a key lever for business success; a foundational element in the prevailing theory that ‘the rules of business success have changed in the 21st Century’.
As 21st Century Enterprises grapple with disruptive forces & rapidly changing business environment, they are adopting next–generation technologies to drive innovation & solve their business problems. Priorities have changed from cost–saving and cost–efficiency to digital innovation & transformation.
Technology, more than ever, is taking precedence over human intervention in almost all areas of business. Organizations are striving hard, not just, to be at par, but rise beyond their competitors and are looking for the means to that end.
Let’s look at the top technology trends impacting enterprises in 2017 and beyond
EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES
These are extremely fast Innovations that are poised to create exponential impact on surroundings or the way things are currently done. These include various technology and process innovations that have significant impact. There is also a view point that Organizations should consider the ethics and morality of applying exponential technologies due to their potential wide ranging impact on human race.
AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY
AR and VR enables experiences that help users to interact with reality in an augmented or virtual manner. This can be through interactions, displays, gestures etc. This technology is penetrating various businesses and finding various use cases across industries. AR/VR saw increased adoption in 2016 and we expect this traction to continue and scale in 2017.
BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES
IET describes BlockChain as “A distributed ledger that provides a way for information to be recorded and shared by a community. In this community, each member maintains his or her own copy of the information and all members must validate any updates collectively.”
Widely touted to eliminate the concept of a middle man in financial transactions, organizations are taking a cautious approach towards adoption of blockchain. This distributed ledger system, which provides speedy settlement of transactions in a secure manner, is poised to disrupt the financial services industry. Which is why the past couple of months saw leading global banks ramp-up investments and collaborate with blockchain start-ups. We expect to see many mainstream adoptions in this space going forward.
INDUSTRIALIZED ANALYTICS
The aim here is to harness data or analyse the same at scale. Organizations find lack of resources, tools and processes to harness the power of analytics a challenge to this stream.
MACHINE INTELLIGENCE
Emergence of autonomous systems that analyze, decide and act is changing the AI space dramatically. Machines are getting more and more intelligent. Organizations are using machine learning technologies to enhance products or create entirely new product categories. The potential overall business benefits of these technologies are much broader than just cost savings. This technology is undergoing evolution and is poised to disrupt status quo big time.
LIQUID WORKFORCE
This is a workforce that is agile, dynamic and ready to adapt to changes and upgrade skills in quick time to enable new projects and activities within the organization. This concept is picking up and organizations are seeing its benefits.
PLATFORM ECONOMY
The platform economy is fundamentally changing the way people work, live, communicate, meet etc. These are businesses that are being fueled by online platforms being used for various user activities.
RE–IMAGING CORE SYSTEMS
This involves re–platforming or modernizing existing IT systems and solutions. This ensures that existing systems are transformed into agile, scalable and user experience based environments.
AUTONOMIC PLATFORMS
These are platforms that have self–managing capabilities and can adapt to changes in the environment. These are platforms that enable real–time intelligent IT and Operations through use of DevOps, analytics etc. based paradigms.
INTERNET OF THINGS
IoT connects physical objects to each other and to people and machines that want to interact with them. We are seeing enormous number of IoT devices being commissioned and sustained.
Maturity in IoT technologies has led to a continuous growth in IoT-adoption rates among business users. Organization have been experimenting with IoT for use cases and potential benefits. The coming months will see more deployments across edge devices, gateways and cloud.
RIGHT SPEED IT
Organizations are talking about Right Speed IT. That is, Speed of IT that balances various aspects ranging from business, technical feasibility, Risk, Compliance etc, while executing its core functions in most efficient and effective manner. It is about making multiple parts move together as fast as possible.
