We all can agree that the year 2020 was unprecedented and extraordinary. A year of pandemic, it resulted in a good percentage of the global workforce shifting to WFH mode. It did have the effect of people starting using online mechanisms to obtain goods and services as a way of avoiding COVID 19. Along with the concomitant surge in data generated, the way society perceives technology has drastically changed. From an enterprise perspective, tons of innovations have moved mainstream. Enterprise digital laggards realized the need to adopt AI, Automation and Cloud. Pandemic lessons learnt in 2020 give birth to new technology innovations and thus become societal trends in years to follow. The annual list of strategic trends published by Gartner throws light on these but positions humans at the center of these themes. Without more ado, the following is my thinking on the nine trends that will emerge in 2021 and hopefully dominate the future.
Category #1 People Centricity
- Internet of Behaviours (IoB): There has been a substantial uplift in the use of IoT technologies during the pandemic. One of the most important of these is influencing human behavior using data collected at various digital devices. For example, many appliances installed in the home may collect data from devices with which humans are interacting. A good example is discussed in Garner’s post. As mentioned in the post, data sources can be Commercial customer data; citizen data processed by public-sector and government agencies; social media; public domain deployments of facial recognition; and location tracking. I think, IoT has evolved over time and its use it in a pandemic is at the peak to influence the actions taken by humans. Digital wearables can be seen as initiators of IoB. But extensive use of the rest of the devices can be a focus. I see more solutions emerging this year that will be marketed towards IoB.
- Total Experience: As bandwidth access gets better and better, the ability to push more intelligence to the edge gets more pronounced thus resulting in more responsive experiences. Low latency thus plays a crucial role in responsive AI-based application components. Enterprise product development which involves more interaction with customers will definitely require and move towards the implementation of total experience solutions. Some examples include Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, gaming, etc
- Privacy-enhancing computation: Accessing and storing data back in colocated servers is a critical requirement for any digital business. This trend specifically focuses on key technologies that will need augmented privacy and security – at minimum encrypted data access and a secure environment in which to host data. In 2021, remote work will be an established way of conducting business. Such technologies will build on lessons learned from the 2020 pandemic from a cybersecurity perspective.
Category #2 Location Independence.
- Distributed Cloud: Businesses want to utilize a private cloud to store very critical data and the rest of digital operations should be taken at the public cloud. Taking into account the colocated business units across the globe and edge computing, public cloud services to be present near to branches or within edge servers is going to be an important trend. The public cloud has evolved to this stage where cloud services can be extended to servers closer to devices in different regions. Also, that helps in satisfying regional data related laws. Many startups have emerged for such use cases that facilitate such deployments. With 5G, this trend will be more exploited by businesses.
- Anywhere Operations: This trend is going to be much stronger as we move forward from the pandemic in 2020. We have already seen many operations and transactions in businesses and several organizations adopted digital technologies from their customers and users. E.g. you can use a banking app to perform all your banking activities without physically going to the bank. Accessing, delivering, and enabling business operations is possible with the adoption of the cloud. We will see more innovation in 2021 in areas such as Industry 4.0 and 5G radio etc.
- Cybersecurity Mesh: Security is key when several devices are involved in digital operations, no matter the industry vertical. There is an increasing number of devices that are interconnected with distributed architecture. Security policy enforcement from central to business participant devices is crucial to maintain data privacy. Any data breach can be costly for businesses. There are many startups that have emerged that focus on monitoring and consolidating interconnection between devices that shares data. But over time, there will be more solutions that can emerge. Technologies like Service Mesh will be evolved more after Kubernetes and containers.
Category #3 Resilient Delivery
- Intelligent Composable Business: Data is a crucial part of businesses. Due to digitization, enormous amounts of data has been generated, mainly by organizations that have customers or end-users with digital devices. The data is owned by the organization itself which has a large impact on business strategic decisions. The success of businesses will depend on these decisions made as quickly as possible. So, it is important to have agile access to that data as well as proper data governance strategy should be defined. I think this will be impactful to businesses how intelligently and automatically they respond to insights from available data. Such data-oriented strategies will be in focus for businesses in areas spanning from marketing to sales to new products.
- AI Engineering: It is already high time for businesses to involve AI-driven processes in selected business operations. Over time, the adaptability of AI has been eased by resolving challenges associated with maintainability, scalability, and governance of AI projects. Organizations will definitely start exploring AI engineering exercises in at least one of digital operations.
- Hyperautomation: Along with data, the speed at which new features and delivery of services are crucial for businesses to stay efficient in the digital arena. Data is democratized but most legacy digital processes that can be automated will be automated in 2021. The pandemic is driving digitization and automation at a record pace. Those organizations that are slow to adapt to automation will face growth harder to achieve as compared to forward-looking competitors. For technology-based companies, DevOps will be DevSecOps that will automate innovation applications that came into the market in the quickest time. In this way, xOps – CloudOps, ITOps, and AIOps, etc – will find firm footing in more organizations.