Tech trends to watch in 2020

Technological trends change over time and outdated technologies are easily totally forgotten. For instance, at the beginning of the 21st century, many technologies we use today did not exist. In 2000, the iPhone, Twitter, Facebook, 5G and many more were not in existence. Companies that watch the trends and quickly adapt them are more positioned to innovate and successfully traverse the digital landscape. This becomes a source of competitive advantage over others.

This article explores some of the technological trends to watch in 2020 as the new decade unfolds.

Trends discussed here are those that were recurrent in predictions made by top global corporations.

• Automation/Artificial intelligence (AI)

In order to refocus staff on higher-value tasks, most organizations are now automating many of their processes. To make the best of automation investments, an overall automation strategy should be in mind. Splunk Predictions reports that companies that totally embrace new technologies that automate people’s jobs may be sabotaging their long-term success rather than enhancing it. Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise report shows a disturbing dichotomy in the view of employees towards automation. According to the survey, 79% of respondents say AI technologies empower people to make better decisions, 63% say their company wants to cut costs by automating as many jobs as possible. No doubt, the efficiency offered by automation is quite attractive, but companies that prioritize cost reduction above every other thing are limiting their potentials. AI can be deployed to carry out repetitive tasks and analytics while best minds are engaged to unleash creativity.

Going forward, greater attention would be paid to balancing tasks between people and technology especially automation.

• Mainstream Cloud/As-a-Service

As-a-service (XaaS) model allows vendors to provide a vast number of products, tools, and technologies over a network. This model started with software as a service (SaaS) but has now moved into hardware and other areas. We now have infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), database as a service (DbaaS) and many more. The implication is that enterprise buyers pay for consumption and not ownership thereby reducing cost. A unit of computing storage on the cloud can be 40% to 50% cheaper than a unit in the physical space. Together with reducing capital expenditure, the as-a-service model helps reduce risks, free up capital and increase flexibility. Gartner reports that “Software as a service (SaaS) remains the largest segment of the cloud market, with revenue expected to grow 17.8 percent to reach $85.1 billion in 2019.” Amazon with a 40% market share is the leader in the IaaS market followed by Google and IBM. The three account for 65% of the market share. With the decline in the usage of on-premises data centers, McKinsey predicts that they could account for about 50% of all IT infrastructure provisioning by 2020. Alibaba is hinted to be one potential competitor given its triple-digit year-over-year cloud-related revenue growth, driven largely by cloud adoption in China.

• Data

The prominence of technologies like AI, augmented reality, 5G networks and others increasingly places demands on organizations to utilize their data. These technologies will continue pushing companies to focus more on efficient management and the use of all their data. This will become a challenge for many companies. A 2019 dark data study reveals that 55% of an organization’s total data is dark. This means they do not know the data exists or they do not know how to find, use or analyze it. Another huge challenge would be data protection. According to Ross Winser, senior research director at Gartner, “The attraction of moving selected workloads closer to users for performance and compliance reasons is understandable. Yet we are rapidly heading toward scenarios where these same workloads run across many locations and cause data to be harder to protect. Cascade effects of data movement combined with data growth will hit infrastructure and operations (I&O) folks hard if they are not preparing now”

• Cyber Threats

Cybersecurity continues to rank as a top priority for organizations. McKinsey reports that attacks are growing in number and that 80% of technology executives agree that their organizations are struggling to mount a solid defense.

“Security professionals, from the tier 1 analyst to the chief information security officer (CISO), spend their days (and nights) watching for dragons and preparing for inevitable attacks. But the risks change all the time. We adopt new technologies that expand and change our attack surface. Hackers adopt new technologies and techniques to get past old defenses. Years of fine-tuning their attacks, growing their knowledge and succeeding without repercussion have only emboldened malicious actors to go bigger.” — Splunk

• Internet of things (IoT)/5G

According to the McKinsey 2017 Enterprise IoT Executive Survey, “96 percent of companies expect to increase their IoT spending over the next three years, with some planning to devote as much as a quarter of their IT expenditures to IoT-related capabilities.” The 5G technology would massively drive the internet of things (IoT) just like 4G did to mobile. In 2020, 5G will feature prominently in the industrial space, providing more efficient services, control of heavy machinery and medicine. The world’s first 5G remote operation has already happened in China — a surgeon used 5G technology to operate on a laboratory animal that is 30 miles away. Although remote surgery wouldn’t become a common practice in 2020, students are already practicing surgical operations on virtual models.

• Immersive Consumer UX

Consumerization has resulted in companies professing to pay increasing attention to user experience (UX) and designs. The design of products and services are now oriented to focus on the end-user as an individual consumer. Customer standards for experience delivered by IT infrastructure and operations are now higher than ever.

Enterprise software companies who are yet to tighten up their designs, producing dull user experiences will increasingly find it difficult to maintain user loyalty and will be more vulnerable to disruption. To succeed, companies have to be visionary and commit to making people’s entire experience better.

These trends are going to be shaping the industry in 2020 and beyond. It is only wise for industry players to keep eyes on developments. Organizations that disrupt industries are those that watch the trends, observe what others did and do their own things differently.