Gartner announced strategic technology trends for 2021. At the end of the every year, the analyst firms publish their technology trends for the coming year. Gartner ventures an outlook on developments that are important for the next five years beginning from 2021.
Strategic technology trends for 2021
Anyone who studies IT trends usually finds that those at the end of the year look different from those at the beginning. This is less a seasonal phenomenon than a question of half-life. Does a trend catch on? How long does it take for the market to anticipate the topic or for the topic to be recognized as a flash in the pan and swept off the table? The IT forecasts of recent years show that the lists of trends change significantly for twelve months and only a few topics become long-runners.
It is all the more astonishing that Gartner specialist David Cearley recently claimed in a Gartner video that the new Gartner technology trends will keep the industry busy for the next five years. So it’s worth watching when it comes to developments of which the full-word saying goes: “Companies cannot afford to ignore them.
Hyper-automation & distributed clouds
First, Gartner Trend 2021 warms up with the topics that are already known and have been on the Gartner list for some time. In addition to hyper-automation, i.e. the idea of automating everything that can be automated, this includes the topic of distributed clouds.
This is about the effects of providing cloud services at different physical locations. The operation, management, and development of the services are in the hands of the cloud provider, and the physical locations for data storage can be chosen according to the offering. The advantages: By bringing cloud services geographically closer to the user, the latency of data transfer is reduced and the performance of services increases.
The topic of distributed clouds can be securely supplemented by managed services, which enable more and more small and medium-sized companies to access services that were previously reserved for large companies with corresponding IT budgets.
And this already begins with data integration as a meta-application, which is indispensable for orchestrating multi-cloud solutions in the business environment. Whereas on-premises systems running on their servers were previously associated with high costs, managed service providers are lowering the barriers to entry. The market is therefore becoming larger. The flexibility for companies is increasing and the possible fields of application are multiplying.
Internet of behaviour
An exciting topic is what Gartner calls the Internet of Behaviour: this trend has a Big Brother feel to it. It is based on technologies such as face and voice recognition, tracking, and Big Data.
Sensor-controlled soap dispensers whose data can be used to determine whether employees wash their hands regularly. Internet of Behaviour means that the results of these analyses are evaluated and another system then prompts the employee(s) to change their behavior if necessary.
Cameras that monitor whether employees comply with the obligation to wear masks and then – for example, using an info screen – point out that they are wearing them correctly.
Speakers that warn employees of protocol violations. Not shown, but probably intended: the prior analysis of what is being discussed at the workplace.
In summary, Gartner says: This trend solves complex business challenges by “transforming the human experience”. What is meant is that systems analyze human behavior and then act to educate.
Privacy-enhancing computing & cybersecurity mesh
Of course, two current developments in the field of data protection, namely privacy-enhancing computing and cybersecurity mesh, are also in the spotlight as new technology trends.
Privacy-enhancing computing is about the optimization of different security aspects. These include the creation of a trustworthy environment in which confidential data can be processed or analyzed, then the decentralized processing and analysis of data, and finally the encryption of data and algorithms before processing or analysis.
With Cybersecurity Mesh a new cybersecurity concept is brought into focus. The idea here is to protect the security area around a person’s identity on the Internet, i.e. to establish a kind of mobile security zone that also functions outside of traditional security zones in the company and expands the previous concepts in the form of a fortified city accordingly.
With Cybersecurity Mesh a new cybersecurity concept is brought into focus. The idea here is to protect the security area around a person’s identity on the Internet, i.e. to establish a kind of mobile security zone that also functions outside of traditional security zones in the company and expands the previous concepts in the form of a fortified city accordingly.
Total experience
The Total Experience is about the idea of combining traditionally isolated disciplines such as multi-experience, customer experience, employee experience, and user experience to achieve a better overall experience.
The Gartner example describes how to optimize a customer visit that can be booked online via an app and when the customer approaches, provides information about the registration process and waiting times. It is about the networking and interaction of different systems to make processes easier, faster, and more transparent for customers, employees, and partners.
Under the impression of COVID-19, Gartner extends the trend hyper-automation by the trend Anywhere Operations. Gartner shows the development of business processes without physical interaction: This applies to contactless banking transactions on the Internet as well as contactless check-out in a physical store.
Intelligent composable business
The term Intelligent Composable Business then broadens the view to the entire corporate structure. The aim is to create as much transparency and flexibility as possible through a maximum of digitalization. Based on the available data, decisions can then be made at short notice using the appropriate evaluation tools, allowing agile adaptation to the respective situation.
In many areas of the company, another trend, AI Engineering, helps to optimize such decisions.
If you take a closer look at these nine trends, you will see that on the one hand, it is about security, and on the other hand, it is about better decision-making and optimized processes: on the one hand through artificial intelligence, and on the other hand through the networking of systems and the integration of data.
Technology trends to optimize data processes
Whether it’s hyper-automation, cloud computing, Internet of Behaviour, Total Experience, or Intelligent Composable Business, the aim is always to make information from one or more systems available in other systems to optimize processes. The aim is to get closer to the customer, become more transparent, react more flexibly, and thus build more resilient structures. As in recent years, the actual mega technology trends actually called system and data integration.
There is a growing need for companies to deal with existing data, analyze how it can be used, and examine the many options for combining it with other data to create added value. This means understanding existing structures, but also creating new ones – in other words, developing existing business digitally and at the same time creating new digital value-added models.
