Technology Trends Driving Digital Transformation in 2019
Ringing in a new year is always exciting. Setting goals and making resolutions, the anticipation of change. The year ahead for technology is very much the same. But just exactly where are we headed in the months to come? Let’s examine a few trends from the industry movers and shakers.
Automation
Global research and advisory firm, Gartner thinks anything autonomous will be in the spotlight this year. Autonomous vehicles are an obvious trend, with investments in such groups being very strong for years now. However, it doesn’t end there. The race to autonomy of any scale is heating up with significant funding behind it all. By now we’ve all seen a car that can parallel park itself, or stay within a travel lane at 60 MPH, but that’s just the beginning.
From robots to drones (Amazon Prime Air was issued a patent in March of 2018 for its delivery drones), the beginning of the autonomous age will be supported by intense programming models allowing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide leading edge functionality that will focus on interaction with people and their surroundings.
Augmented Analytics
Gartner is also white hot on Augmented Analytics. Quite certainly not as clear cut as autonomous vehicles, augmented analytics targets a specific part of artificial intelligence utilizing ML (machine learning – think IBM Watson) to transform how analytics content is produced, utilized and shared. The only thing holding this back are the number of applications, or lack thereof, that can empower businesses to find correlation in data that can be key differentiators in operating efficiencies that can most often lead to cost savings.
Last year, a U.S. Health Insurance Company examined the cost of care by utilizing Salesforce’s Einstein Discovery – an AI infused analytics tool. Einstein Discovery was used to take large amounts of the insurance company’s data and distribute it through algorithms to explore all the possible combinations of factors driving cost. They were shocked by the results. The insurance company’s CFO had always tracked metrics on the degree of sickness or chronicity, long thought to be the leading cause of rising care costs. Surprisingly, after Einstein Discovery chewed through the data, it was found that children under 12 years of age were the biggest cost drivers due to contract specifications that more expensive ambulance costs related to trips to the hospital. The takeaway here is that vast amounts of data can make it virtually impossible to see possible correlations that can benefit business. That is of course without the help of augmented analytics.
Blockchain
Back in focus once again is Blockchain. Simply put, blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions, but virtually anything of value. Gartner estimates blockchain will be a 3.1 trillion business by 2030. That’s not a typo, 3.1 TRILLION!
From platform growth to standardization and utilization among industries, blockchain has been an obvious, consistent, legitimate technology trend. The transformation of the industries using blockchain will come through transparency and more efficient business ecosystems leading to reduced costs, decreasing transaction settlement times as well as improvement in cash flow. The downside to blockchain is apparent; it’s poorly understood among enterprise professionals, still in its infancy, and unproven in mission critical business operations.
Edge Computing
We can finish up our discussion of 2019 technology trends with edge computing. No less important but poorly understood, edge-based infrastructure extends beyond “centralized” cloud computing platforms to focus on challenges related to bandwidth, as well as connectivity and latency issues. Edge computing isn’t new. In fact, Gartner has been big on edge computing for several years.
As we’ve seen so far, cutting-edge tools like AI applied to operations or devices have been at the forefront of trendy technologies. But, to enable a high-degree of accuracy and delivery to end users, a higher capacity network, computational power and decreased latency will all be required. Responses in “real-time” by intelligent technologies is the only way to function here. Otherwise, what’s the point? The immediacy of action these devices and operations will demand is impossible with current cloud and centralized infrastructures.
Current software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications may only store data in the application, thus nullifying the need for such a rapid response. Enabling cognitive technologies for autonomous anything will be time and latency sensitive. These technologies will be truly mainstream by bringing edge computing front and center into our current communication network.
The year ahead is exciting indeed and I can only ponder what digital transformation trends 2020 may bring.