Gartner’s analysts provided a look at the near future during their IT Symposium/Xpo recently held in Florida, presenting their top 10 strategic technology trends. The identified trends are seen to be emerging in the coming year, ranging from data transparency to distributed cloud computing, and even in the area of human augmentation. Gartner stressed that organizations should place greater focus on these technologies, prioritizing them to stay ahead of competitors.
Gartner’s Vice President and Fellow, David Cearley, touched on the importance of people in these trends. “Putting people at the center of your technology strategy highlights one of the most important aspects of technology — how it impacts customers, employees, business partners, society or other key constituencies. Arguably all actions of the organization can be attributed to how it impacts these individuals and groups either directly or indirectly.”
Gartner describes ‘strategic technology trends’ as having disruptive potential and poised for broad use with a potential broad impact, or as a trend that is having rapid growth and high volatility that is expected to hit a tipping point within the next five years.
Gartner’s top 10 Trends for 2020 include:
- Hyper-automation, combining multiple machine learning softwares and automation tools to produce work.
- Multi-experience, covering many topics like virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and conversational platforms that alter how people interact and perceive digital worlds.
- Expertise Democratization, providing consumers access to technical or business domain expertise through simplified experiences without training.
- Human Augmentation, using technology for physical and cognitive improvements as integral parts of the human experience.
- Traceability and Transparency, giving consumers greater understandings of where their personal information is going and what it’s being used for.
- Empowered Edge Computing, a kind of computing topology where content collection, information processing, and delivery are closer to their sources to reduce latency and traffic.
- Distributed Cloud, distributing public cloud services to different locations, while the original provider continues operating and updating the services.
- Autonomous Things, physical devices using AI to automate functions that humans used to perform.
- Practical Blockchain, building trust and transparency while enabling value exchanges across business ecosystems.
- AI Security, the reality that artificial intelligence and machine learning provide new avenues for cyber-attacks, and the need for security teams to protect them.
Smart spaces centered on the people within them served as Gartner’s primary method of measuring the impact of emerging technology trends. A smart space is a place that brings people and technology-enabled systems together to create a more open and connected ecosystems.
