Top 10 Technology Trends For 2018

Living apart from technological progress and its trends is an important step back in any company. “Technology will be integrated into every digital business of the future.” This is stated in the latest Gartner report with the 10 main trends that will have the most impact in 2018 and which, according to the consultant, will set the course for the next 10 years.

What unites them is that they are all part of what Gartner has called the digital and intelligent mesh (‘intelligent digital mesh’), a gear of interconnected devices, people and services on which the business models of the future will be supported. These models will be based mostly on artificial intelligence techniques, they will be digital and they will operate in a network.

Starting from these three axes, Gartner has identified 10 specific trends such as autonomous robotics, the growing applications of the internet of things and the development of services based on the blockchain.

1. Artificial Intelligence As ‘Foundation’ :

The artificial intelligence (AI) is taking a more decisive role in day to day business and, according to Gartner, by 2025 will become the “base” tool to redefine the customer experience and reinvent a wide variety of models of business.

However, Gartner makes an important distinction between two types of AI: the general, understood as an entity capable of performing any task (which recommends leaving for “science fiction writers”); and the ” narrow AI ” or reduced, which is able to learn to perform very specific tasks, and do them very well. As for example, understand human language or drive in a controlled environment.

The latter is the one that, fed by highly specialized machine learning algorithms, promises greater results for companies and for which Gartner recommends betting in the coming years.

2. Smart Applications And Analysis:

The study also focuses on the fact that practically all applications and services will have some form of AI. This will lead to intelligent applications that will act as intelligent and non-intrusive intermediaries in the relationship between people and systems. They will also have the ability to transform the way they work in the future, as in the case of virtual assistants for customer service.

The report exposes the need to “explore smart applications as a way to increase human activity and not simply as a way to replace employees”. In addition, it puts the focus on how “enhanced analytics” through AI constitute an area of special growth and can represent a revolution in the way of collecting data and exchanging ideas in a wide variety of businesses. Using them to add “business value” will be the big challenge for companies, according to David Cearley, vice president of Gartner.

3. Smart Objects That Talk To Each Other:

Autonomous vehicles, robots or unmanned aircraft. Everything will be connected and with the arrival of 5G networks will reach the summit of the internet of things. This tendency to connect devices so that they communicate with each other will suppose a way of interacting in a more natural way with the environment, changing the paradigm of the relationship between human being and machine.

Something essential for the development of sustainable businesses.

The key will also be that as this trend proliferates, a collaborative network of smart goals will be created in which multiple devices (cars, traffic lights, roads, smartphones) will work together, with or without human intervention.

4. A ‘Digital Twin’ To Create Value:

The ‘digital twins’ are the virtual representations of any entity or system in the real world. They are like the digital ‘reflex’ of the objects connected to the internet of things, which contain information about their status in the real world. These digital avatars can respond to changes in the environment, improve processes and add value. And given the volume of connected objects that will be in the world by 2020 (about 20,000 million according to Gartner), proper management can involve saving billions of dollars by improving operational efficiency and system maintenance.

The digital twins will allow data analysis and monitoring of all types of systems to avoid problems, prevent downtime, develop new opportunities and even plan the future through simulations.

“Over time, the digital representations of our world will be connected to an existing figure in the real world that will offer AI-based capabilities to allow simulations, operations, and advanced process analysis,” says the expert.

5. The Cloud Is Not Alone: Arrives The ‘Edge Computing’:

The ‘ edge computing ‘ is a computer model in which the processing and gathering of information take place close to the source of the data. That is, instead of processing in the cloud, each device connected to the network plays its own role in the processing of information. An approach that seeks to reduce latency (the time required for sending data) and network saturation.

The trend towards the adoption of ‘edge computing’ comes from the increased use of mobile devices, especially the consumption of video, virtual and augmented reality, as well as the massive deployment of sensors as part of the IoT. Analysts predict a great demand in 2018, what is not yet clear is how the infrastructure should be to support it.

6. The ‘Chatbots’ Reach The Turning Point:

They will be the most important change in the relationship between human beings and machines. Is it possible to interact with a machine as it is done with another person? Here come the voice assistants like Siri or Cortana with the goal for 2018 that they are the ones who ‘speak’ to the users. That is, they are able to understand and anticipate.

“The conversation platforms have reached a turning point in terms of understanding the user’s basic language and intention, but there is still work to be done,” Cearley suggests. A trend that, according to Gartner, will be extended to other uses, mainly professionals, to facilitate the start of operations and transactions without the need to previously obtain the information.

7. Mixed And Enveloping Experiences:

Discovering in which areas of real life you can use and apply virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) is the challenge for companies for next year. At the moment, it is a fragmented market that is still taking off. But according to Gartner, the arrival of a ‘mixed reality’ combined with conversation platforms can help create a new generation of “enveloping and invisible” experiences, where the user interacts with both digital and real objects while maintaining their presence in the physical world.

This jump will be essential to stop seeing these tools as something intended only for leisure. According to Gartner, during the next five years, these new spaces of mixed reality will make it possible to adapt this technology to specific work environments such as training. In addition, the launch of the various technological giants (such as Apple and Google) of their own VR and AR platforms will make 2018 a “battlefield” for the developments of this technology based on the ‘smartphone’.

8. ‘Blockchain’ Integrated Into Business:

‘ Blockchain ‘ is a decentralized registration technology (‘distributed ledger technology’ or DLT) that was originally created for transactions with cryptocurrencies, but whose impact promises today to change industries such as transport, logistics, food or the financial sector.

In a period of between two and three years, according to Gartner, ‘blockchain’ will reach the necessary maturity to develop applications and real solutions although it also warns of the need to create a regulatory framework that covers the exploration of this new technology. The consultant highlights some of the challenges faced by companies that invest in it: identify how to integrate it with existing infrastructures and monitor the evolution and maturation of platforms.

9. Decisions Based On ‘Events’:

The convergence of the internet of things with advanced analytics in digital ecosystems has led to the appearance of a new concept: the ‘event thinking’. This trend refers to the automatic decision making within a business triggered by a series of pre-established events. That is, given a situation “x” in a given context, systems must be able to activate “and”.

According to Gartner, by 2020 80% of businesses and digital solutions will have to support this type of mechanisms to make decisions in real time based on the data collected about their environment.

10. Real-Time Risk Management:

As digital ecosystems become more complex and sophisticated, so do security risks. Gartner argues that the solution to address the context of growing concern is to opt for a model called LETTER (Continuous adaptive risk and trust assessment), which allows decision-making in real time to adapt to changes in risk levels and offer answers immediate, flexible and customized. According to the consultant, this approach implies adopting a proactive vision of security, centered on the people and the role of the developers.