Tech Trends to Watch Out in 2018

Datafication of lives

From emotions and sentiment to interactions and relationships and finally our culture as a whole, data is transforming us in unprecedented ways.

The many facets of ‘data’ can be classified into the A.I, Digital and finally the inter-connected categories.

Intelligent: AI is getting embedded into every technology as designers are tasked with creating human-like machines.

Digital: The growth of digitally defined environments providing digitally-immersive experiences for individuals and groups.

Interface: An ecosystem comprising of people, companies, devices to deliver digital outcomes.

The Internet of Things (IoT)

Everyday devices are becoming more ‘smarter’. Being digitally enabled, these devices connect and exchange data resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit with limited human intervention.

Given these utility everything manufactured is being made ‘smarter’ these days.

For example, cars are becoming increasingly connected via internet for traffic accessibility and management, or smart watches and smartphones.

Intelligent things use AI and Machine Learning to interact in a more intelligent way with people and surroundings. Some intelligent things wouldn’t exist without AI, but others are existing things that AI makes intelligent.

These things operate semi-autonomously even autonomously in an unsupervised environment for a set amount of time to complete a particular task. As the technology develops, AI and machine learning will increasingly appear in a variety of objects ranging from smart healthcare equipment to autonomous harvesting robots for farms.

As intelligent things sky-rocket, we see a shift from individual intelligent things to a collective of collaborative intelligent things. In this model, multiple devices will work together, either independently or with human input.

Artificial Intelligence gets smarter

Thanks to innovations in AI, computers are now able to learn the same way as humans do. For example, computers undertake tasks such as facial recognition, analyzing social media messages, answering voice commands, affective computing etc.

For all of these technology trends, artificial intelligence (AI) will finally decide the victors in the big race. The ability to use AI to enhance decision making, reinvent business models and ecosystems, and remake the customer experience will drive the market.

By 2018, companies will become more information-driven, application and services will incorporate AI at some level or the other.

A big bastion of AI deployment is IoT which includes Employee information systems and processes, clinical health advisement systems and IT service management. Besides these, Augmented analytics is a rapidly growing area that uses machine learning for automating data preparation, insight discovery and insight sharing for a broad range of business users, operational workers and citizen data scientists.

Intelligent apps thereby create a new platform for people and systems and have the potential to transform the nature of work and the structure of the workplace. For example, virtual customer assistants and enterprise advisors and assistants like Alexa or Siri.

Augmented Reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality are changing the way that people perceive and interact with the digital world. In 2018, the focus will be on mixed reality, which is emerging as the immersive experience of choice, where the user interacts with digital and real-world objects while maintaining a presence in the physical world.

Combined with conversational platforms, a fundamental shift in the user experience to an invisible and immersive experience is emerging. Application vendors, system software and development platform vendors are all competing to deliver this model.

BLOCKCHAIN

The blockchain is making waves in many industries be it payments, contracts, cloud storage, real estate and brokerage.

Want to know the reasons?

Blockchain technology is proving itself to be the ultimate solution to the problem of storing, authenticating and protecting data.

A blockchain is a decentralized, extremely secure database and a distributed peer-to-peer ledger of records.

While not totally ‘hack-proof’, it’s a huge step forward compared to our current data security technology as, unlike a centralized database, there’s no one single point of failure.

The records in a blockchain are called ‘blocks’ and every block is connected to the previous block. The whole chain is self-managed, which means there’s no one person or organization in charge of the entire chain. For example, the virtual currency Bitcoin functions on this technology.

A practical approach to blockchain demands a clear understanding of the business opportunity, the capabilities and limitations of the blockchain, a Trust architecture and the necessary implementation skills. Before embarking on a distributed-ledger project, ensure your team has the cryptographic skills to understand what is and isn’t possible.

Identify the integration points with existing infrastructures, and monitor the platform evolution and maturation.

Re-platforming the approach.

A platform is essentially a network (digital or physical) that creates value for participants by facilitating connections and exchanges between people for services, products or information.

The platform is rarely the actual service provider; instead, it acts as a facilitator for the crowd, making interactions possible, easy, and safe for participants.

In 2018, we’ll see an aggressive move to common IT platforms so companies can respond to market changes faster, be more productive and make better-informed decisions.

These common platforms are rich in analytics, follow the information flow of the business and are simple enough that users can constantly change the business without writing (much) code.

Moreover, they bring an operational and evergreen scale to traditionally bespoke enterprise IT.

Common platforms enable companies to shift their customization efforts from infrastructure to applications and the user experience, which is where the action is.

Moving to common platforms frees up talent and working capital for different services in context to customers, partners and employees for new and better outcomes and experiences.

Platforms have given rise to businesses like Airbnb, Uber and Amazon, and are also the foundation of what social media giants- Facebook and Twitter do.

Cybersecurity 

From “WannaCry” to the massive Equifax breach, the lack of cybersecurity has shaped much of 2017. This has necessitated a move towards developing and providing customers with robust security measures and infrastructure.

In 2018, enterprises will focus on getting their resilience as high as possible to withstand cyber attacks and threats.

Most of the companies face cyber attacks, vendor failures, human error, mergers and acquisitions — enterprises must work to become ever-more resilient by applying continuous improvement to productivity, differentiation and the resiliency of the business itself.

Digital business should create a complex, evolving security environment. Continuous Adaptive Risk and Trust Assessment (CARTA) allows for real-time, risk and trust-based decision making with adaptive responses to security-enabled digital business.

Traditional security techniques using ownership and control rather than trust will not work in the digital world.

Infrastructure and perimeter protection won’t ensure accurate detection and can’t protect against behind-the-perimeter insider attacks. This requires embracing people-centric security and empowering developers to take responsibility for security measures.

This involves integrating security into your DevOps efforts to deliver a continuous “DevSecOps” process and exploring deception technologies to get hold of the hackers.