Sunday 12 December 2021

Gartner’s strategic technology trends for 2022

Every year, Gartner predicts what will be the strategic technology trends for the year ahead and beyond. I thought that it would be interesting to see what they are predicting and whether those trends will be seem by mainframe users.

They say that automation is a critical ingredient for digital transformation. Hyperautomation provides a faster path to identifying, vetting, and automating processes across the enterprise. Organizations should focus on improving work quality, hastening the pace of business processes, and fostering nimbleness in decision making. We’ve had the introduction of the idea of a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), who will spend half their time on developing new features, scaling, and automation. The other half of their time will be spent on operator-type tasks. And, of course, we have seen the growth in the use of Ansible playbooks. And there’s RPA (robotic process automation) to perform mundane tasks.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen an increase in interest and investment recently. Generative AI references algorithms that enable using existing content like audio files, images, or text to create new content. According to Gartner, in the next three and a half years, generative AI will account for 10% of all data produced compared to less than 1% at present. It will be used to support software development more generally, to assist companies in finding candidates to fill talent shortfalls, and to identify drug candidates more readily.

Data Fabric, which Gartner defines as a design concept that serves as an integrated layer (fabric) of data and connecting processes, will foster resilient and flexible integration of data across business users and platforms. This, they predict, will reduce data management efforts substantially while dramatically improving time to value.

Once an AI model is put in place, its value begins to drift as data inputs, real world conditions, and the economic environment change. To achieve lasting value from AI investments, companies will need to take an integrated approach for operationalizing AI models, or AI engineering. Gartner estimates that companies that fully adopt AI engineering will reap three times more value from their AI efforts.

The next stage in automation will be where a physical or software system is capable of self-managing. This is what they call autonomic systems, and they will be more apparent later in the decade. Gartner suggests that autonomic systems with in-built self-learning can dynamically optimize performance, protect companies in hostile environments, and make sure that they’re constantly dealing with new challenges, The software will have greater levels of self-management.

Decision Intelligence (DI) is automation software that enhances human intelligence. It models decisions in a repeatable way to make them more efficient and to hasten the speed to value. Gartner thinks that in the next two years, one-third of large enterprises will use DI for better and more structured decision making.

If you break down an application into the functional blocks, those blocks can be decoupled from the overall applications. These blocks can then be used to create new applications. I guess it’s the same sort of thinking as the API economy. This is what Gartner calls composable applications. According to Gartner, companies that leverage composable applications can outpace their competition by 80% regarding new feature implementation.

Gartner predicts that cloud-native platforms (CNPs) that leverage cloud technology’s essence to offer IT-related capabilities as a service for technologists, will provide the foundation for most new digital initiatives by mid-decade.

Privacy-enhancing computation (PEC) is expected to protect a company and its customers’ sensitive data, which, Gartner thinks, will maintain customer loyalty by decreasing privacy-related issues and cybersecurity events. Gartner goes on to suggest that roughly 60% of large enterprises will leverage these practices by 2025.

Cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA) is an integrated approach to securing IT assets regardless of their location. It redefines the perimeters of cybersecurity to the identity of a person or a thing. Gartner predicts that this will reduce the financial implications of cyber incidents by 90% in less than two years.

The distributed enterprise model allows employees to be geographically dispersed, making it possible to employ talented staff based anywhere. Gartner thinks that organizations using this model will achieve 25% faster revenue growth than companies that don’t. Following the pandemic and lockdowns, many companies must already be part of the way towards this model.

Total experience (TX) shows the value of improving every stakeholder’s experience – that’s customers, employees, and users. This, Gartner suggests, will improve business outcomes. They also warn that currently-existing silos need to be broken down.

It will be interesting to see how many of those become part of the new normal.

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