Beginning in March 2020, the world experienced an unprecedented surge in the use of communications tools for distributed and remote workers. This montinues today, inspiring new technological applications, investments, and business models. Here are seven of the most exciting technology trends you can expect to see in 2022, as noted by Gartner, WEF, and the IEEE:
1. Virtualized business
Numerous mainstream businesses are preparing themselves for virtual spaces that have their own digital avatars, assets, and even currencies. The rise and convergence of virtual reality technology, non-fungible tokens, and cryptocurrencies is shaping this new digital environment, which some have dubbed the metaverse, in new and interesting ways. And while this shift is still in its nascent stages, the possibilities for experimentation and innovation are attracting attention across the globe.
2. Privacy-focused security
As digital security becomes a key business priority, privacy-enhancing computational advancements are poised to security of the processing of personal data in untrusted environments. These algorithms use a variety of privacy-protection techniques that can extract value from data without violating compliance requirements.
3. Composable applications
Composable applications are rapidly finding enterprise adoption due to their modular and easy-to-repurpose nature. With this modular approach to application design, businesses can easily develop new and improved solutions to their processes using already created application modules. By making it easier to reuse blocks of code, composable applications shorten the time to market for new products, customize solutions more quickly, and enhance enterprise value.
4. Automation maturity
Automation technologies have become a business imperative for major organizations. A myriad of applications, including AI engineering, autonomic systems, and generative content creation will soon touch all aspects of enterprise operations. These changes may include operationalization of AI delivery for seamless governance, self-sustaining systems in manufacturing units, and even the creation of new content forms in media and the acceleration of healthcare R&D cycles.
5. Decision intelligence
Cognitive intelligence will soon play a key role of enhancing organizational decision making. Often seen as the holy grail of enhanced human capabilities, cognitive intelligence will support human decision making directly in real time, bringing the power of automation and advanced technologies within easy grasp of human workers, driving better business outcomes.
6. Cloud-native platforms
The proliferation of cloud technologies, combined with the rapid rise of distributed work, will lead to the creation of new application architectures that are resilient, elastic, and agile. Cloud-native platforms will improve on the traditional “lift-and-shift” approach of first-generation cloud applications, which failed to take full advantage of the cloud’s capabilities due to the inherent complexity of the maintenance of legacy architecture.
