Gartner has published what it considers to be the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2019 that will have a significant and disruptive impact on technology and industry through to 2023, characterizing the trends by reference to the “intelligent digital mesh”.
Intelligent
No list of top trends would be complete without some discussion of AI. The first three trends identified by Gartner fall into this category:
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Autonomous things
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Augmented analysis
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AI-driven development
AI is already used across a broad range of applications, and Gartner predicts that “virtually every application, service and IoT object will incorporate some form of AI to automate or augment processes or human actions”. This would be a significant development, particularly when coupled with the continued development and improvement in AI technology and its capabilities.
Gartner also predicts that by 2020 “more than 40% of data science tasks will be automated”, identifying augmented analysis as a major development for data analytics and as transforming how increasing levels of data are analyzed, while at the same time removing personal bias. Automation of data analysis allows data on a huge scale to be analyzed against hypotheses in excess of those that data scientists have the capacity to explore.
Finally, Gartner considers that the trend in AI-driven development (essentially how AI is embedded within applications and use of artificial/virtual software developers) will result in developers developing AI tools without the involvement of data scientists and greater use of virtual software developers. This development will no doubt help drive the number of applications that utilize AI software.
Despite the potential for AI, Gartner also (perhaps reassuringly) warns of its limitations, stating that companies should keep in mind that the technology does not have the capability of the human brain, whether in terms of “decision making, intelligence or general-purpose learning”.
Digital
Digital concerns “blending the digital and physical worlds to create an immersive world.” Gartner identifies the following three trends as falling within this category:
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Digital twin
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Empowered edge
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Immersive experience
Gartner recognizes that digital twins are not new (think, for example, of the 3D models developed by CAD software), but considers that there will be significant development in this area, particularly with respect to digital twins in the IoT, which Gartner discussed in detail in this earlier post.
Gartner also anticipates a steady increase in edge computing though to 2028 (processing of data close to the source of such data). This will be an important development as levels of data increase and is expected by Gartner to “address challenges ranging from high WAN costs and unacceptable levels of latency”.
Some will have experienced the impressive capabilities of virtual reality technology currently available. Gartner predicts significant development and utilization of immersive technologies. For example, it predicts that “By 2022, 70% of enterprises will be experimenting with immersive technologies [which include augmented relative, mixed reality and virtual reality] for consumer and enterprise use” and that 25% will have deployed such technology into production. It further predicts that immersive technologies will have the ability to detect personal emotion.
Mesh
The last of the categories is the exploitation of “connections between expanding sets of people, businesses, devices, content and services”. Two trends identified fall within this category:
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Blockchain
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Smart spaces
Blockchain, which we discussed in this post last week, is predicted by Gartner as having the potential to create $3.1 trillion in business value by 2030, therefore highlighting the likely importance of this technology going forward.
Gartner considers trends identified such as blockchain, edge computing, and digital twins as being drivers for smart spaces. This highlights how these trends cannot be considered in isolation, and the interconnectedness of the “intelligent digital mesh”.
And Finally…
Gartner identifies two further trends for 2019:
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Digital ethics and privacy
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Quantum computing
The level of attention given to the use of personal data by organizations in recent months and changes in regulation in this space in 2018 means that it is not surprising that Gartner has identified digital ethics and privacy as a key theme going forward. The importance placed by Gartner on this trend is evident by its prediction that to succeed, companies will need to ensure that they gain the trust of those using their services.
Quantum computing is identified by Gartner as being in an emerging state, though with the potential to transform some industries if it became in a form that was “commercially available, affordable and reliable”. It may therefore be some time before we see significant exploitation of this technology and the full scope of its potential.
