Hold on tight as you are approaching the year 2018. According to Gartner, artificial intelligence, immersive experiences, digital twins, event-thinking and continuous adaptive security create a foundation for the next generation of digital business models and ecosystems. Here, three top strategic technology trends for 2018 are formulated.
Trend #1: Artificial Intelligence (AI)
How AI is seeping into virtually every technology and with a defined, well-scoped focus can allow more dynamic, flexible and potentially autonomous systems. The ability to use AI to enhance decision making, reinvent business models and ecosystems, and remake the customer experience will drive the payoff for digital initiatives through 2025. Given the steady increase in inquiry calls, it’s clear that interest is growing. A recent Gartner survey showed that 59% of organizations are still gathering information to build their AI strategies, while the remainders have already made progress in piloting or adopting AI solutions.
Although using AI correctly will result in a big digital business payoff, the promise (and pitfalls) of general AI where systems magically perform any intellectual task that a human can do and dynamically learn much as humans do is speculative at best. Narrow AI, consisting of highly scoped machine-learning solutions that target a specific task (such as understanding language or driving a vehicle in a controlled environment) with algorithms chosen that are optimized for that task, is where the action is today.
(Source: Deloitte Analysis)
Intelligent apps also create a new intelligent intermediary layer between people and systems and have the potential to transform the nature of work and the structure of the workplace, as seen in virtual customer assistants and enterprise advisors and assistants. As intelligent things proliferate, expect a shift from stand-alone intelligent things to a swarm of collaborative intelligent things. In this model, multiple devices will work together, either independently or with human input. The leading edge of this area is being used by the military, which is studying the use of drone swarms to attack or defend military targets. It’s evident in the consumer world in the opening example showcased at CES, the consumer electronics event.
Trend #2: Digital Twins
Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality are changing the way that people perceive and interact with the digital world. A digital twin is a digital representation of a real-world entity or system. In the context of IoT, digital twins are linked to real-world objects and offer information on the state of the counterparts, respond to changes, improve operations and add value. With an estimated 21 billion connected sensors and endpoints by 2020, digital twins will exist for billions of things in the near future. Digital twins offer help with asset management, but will eventually offer value in operational efficiency and insights into how products are used and how they can be improved.
(Source: Deloitte Analysis)
Trend #3: Mesh
Meshes are the connections between an expanding set of people, business, devices, content and services to deliver digital outcomes. Business events reflect the discovery of notable states or state changes, such as completion of a purchase order. Some business events or combinations of events constitute business moments — a detected situation that calls for some specific business action. The most consequential business moments are those that have implications for multiple parties, such as separate applications, lines of business or partners.
(Source: Cisco CloudLock)
Digital business, however, creates a complex, evolving security environment. The use of increasingly sophisticated tools increases the threat potential. Continuous adaptive risk and trust assessment (CARTA) allows for real-time, risk and trust-based decision making with adaptive responses to security-enable digital business. Traditional security techniques using ownership and control rather than trust will not work in the digital world. This requires embracing people-centric security and empowering developers to take responsibility for security measures.