Technology influences how people behave at work and what types of trends they gravitate towards, whether it be AI engineering or hyper-automation, there are a host of new technologies emerging that will shape the future. Because the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the technology innovation and investment strategies of nearly every company in the world, economic and socio-economic challenges have made it clear that IT is the lifeline for businesses during this coronavirus era.
The following major technology trends are gearing up to create a landslide of opportunities and jobs for solution providers and vendors alike. The unprecedented challenges of this past year 2020 are now demanding that the organizational flexibility transform and generate the future.
For instance, those employees who are returning to work are being met by new sensors, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and behavioral data technology that influence how they act at work. This new collection and use of data to drive behaviors is one of the latest trends to hit the technology market for the new year. From autonomous things and artificial intelligence to cloud computing and emerging technologies, here are the seven biggest technology trends that will change up the market in 2021.
Influencing how employees behave at work includes the RFID sensors mentioned above, and also a rollout of computer vision to be able to determine if personnel are wearing masks and washing their hands frequently. This behavioral data being collected and analyzed is called the Internet of Behavior (IoB). As organizations improve the amount of data they capture, the IoB will affect how organizations interact with people. However, it is key to note that privacy laws, which can vary greatly depending on geographical location, will impact the adoption and scale of the IoB.
The latest saying is to automate everything or risk getting left behind. As a major trend that will accelerate in 2021, automating as many things as possible is on track to secure organizational flow. Hyper Automation is the idea that anything that can be automated in an organization should be automated. This technology trend is driven by businesses having legacy processes that are not streamlined, which creates huge costs and extensive issues--while at the same time--the acceleration of digital business requires efficiency, speed, and democratization.
Successfully emerging from the pandemic requires an “anywhere operations” attitude. The model will be vital for businesses to successfully reappear and re-establish themselves from COVID-19 in 2021. At the core of the remote work trend is an operating model that allows for business to be accessed, delivered and enabled anywhere regardless of where customers, employers and business partners operate in physically remote environments. Going beyond in the new year will require a “digital first, remote first” way of doing business.
The future of cloud computing is where cloud services are distributed to different physical locations, but the operation, governance and evolution remain the responsibility of the public cloud provider. A trend that has been growing over the past few years, distributed cloud has seen many organizations moving some of their applications and data to the public cloud. In 2021, the distributed cloud will better enable organizations to have these services physically closer ,which will solve low-latency issues, reduce data costs and help accommodate laws that dictate data must remain in a specific geographic area.
A cybersecurity mesh is a distributed architectural approach to scalable, flexible and reliable cybersecurity control, and is a growing vital security trend as more and more assets are now existing outside the traditional security perimeter. A strong cybersecurity mesh allows for the security perimeter to be defined around the identity of a person or thing, enabling a more modular, responsive security approach by centralizing policy orchestration and distributing policy enforcement. Perimeter protection becomes less meaningful in 2021, and the security approach will evolve to meet the modern cybersecurity needs of every business.
Investing in a solid artificial intelligence engineering strategy will create the performance, scalability, interpretability and reliability of AI models while delivering the full value of AI investments. Many AI projects often face issues with maintainability, scalability and governance, which make them a challenge for most organizations, however in 2021, AI engineering offers a new pathway to the mainstream DevOps process. Rather than a set of specialized and isolated projects, AI engineering brings together various disciplines for a clearer path to deal with trust, transparency, ethics, fairness, interpretability and compliance issues.
One of the most important technology trends of 2021 is privacy-enhancing computation, which features three technologies that protect data while it’s being used. The first provides a trusted environment where sensitive data can be processed or analyzed. The second performs processing and analytics in a decentralized manner, and the third technology encrypts data and algorithms before processing or analytics. The overall result gives organizations the wherewithal to collaborate on research securely across regions and with competitors without sacrificing confidentiality, an approach designed specifically for the increasing need to share data while maintaining privacy or security.
In order to make technology work for you or your business, it’s vital to have a resource that provides competent, honest, and dependable computer learning and services. Whether making the jump to a new technology trend in 2021, or improving the current status of your professional organizational tactics, the key is to examine what will keep your head above water and your business running smoothly for the future, once the pandemic has subsided.