Gartner’s top 10 strategic
technologies for 2016 from information-age.com
Analyst firm shoots for machine learning,
autonomous agents and the Internet of Things among the technologies that will
most impact business strategies next year
Posted by Ben Rossi
on 7 October 2015
Analyst firm Gartner has revealed the top ten
technology trends that it predicts will be strategic for most organisations in
2016.
The company defines a strategic technology
trend as one with the potential for significant impact on the organisation.
Factors that denote
significant impact include a high potential for disruption to the business, end
users or IT, the need for a major investment, or the risk of being late to
adopt. These technologies impact the organisation's long-term plans, programmes
and initiatives.
"Gartner's top
ten strategic technology trends will shape digital business opportunities through 2020,"
said David Cearley, VP and Gartner Fellow. "The first
three trends address merging the physical and virtual worlds and the emergence
of the digital mesh. While organisations focus on digital business today,
algorithmic business is emerging.
>See also: Gartner’s business intelligence predictions
“Algorithms – relationships and
interconnections – define the future of business. In algorithmic business, much
happens in the background in which people are not directly involved. This is
enabled by smart machines, which our next three trends address.
“Our final four trends address the new IT
reality, the new architecture and platform trends needed to support digital and
algorithmic business.”
1.
The device mesh
The device mesh refers to an expanding set of
endpoints people use to access applications and information or interact with
people, social communities, governments and businesses.
This includes mobile
devices, wearable, consumer and home electronic devices, automotive devices and
environmental devices – such as sensors in the Internet of Things (IoT).
"In the post-mobile world, the focus
shifts to the mobile user who is surrounded by a mesh of devices extending well
beyond traditional mobile devices," said Cearley.
While devices are increasingly connected to
back-end systems through various networks, they have often operated in
isolation from one another.
As the device mesh evolves, Gartner expects
connection models to expand and greater cooperative interaction between devices
to emerge.
2.
Ambient user experience
The device mesh creates the foundation for a
new continuous and ambient user experience. Immersive environments delivering
augmented and virtual reality hold significant potential but are only one
aspect of the experience.
The ambient user experience preserves
continuity across boundaries of device mesh, time and space. The experience
seamlessly flows across a shifting set of devices and interaction channels
blending physical, virtual and electronic environment as the user moves from
one place to another.
"Designing mobile apps remains an
important strategic focus for the enterprise," said Cearley.
"However, the leading edge of that design is focused on providing an experience
that flows across and exploits different devices, including IoT sensors, common
objects such as automobiles, or even factories.
“Designing these advanced experiences will be
a major differentiator for independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprises
alike by 2018."
3.
3D printing materials
Advances in 3D printing have already enabled
3D printing to use a wide range of materials, including advanced nickel alloys,
carbon fiber, glass, conductive ink, electronics, pharmaceuticals and
biological materials.
These innovations are driving user demand, as
the practical applications for 3D printers expand to more sectors, including
aerospace, medical, automotive, energy and the military.
The growing range of 3D-printable materials
will drive a compound annual growth rate of 64.1% for enterprise 3D-printer
shipments through 2019, according to Gartner.
These advances will necessitate a rethinking
of assembly line and supply chain processes to exploit 3D printing.
"3D printing will see a steady expansion
over the next 20 years of the materials that can be printed, improvement in the
speed with which items can be printed and emergence of new models to print and
assemble composite parts," said Cearley.
4.
Information of everything
Everything in the digital mesh produces, uses
and transmits information. This information goes beyond textual, audio and
video information to include sensory and contextual information. Information of
everything addresses this influx with strategies and technologies to link data
from all these different data sources.
Information has always existed everywhere but
has often been isolated, incomplete, unavailable or unintelligible. Advances in
semantic tools such as graph databases as well as other emerging data
classification and information analysis techniques will bring meaning to the
often-chaotic deluge of information.
5.
Advanced machine learning
In advanced machine learning, deep neural nets
(DNNs) move beyond classic computing and information management to create
systems that can autonomously learn to perceive the world, on their own.
The explosion of data sources and complexity
of information makes manual classification and analysis infeasible and
uneconomic. DNNs automate these tasks and make it possible to address key
challenges related to the information of everything trend.
DNNs (an advanced form of machine learning
particularly applicable to large, complex datasets) is what makes smart
machines appear ‘intelligent’.
They enable hardware- or software-based
machines to learn for themselves all the features in their environment, from
the finest details to broad sweeping abstract classes of content.
This area is evolving quickly, and Gartner
advises organisations to assess how they can apply these technologies to gain
competitive advantage.
6.
Autonomous agents and things
Machine learning gives rise to a spectrum of
smart machine implementations – including robots, autonomous vehicles, virtual
personal assistants (VPAs) and smart advisors – that act in an autonomous (or
at least semiautonomous) manner.
While advances in physical smart machines,
such as robots, get a great deal of attention, the software-based smart
machines have a more near-term and broader impact.
VPAs such as Google Now, Microsoft's Cortana
and Apple's Siri are becoming smarter and are precursors to autonomous agents.
The emerging notion of assistance feeds into
the ambient user experience in which an autonomous agent becomes the main user
interface.
Instead of interacting with menus, forms and
buttons on a smartphone, the user speaks to an app, which is really an
intelligent agent.
"Over the next five years we will evolve
to a post-app world with intelligent agents delivering dynamic and contextual
actions and interfaces," said Cearley. "IT leaders should explore how
they can use autonomous things and agents to augment human activity and free
people for work that only people can do.
“However, they must recognise that smart
agents and things are a long-term phenomenon that will continually evolve and
expand their uses for the next 20 years."
7.
Adaptive security architecture
The complexities of digital business and the
algorithmic economy combined with an emerging ‘hacker industry’ significantly
increase the threat surface for an organisation.
Relying on perimeter defense and rule-based
security is inadequate, especially as organisations exploit more cloud-based
services and open APIs for customers and partners to integrate with their
systems.
IT leaders must focus on detecting and
responding to threats, as well as more traditional blocking and other measures
to prevent attacks, says Gartner. Application self-protection, as well as user
and entity behavior analytics, will help fulfill the adaptive security
architecture.
8.
Advanced system architecture
The digital mesh and smart machines require
intense computing architecture demands to make them viable for organisations.
Providing this required boost are high-powered and ultraefficient neuromorphic
architectures.
Fueled by field-programmable gate arrays
(FPGAs) as an underlining technology for neuromorphic architectures, there are
significant gains to this architecture, such as being able to run at speeds of
greater than a teraflop with high-energy efficiency.
"Systems built on GPUs and FPGAs will
function more like human brains that are particularly suited to be applied to
deep learning and other pattern-matching algorithms that smart machines
use," said Cearley.
"FPGA-based architecture will allow
further distribution of algorithms into smaller form factors, with considerably
less electrical power in the device mesh, thus allowing advanced machine
learning capabilities to be proliferated into the tiniest IoT endpoints, such
as homes, cars, wristwatches and even human beings."
9.
Mesh app and service architecture
Monolithic, linear application designs (e.g.,
the three-tier architecture) are giving way to a more loosely coupled
integrative approach: the apps and services architecture.
Enabled by software-defined application
services, this new approach enables web-scale performance, flexibility and
agility.
Microservice architecture is an emerging
pattern for building distributed applications that support agile delivery and
scalable deployment, both on-premises and in the cloud.
Containers are emerging as a critical
technology for enabling agile development and microservice architectures.
>See also: Gartner's Internet of Things predictions
Bringing mobile and IoT elements into the app
and service architecture creates a comprehensive model to address back-end
cloud scalability and front-end device mesh experiences.
Application teams must create new modern
architectures to deliver agile, flexible and dynamic cloud-based applications
with agile, flexible and dynamic user experiences that span the digital mesh.
10.
Internet of Things platforms
IoT platforms complement the mesh app and
service architecture. The management, security, integration and other
technologies and standards of the IoT platform are the base set of capabilities
for building, managing and securing elements in the IoT.
IoT platforms constitute the work IT does
behind the scenes from an architectural and a technology standpoint to make the
IoT a reality. The IoT is an integral part of the digital mesh and ambient user
experience and the emerging and dynamic world of IoT platforms is what makes
them possible.
"Any enterprise embracing the IoT will
need to develop an IoT platform strategy, but incomplete competing vendor
approaches will make standardisation difficult through 2018," said
Cearley.
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