Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2016
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
7 October 2015 informationage.com
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.
“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.
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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