Join us as we explore top business technology topics and trends for 2021. We looked at 3 sources, including Gartner, Forbes, and Deloitte. We found some common themes focusing on People, Agility, and then some technical topics such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). We broke down each topic into (mostly) non-technical terms, and what is relevant for small and medium-sized businesses in Canada. For Part 1, we take a deep look into Gartner’s 9 trends, while Part 2 features the key points from Forbes and Deloitte, and our conclusions.
Trend 1: Internet of Behaviors
technologies that gather the “digital dust” of daily life
Trend 2: Total experience
The goal is to improve the overall experience where all of these pieces intersect, from technology to employees to customers and users. We discuss customer portals, integrated eCommerce, and OmniChannel retail
Trend 3: Privacy-enhancing computation
This approach is designed specifically for the increasing need to share data while maintaining privacy or security.
Trend 4: Distributed cloud
Distributed cloud is where cloud services are distributed to different physical locations, but the operation, governance and evolution remain the responsibility of the public cloud provider.
Trend 5: Anywhere operations
An anywhere operations model will be vital for businesses to emerge successfully from COVID-19. At its core, this operating model allows for business to be accessed, delivered and enabled anywhere — where customers, employers and business partners operate in physically remote environments.
Trend 6: Cybersecurity mesh
Cybersecurity mesh essentially allows for the security perimeter to be defined around the identity of a person or thing. It enables a more modular, responsive security approach by centralizing policy orchestration and distributing policy enforcement.
Trend 7: Intelligent composable business
An intelligent composable business is one that can adapt and fundamentally rearrange itself based on a current situation. As organizations accelerate digital business strategy to drive faster digital transformation, they need to be agile and make quick business decisions informed by currently available data.
Trend 8: AI engineering
making AI a part of the mainstream DevOps process rather than a set of specialized and isolated projects
Trend 9: Hyperautomation
Hyperautomation is the idea that anything that can be automated in an organization should be automated. Hyperautomation is driven by organizations having legacy business processes that are not streamlined, creating immensely expensive and extensive issues for organizations.
Many organizations are supported by a “patchwork” of technologies that are not lean, optimized, connected, clean or explicit. Organizations that don’t focus on efficiency, efficacy and business agility will be left behind.
We discuss the benefits of an accelerated Digital Transformation, using integrated business systems.
