The year 2020 was more than just being volatile; rather it was the year marked with numerous digital and technology advancements which were a direct response to overcome the challenging circumstances. The pandemic certainly impelled even the naysayers to go digital, and the halted ones to surge; the business spectrum had no respite than to leverage the digital wave.
The coming year foresees a promising and potential role of technology to deliver a paradigm shift in the business operation models. These game-changing technologies have the promise to impact businesses and consumers alike with their disruptive potential.
1. Smart Work-from-Home Technologies: The widespread adoption of 5G and emerging technologies such as AI and IoT will have a massive impact on the work-from-home trend that we saw becoming massively accepted in 2020. The coming year will elevate the work-from-home format to ‘anywhere’ model where organizations would actually not bother if anyone is working from the moon and delivering results! Smart work-from-home technologies like remote communication tools, video calling services, project management platforms, and digital assistants shall continue being in high demand.
2. Hyperautomation: Hyperautomation is an advanced, intelligent form of automation that implements AI and ML allowing it to go beyond task-automation and accomplish process-based automation. As businesses continue leveraging advanced technologies to automate tedious, repetitive tasks and processes, the new year will see new hyperautomation technologies evolve and existing solutions to continue to advance.
3. Edge Computing: Until recently, edge computing was considered an emerging technology – something akin to a science project. With the proliferation of 5G and IoT, 2021 is the year when edge computing will see doors opened for it. Its ability to accomplish complex operations in low-latency environments is expected to be the primary reason and the driving factor for businesses to eagerly adopt this technology.
4. Quantum Computing: The forthcoming year is predicted to be the year that quantum computing scales-up rapidly and grows to transform Artificial Intelligence making it more advanced – called Quantum plus Artificial Intelligence (QAI). Similarly, AI applications with machine learning run on quantum computers can accelerate computer vision in the coming years quite disruptively.
5. Cognitive Foundation Technology: Cognitive Foundation (CF) optimally matches all kinds of ICT resources such as cloud, edge, terminal, network, etc., and manages information distributed among them centrally. CF creates an unconstrained platform that can analyze and forecast irrespective of the format of the systems or the data. Its self-evolving and multi-orchestrating abilities make this tech trend one to watch out for.
6. Digital Twin Computing: Digital Twin, as the name suggests, means building a digital twin of a real person or thing. They are manufactured to manage performance and effectiveness of machines, to simulate the impact of new developments, and even proactively help in designing solutions. Digital Twin Computing is a new computer paradigm which makes it possible to test and experiment multiple real-life possibilities in different environments without relying on a human to provide input. While this technology has decades to come into the mainstream, the buzz around it is sure catch eyes in 2021.
7. Robotics Process Automation: With the advances that we have already seen and the ones predicted to come, one thing is clear – the world is making a shift towards high-end data usage. RPA uses software bots to tackle repetitive, cumbersome tasks unleashing the ultra-tech features of AI, ML and computer vision. Studies show that 1 minute of RPA work is worth 15 minutes of manual work – with an efficiency rate like this, 2021 promises to see unseen advances and a high rate of adoption for this technology.
