About the Author
Samantha Searle is a senior analyst at Gartner.
Given the rapid pace at which technology trends emerge and evolve, it can be difficult to determine which of these trends present opportunities and which present risks. Each technology trend can have different types of potential impact: broad and global, or narrow and niche.
Trends rarely act in isolation – consider established digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which combine to spark new trends that then create an exponentially larger impact.
Data and analysis
For example, data generated by IoT is applied to advanced analytics and machine learning. This process produces a greater number of intelligent applications and agents capable of suggesting the best response in a given situation. The combination of the three technologies created the digital twin, a digital representation of a real world entity or system.
However, the digital twin may not be relevant to all the needs of modern businesses. That is why it is essential to address trends globally and globally. It's tempting to be sold on expensive trends, but not all trends are created equal, and not all will apply.
The question is: how do you know which technology trends will evolve to cause significant disruption or create new opportunities for your organization? Ultimately, three key factors will enable you to identify the potential impact of a particular technology trend on people, businesses, information technology, and the technology marketplace:
Impact of trends.
Technology trends can also differ depending on the extent of their impact. The different trends may affect just one country, several countries, or an entire region. The magnitude of the impact of a trend will depend on social, cultural, geopolitical and economic factors in a given country or region.
It should also be noted that a trend can have a direct or indirect impact on the interactions between people, companies, IT departments or IT departments. This could also affect the tasks and operations performed by these people or services.
Virtual reality, augmented reality, and virtual personal assistants like Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Amazon's Alexa are trends that have had a direct impact. In fact, these trends have changed the way we interact with devices and companies.
Trends around cloud computing and mobile technology have also had a substantial and direct impact on businesses, IT departments, and the technology marketplace. In fact, these technologies have required a complete redesign of the application strategy, which is now based on software as a service (SaaS) and extends them to mobile devices through applications.
respond to trends
A variety of factors will affect an organization's ability to respond to a particular technology trend and technology. These factors include cost, regulatory considerations, privacy, usability, and social feedback. The extent to which these factors affect an organization's response to a given technology trend will inevitably vary with the maturity of the trend.
A perfect example can be found in emerging technology trends. These trends tend to raise more and more concerns about risk, security, and privacy. As the trend grows, factors like cost and risk become less important, while factors like deployment activity and ease of operation become even more important. use made priorities.
When trends become mainstream
Finally, a trend is spreading, garnering a stronger social and cultural response, while increasing adoption means authorities need to tighten regulation of this trend.
When responding to a technology trend on your watch list, you can:
- Ignore the trend, as it is unlikely to fit your organization's business model and strategy;
- Periodically monitor the trend to see if its potential impact or maturity has changed. Additionally, you can continually explore potential impacts and applicability to modernization and innovation efforts;
- Mitigate the impact of the trend or brace yourself, but be prepared to feel the negative effects on your business and your industry, even if you choose not to adopt it.
- Adopt the trend and apply it in companies, actively integrating it into projects, given its potential and commercial value;
- Take advantage of the trend to reinvent the business model as you have a clear interest in current and specific business needs and opportunities, which could provide a significant competitive advantage and enable your business to grow. be disruptive, not annoying.
It is essential to identify technology trends before they are released and to understand their nature from an organizational point of view before reacting.
Samantha Searle is a senior analyst at Gartner.